The Storm Unseen
A year passed beneath the canopy of renewal. Under the Accord of Dawn, fractured cities began to heal. Roads were rebuilt, rivers cleared, and ancient places once sealed by fear were reopened to light. But with peace came a deeper silence, and in that silence, unease grew.
Mira had grown attuned to the subtle rhythms of the world. Each whisper of the wind brought her news—joyful births, reunions, migrations. But then came the dissonance: dreams riddled with red skies and endless storms. Her nights became restless, filled with the sound of waves crashing in places that had no ocean.
She sought Lena first, who combed through old songs and scripts. "There's a myth," Lena said. "Of something older than the Balance—a force kept at bay by the Tree's very presence. When the Tree was wounded, that force stirred."
Elric, now commander of the Boundless Guard, had seen signs too. "Whole caravans vanish beyond the Glass Dunes. And near the Shattered Coast, the sea churns black despite clear skies."
They met with Bram, whose time in the Between had changed him. His voice was calmer, deeper, and his eyes glowed faintly even in daylight. "The Between speaks of a storm. Not of wind and rain, but of memory and will. Something is rising. Not Caelen—something older."
They gathered the Council again, but fear had returned to many hearts. Whispers of the Unseen Storm spread faster than truth.
Mira made a decision. She would go beyond the known lands—to the Shattered Coast where the sea boiled under empty skies. Lena, Elric, and Bram agreed to join her, and so too did Valien, whose scouts had seen strange lights beneath the waves.
Their journey took them through lands both changed and unchanged. Some villages had thrived; others had vanished entirely, their ruins scattered like bones. In the forests beyond the Mistspire, they found statues carved from living trees—faces twisted in awe and fear.
At the coast, they saw it: the sea, dark and roiling, though no wind stirred the cliffs. Thunder rumbled not from above but from the depths. And on the horizon, a shape moved beneath the waves—vast, slow, ancient.
Lena stepped forward, staff raised. "This is no natural storm."
"No," Mira said. "It's the echo of something we forgot."
The orb pulsed in her hand—faster, brighter. The wind picked up, speaking in tones too old to name. A whisper reached them, not in voice but in memory:
"What you bound, we remember. What you broke, we endure. What you healed, we hunger for."
Mira looked to the sea and saw eyes within it.
The storm was no longer unseen.
It had come.