The Quiet After the Storm

The gates had closed behind him with a sound she hadn't been able to forget since.

Clang.

She heard it again in her dreams. Felt it in the pit of her stomach every time she closed her eyes.

Warren was gone.

Taken.

And she had let it happen.

Kaela sat in a small barracks room near the southern watchtower of the settlement, the walls too close, the air too clean. Her armor dismissed into the air, still being repaired. She wore the soft grey regulation scout attire—slim-fitted fabric beneath a long black jacket that brushed her thighs. The outfit was comfortable, civilian. But none of it made her feel human.

She stared at the flame of a single lantern, watching it sway.

She hadn't seen Vin since the report. He hadn't said a word on the walk back from the gate. Just nodded once after they handed Warren over to the guards. Then he vanished into the fortress like smoke.

She didn't know if she was relieved or furious.

Maybe both.

'I should've said something.'

She should have told Warren when they first met what might happen. Should've warned him that the mark he carried—the Will of Envy—wasn't something you just brought up in casual conversation. Wasn't something you could simply have without drawing the eyes of the upper council. Without being treated like a threat.

But she hadn't.

She'd smiled at him. Fought beside him. Shared food. Shared glances.

And now… he was locked in a stone cell somewhere below the central hold, likely thinking she'd never cared at all.

The thought made her stomach twist.

Was it wrong that she had cared?

She'd been a scout for nearly two years. She had lost comrades before. Seen people come and go—burn out or disappear into the woods, never to be seen again. But Warren…

Warren was different.

He was weak, sure. Reckless. Naïve. Clumsy. Funny. Keen. Insightful

He was genuine. He looked at her like she wasn't just another scout or soldier. He looked at her like a person. Like Kaela.

Even after the blood, after the fights. He smiled at her like she wasn't just a killer with a rank beside her name.

And maybe that's why it hurt more than it should have.

Because she didn't say goodbye.

Because she'd let them take him like he didn't matter.

Because part of her believed he did.

That night, she knocked on the storage house door, whispering through to the night-shift mess officer. A favor. Just a small one.

She didn't wear her uniform—just a plaid shirt over a sleeveless undershirt and tight scout shorts, her long boots laced loosely. It wasn't regulation, but it was more casual and a better looking.

She carried the tray down the hall carefully. Stew, bread, water.

Her fingers trembled once—but she steadied them.

The stone corridors of the holding block were quiet. Cold. The two guards at the stairs let her through without a word. She didn't know if they pitied her or if they thought she was insane.

Didn't matter.

When she stepped in front of Warren's cell, he looked up—and all the warmth in his face disappeared.

His eyes were full of rage. Disbelief. Hurt.

She felt it hit her like a blade.

"I know you haven't received food yet so I pulled some strings to personally deliver it," she started, her voice more nervous than she'd intended. "Actually, the food here is quite good. Way better than what we had in the—"

"Cut the crap."

Warren's voice lashed like a whip.

Her breath caught in her chest.

"What the hell is going on?"

Then he exploded.

Words, pain, betrayal—he threw them all like daggers. And each one struck deep.

Kaela couldn't look at him. Couldn't even defend herself.

Because the truth was… she had known.

Not everything. Not how he'd be treated. But she'd known that just having that kind of relic would put a target on his back. That the council would never risk letting someone like that roam free.

And she'd said nothing.

Warren's voice cracked. He shouted that he didn't want her food, didn't want to see her again. Said she meant nothing.

She bit her lip so hard it bled.

Maybe she deserved it.

She'd been screamed at before—back in the real world, people had said cruel, vile things to her all the time. She never cried. Not once. She had always taken pride in her strength, in her independence. Even as a child, when she fell or failed, she forced herself to stand back up. To grit her teeth. To never give in to pain.

She had been born a rank 7. That alone meant she wasn't allowed the luxury of breaking down. Rank 7s didn't cry. Rank 7s didn't despair. They endured, because no one else would carry them when they couldn't carry themselves.

