The Storm Warden

The figure on the platform was motionless, as if sculpted from the very storm.

Silver armour, fractured and mended with living lightning, wrapped its form in jagged arcs. Its face was obscured by a helmet of stormglass—transparent in moments, then opaque as thunderclouds. At its back, a spear rested against the stone, crackling faintly with residual energy.

Reven stepped forward, his boots ringing against the storm-forged floor.

"You are the one who bears the core," the Warden said. The voice wasn't loud, but it carried through the air like pressure before a downpour.

"I am," Reven answered, unslinging the containment core from his back. "Do you know what it is?"

"I know what it once held," the Warden replied. "And what it could still unleash."

Lirien moved beside Reven, silent but alert. Her wings folded tight, wary of every movement. "You're not like the last Warden," she said.

"No," the figure agreed. "Solen was forged in fire. I was born of storm. We are not the same—but we remember the same failures."

Lightning arced across the clouds above. The vault hummed in response.

Reven held the Warden's gaze. "I need access. To what's sealed here."

"You think the Vault contains answers," the Warden said. "It doesn't. It contains choices."

Kaela's voice echoed from behind as she climbed onto the platform, dust and blood streaking her cloak. "We're not here to debate. Let him in."

The Warden turned toward her, unmoved. "The Rift tests all things. Especially resolve."

Reven didn't hesitate. "Then test me."

The Warden nodded once. "Very well. Place the core on the altar."

Reven stepped toward the centre of the platform. A crystalline pedestal stood waiting—hovering above a vortex of churning air. As he lowered the containment core into place, the platform responded.

A pulse of light surged through the air, and the sky above split—revealing not more sky, but memory.

The Vault of Storms opened.

Not with sound, but sensation. Reven staggered as the air thickened around him, like drowning in atmosphere. The world warped, colour bending sideways, light taking shape.

They were no longer standing on stone.

They stood in a city of wind.

Buildings hung in the air, suspended by unseen currents, tethered only by beams of force and ancient gravity anchors. Figures flickered in and out of sight—ghosts of Skyborn engineers, architects, warriors. Their conversations, their failures, their desperation.

Reven recognized the tone. He'd seen it before in the Ember Vault.

This was the moment before collapse.

"The Skyborn knew the Rift would reach them," Lirien whispered. "They tried to build a sanctuary."

The vision shifted. The city fragmented into storms. Tempests erupted from the core. Wind sheared towers from their moorings. Beacons shattered. People vanished.

Then came the voice.

"Anchor yourself, or be scattered."

The world around them stabilized. The hallucination faded. The vault returned—but something had changed.

Now they stood in a vast circular chamber, the walls embedded with storm mirrors—glass that shimmered with reflections from other times.

At the centre was a sphere of condensed air. Frozen wind, spinning so fast it looked still.

The Warden stood across from them.

"This is your trial," he said. "To carry the knowledge of the storm, you must survive its eye."

Kaela crossed her arms. "Define 'survive.'"

The Warden pointed to the sphere. "Enter. Alone. You will not be followed. You will not be helped. If your mind is unsteady, you will shatter."

Reven looked toward the storm.

"What's inside?"

"Your storm," the Warden said. "Your memory. Your flaw."

Reven nodded once. He handed his sword to Kaela without a word.

She stared at it. "You're going in unarmed?"

He met her gaze. "If I can't face it bare, I don't deserve what's inside."

Then he stepped into the eye.

It wasn't darkness.

It was noise.

A wall of sound so deep it had no beginning. It wasn't loud—it was total. Like the heartbeat of the world crashing into his ribs.

Reven dropped to one knee.

He wasn't in the vault anymore.

He stood on the battlefield. A different one. Old. Scorched. A city burning in the background. A woman screaming. A child in his arms.

No. Not his arms.

His mother's.

He saw her—face twisted in pain, voice breaking as soldiers dragged her from a pile of rubble. Reven was just a boy, hiding beneath a collapsed rail line, watching.

He hadn't moved. He hadn't screamed.

He'd done nothing.

The wind howled through the vision. The world blurred, and the Rift opened in the sky above. A crack like shattered glass. Everything twisted.

And then another voice—his own.

"You want to stop the end? Then stop running."

Reven turned.

He was looking at himself. Older. Armoured. Cold.

The other Reven drew his blade. "Face me."

He didn't wait for permission.

They clashed—sword against memory, guilt against will.

Every strike the doppelgänger landed drove images deeper. The people Reven couldn't save. The choices he made. The ones he didn't. Fire. Silence. Regret.

"You were never chosen," the double hissed. "You were left behind."

Reven collapsed to one knee, breath ragged.

But then—he remembered the Vault. The Warden. The others. Kaela's voice. Lirien's calm. The flame in his chest. The reason he still carried on.

"I was left behind," Reven whispered, "so I could carry what others couldn't."

He stood.

And drove his fist into his other self's chest.

The memory shattered.

The storm peeled away like skin.

Reven stood alone in a circle of calm, the noise gone, the pressure lifted.

And in front of him—resting on a pedestal of lightning and glass—was a new shard.

A sliver of the Rift. Stabilized. Controlled.

He reached out.

As his fingers closed around it, the voice returned.

"The Rift remembers. But so do you."

Reven emerged from the storm with the shard in his hand. His eyes clearer. His jaw set.

Kaela gave him back his blade. Lirien didn't speak, but her look said enough.

The Warden stepped forward.

"You passed. Barely."

"I've had worse days," Reven muttered.

The Warden raised his spear.

"The path continues. One vault remains. One wound left to face."

Kaela's grip on her blade tightened.

"And after that?" she asked.

The Warden looked toward the horizon.

"After that, the Rift comes to you."