The Storm at Their Backs

The Scorchspine Mountains faded behind them as they crossed into the fractured highlands. The sky above no longer looked like it belonged to their world—washed in grey and streaked with faint violet currents, like veins beneath bruised skin.

It wasn't natural.

It wasn't quiet, either.

Thunder rolled somewhere far to the north. Not from clouds. From something deeper.

Lirien scanned the horizon from a jagged outcrop, wings partially extended for balance, her expression drawn.

"There's a pull," she said. "Same as the Vault of Embers. But stronger."

Reven knelt by the shattered remnants of an old boundary stone. The markings were ancient—Skyborn again, but these weren't warnings. They were instructions. Pilgrimage markers.

"It's leading us to the next vault," he said. "Storms, if the Archive wasn't lying."

Kaela stood nearby, eyes narrowed against the rising wind. "Let's hope it wasn't."

They moved without ceremony. The weight of the Ember Vault still lingered in their bones—what they saw, what Reven had to do. The Warden's words echoed in his mind like a burn that wouldn't scab.

"You're not fighting monsters. You're fighting memory."

The terrain shifted beneath their boots. Stone gave way to metallic fractures in the earth, signs of tectonic interference where Rift bleed had eaten into the world's bones. Lightning cracked from a nearby plateau—blue and white, unnatural in shape, forking sideways across the rock instead of down.

By midday, the rain began.

Except it wasn't rain. Not water.

Tiny, sharp particles drifted from the clouds—metallic ash with an electrical charge. It bit at their skin. Reven wrapped a cloth over his mouth. Lirien activated her cloak's environmental veil. Kaela just growled and pulled up her hood.

They didn't speak much after that.

Not until they found the ship.

It lay half-buried in a ravine, slumped like a dying beast. An old world model—Skyborn architecture fused with pre-collapse tech. The hull was cracked in several places, but intact enough to have survived something catastrophic.

Reven ran his hand along the surface. "This wasn't just a transport. It was armoured."

Kaela crouched beside one of the ruptures, brushing away layers of volcanic glass. "Scorch damage. Direct hit."

"From what?" Lirien asked.

Kaela looked up. "Something above it."

Reven circled to the open breach. Inside, the ship was still—no lights, no systems online. Just bodies. Slumped in ancient armour, some still in crash harnesses. They had died on impact, or soon after. But they had died facing inward.

Which meant they weren't afraid of what was outside.

They were afraid of what they brought with them.

Reven found it in the rear hold.

A sealed container, humming faintly, chained with glyph-locked bands etched in four languages—Skyborn, Old Beast-Kin, Human Technical, and one he didn't recognize.

"What is it?" Kaela asked behind him.

Reven didn't answer. His fingers hovered just above the glyphs. They pulsed beneath his hand.

Lirien entered the chamber, her voice barely audible above the hum. "Reven, that's Rift tech."

"I know."

Kaela's hand went to her weapon. "Then we shouldn't be touching it."

"No," Reven said. "We should be using it."

They stared at him.

He turned slowly, gaze steady.

"If we want to beat this thing, we need to understand it. Contain it. The old world didn't just fight the Rift—they studied it. Left behind pieces like this for a reason."

Kaela didn't like it. She didn't have to say it.

Lirien nodded once. "You want to take it with us."

"We don't have time to come back," Reven said. "This tech isn't active. Yet. But I've seen these containment cores before. The Warden at the Ember Vault had one embedded in his armour."

Kaela exhaled through her nose, then stepped forward. "Fine. But you carry it."

He strapped the core to his back. The weight was immediate—more emotional than physical. Like carrying a loaded weapon pointed inward.

They moved again at nightfall, tracking the lightning pulses to the horizon.

Reven barely slept. The core throbbed in sync with something in the distance. Every so often, he saw flickers in the dark—not visions, but echoes. Shadows without light. Movement without origin.

Lirien kept watch from above. Kaela paced.

At dawn, they reached the Stormline.

It wasn't a mountain. It was a fracture in the sky.

The Vault of Storms didn't rise from the earth—it hung in it. Suspended in the air, caught between jagged ridges of floating stone and coils of lightning that danced in impossible patterns. The wind here howled like a living thing, torn between rage and warning.

Kaela stared up at it, jaw clenched.

"That's suicide."

Lirien's wings flared slightly. "Not for all of us."

She turned to Reven. "I can take you."

"What about Kaela?"

"I'll come up another way," Kaela said. "I see a climbing route. Dangerous, but doable."

Reven didn't question it.

He strapped the core tighter and stepped beside Lirien.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, wings unfurling with a powerful snap. The wind surged around them as she lifted off, angling through the spiralling currents.

They flew in silence.

Below them, the world shrank. And above them, the vault loomed.

It was unlike the Ember Vault. This one breathed electricity—runes carved into floating stones, gates of metal and storm-forged crystal.

They landed on a suspended platform.

At the centre stood a figure.

Not waiting. Watching.

Like it had known they would come.

Reven stepped forward slowly.

The figure raised its head.

"You brought it," it said, voice like thunder in a well.

"The containment core," Reven replied.

A nod. "Then the trial begins."