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September 14 - September 19, 2025
For he knew in his bones that she would emerge victorious, Naarvian steel in hand, vows of vengeance on her tongue. And that she would come for him.
He cried out as the pain and images compounded. A broken body and a broken mind – that was their intent: torture at its finest. And just when he could take no more, just as he considered cracking his own head upon the stone to make it stop, he was shown something else. Something good. His cabin.
he understood the husks staring back out at him from behind the stone bars, for they looked how he felt: hollowed out, a fragile shell of what had come before.
The thought was bittersweet, for she’d won the Great Rite and achieved what she’d always wanted, only to have lost something more precious when she emerged.
For him, the world would wait. And when he was safe at her side, they could watch the whole fucking thing go up in flames to be reborn anew.
‘Then the world will know that if they hurt him, I’ll burn them all to the ground.’
Thea had never seen anything like it – a shadow-touched Warsword battling monsters in midair. He was cloaked in midnight, his membranous wings unfurling with each mighty beat, carrying him effortlessly through the swarm of wraiths. He brandished twin blades of Naarvian steel, twirling them amid the shadows, cleaving like a comet through the night. Talemir’s movements in the sky were a symphony of precision and predatory prowess that she recognised in her own style.
As blood dripped from Wilder’s swords, that brilliant white light flared again. At last, he tasted the storm on his lips, and looked up.
She broke away, panting. ‘I love you,’ she gasped, refusing to tear her eyes away from him. ‘I love you so much I can hardly breathe. I’ve wanted to say it for so long —’ Wilder gave a hoarse, broken laugh. ‘Tell me again later. Tell me when we’re safe.’ Thea kissed him again, desperate to show him that tempest he’d brought to life within her from the moment they’d met. ‘I’ll tell you every day until my last,’ she murmured.
‘I am the storm,’ she told herself. She let her lightning rage, right alongside her heart, and she split the gods-damned tower in two.
‘You never have to hide your tears from me.’
She pointed to the door. ‘Out there, you can have your armour on as much as you need, but in here with me? We are equals. It was you who told me, what hurts you, hurts me. You told me we’ll take it on together.’
But Adrienne was cut off by one of the doors flying open. A dishevelled Wren entered, wearing an apron, her face smudged with dirt. ‘Sorry, sorry!’ She wiped her hands on a clean patch of her apron and reached for a plate as she scanned the room. ‘Did I miss anything? Did anyone else arrive —’ ‘Like who?’ Anya said, a coy smile on her lips. Wren pinned her with a challenging glare. ‘Like Cal, and Kipp…?’ ‘No one else?’ Anya pressed, her eyes bright. ‘Not a golden-haired Warsword, perhaps?’
He flipped through the countless pages. ‘If you had this much to say, why not say it to me? I’m here. I’m with you now.’ He could hear the pain straining his voice, but he didn’t care. Didn’t she know that she was breaking him apart? Didn’t she know that he wouldn’t let her go anywhere without him?
‘Tell Queen Reyna that the heirs of Delmira beg an audience.’
Reyna’s eyes flicked to her. ‘Shadow and storms. A reckoning. I have seen that gold will turn to silver in a blaze of iron and embers, giving rise to ancient power long forgotten. And I have seen your fates,’ she told them. ‘They are tangled. I cannot discern one from the next, only that they meet in a dawn of fire and blood.’
‘A Warsword is also a killer. A man – or woman – of violence and fury. Any good in me is because of that storm wielder you so vehemently insulted.’
Don’t let the world – don’t let anyone convince you that you’re not enough. Only you define your story. You and you alone. When they tell you what you’re not, when they tell you what you can’t do, remember: you are the storm, Elwren. You split the skies and flood the plains. You make the ground tremble beneath their boots. No one can fucking stop you.’
The tent flap shifted and in strode Wren, who was clutching a piece of parchment in her fist, and, to Wilder’s surprise, wearing armour. The Bear Slayer didn’t take his eyes off the younger Embervale sister, his gaze tracking the tight leathers that followed the curves of her body.
Wilder leant against the table, folding his arms over his chest and trying to hide his amusement as the alchemist and strategist chatted, and the Bear Slayer glowered in the background.
‘Furies save me,’ he rasped. ‘Are you trying to get me killed again, Thea? Don’t tell the Warsword you love me.’
‘I want… a life more than existence, more than survival. To experience the world to its fullest, with you at my side.’
Two hundred men and women, a combination of shadow-touched, Guardians and common folk, all marched along the Mourner’s Trail in her wake, and Thea knew without a doubt that soon enough, they would come to understand the road’s name intimately.
A former child of Thezmarr, a girl turned warrior, Althea Nine Lives, the Shadow of Death, the wraith slayer. The storm-wielding Warsword. Althea Embervale.
Thea raised her blade and shouted her final words for all the world to hear. ‘If this is to be our final stand, let us make it worthy of legend!’
‘We are all daughters of darkness, Thea. We were born into a world of it, a place that would dictate the way in which we defend ourselves, the way we live our lives. No more. That world is no longer. And the next one will be what we make it.’
The golden-haired warrior was no more. He had been kissed by lightning and thunder, and scorch marks blackened the ground where he knelt. Thrumming with renewed Furies-given power, he stood. His hair, now silver, caught in the wind as he squared his shoulders. His gaze, now as dark as the shadows he’d vanquished, went to the young storm wielder on the parapet. ‘Holy shit…’ Wilder muttered, words Torj himself would usually say. He felt Thea at his side, following his stare from the Bear Slayer to Wren. ‘Incredible,’ she whispered. ‘She let him wield her power.’
‘Then let’s talk about the Guild Master,’ Esyllt said, turning to Thea, determination blazing in his eyes in a way that made the hair on her nape stand up. ‘What?’ she blurted. ‘It’s yours,’ Esyllt said. ‘The Guild Master title.’
Thea stared at her sister. ‘Is it always so… brutal?’ ‘Only if you make it so.’ It was Kipp who came forward and marvelled at the Ladies’ Luncheon teapot. ‘I think I love you,’ he told the alchemist. Adrienne shook her head in disbelief as she approached Wren, clapping her on the shoulder. ‘Killed by a teapot… I’ll have to tell Drue and Tal about this.’
He looked into her eyes, loving every flicker of that untamed storm within. ‘I always said you’d be the end of me,’ he told her, throat bobbing. ‘But I was wrong. You’re the beginning.’