But as she stood there outside that cell, as Warren's voice echoed in her ears—furious, betrayed, and utterly disappointed—she felt something she hadn't felt in years.

A soft warmth against her cheek.

She was crying.

And for the first time in a long time, she didn't try to stop it.

She placed the tray through the slot—because what else could she do?—and walked away before she said something she'd regret.

Or something she didn't want to admit.

***

The clang of the gate echoed longer in Vin's ears than it should have. Not because of its volume, but because of its weight. It sounded like finality. Like failure.

He didn't flinch. Not even as the guards marched Warren away in shackles, nor when he heard the younger boy's voice call out behind him—confused, betrayed.

Vin didn't turn back.

His fingers flexed against the hilt of his sword, bound in light and sheathed at his hip once again. The familiar sensation did nothing to settle the unrest in his chest.

Kaela stood beside him, silent.

They didn't speak on the walk to the inner compound. They didn't need to. There was nothing that could be said. Not after that.

Vin sat alone in one of the stone barracks near the scout headquarters, his gear still packed by the door. The room was bare—cold stone walls, an iron-framed bed, and a small table with a chair that creaked whenever he shifted in it.

He didn't take off his boots. He didn't rest.

He just sat there. Thinking.

Or trying not to.

The city was quiet at night. The kind of quiet that made you remember things. The kind that made regret louder.

Kaela hadn't come back after delivering food to Warren. She hadn't said anything since.

He figured she couldn't.

Not after seeing his face when they took him.

Warren's expression had haunted him more than he wanted to admit.

Betrayal.

Vin had seen that face before.

Not on Warren.

But on himself.

He was younger then — not by much, but enough to still believe in promises. Enough to think loyalty meant something. He had looked up at a man who told him they were in it together. That they'd make it through. Then watched that same man turn his back and walk away when things got too hard.

And Vin had stood there, discarded. The weight of abandonment pressing into his chest like a stone.

That day, he'd looked at his reflection — in a broken window, maybe, or a pool of muddy water — and made himself a promise: "I'll show him. i will survive in spite of him and one day i will create a world where no one has to feel the pain of being abandoned ever again."

But now…

He saw it. In Warren's face. In the tight, bitter lines drawn around his mouth. The disbelief, the hurt, the silence that screamed you were supposed to protect me.

And suddenly, Vin wasn't looking at Warren anymore.

He was looking at that scared and lonely boy from 2 years ago — at himself.

Only this time, he was the one doing the abandoning.

He clenched his fists.

'It was the right thing to do.'

That's what he told himself.

Again.

And again.

And again.

But it didn't make it feel right.

He remembered the first day they met Warren. The way the kid stumbled out of that cave, covered in blood, ragged and half-starved, with too much pride to ask for help and too much fight in him to stay down.

A complete idiot.

But he hadn't run.

Even when he was told he should.

Even when death looked him in the eye.

Even when it would've been smarter, safer, easier.

Vin ran a hand through his hair and exhaled slowly.

"What else were we supposed to do?"

He had made the report. Just like any scout would.Just like any citizen was required to.

It wasn't out of malice. It wasn't betrayal.It was protocol.

Because relics don't just appear.They're born from death. From will.And outside that cave…There were five bodies left behind.

To receive a relic, you have to take something.Something alive.And all sings pointed to the fact, Warren had taken a lot.

That was the real reason they turned him in.Not because the relic was dangerous.But because someone had to die for him to claim it.

And someone had.

Still, the way Kaela looked at him… she hadn't said anything, but the silence between them had never been that thick before.

Vin didn't care what she thought. Didn't need her approval. He'd made the call. She didn't stop him.

'He's better off in there than bleeding out in some ditch because of that mark.'

That mark. The Will of Envy.

Even just hearing it again had made Vin's skin crawl.

People who came into contact with relics like that—people who bore those Legacy Wills—they didn't get to choose what happened to them. The world chose for them.

And it almost always chose ruin.

Vin had seen it happen. Once.

He remembered the look in their eyes.

And he remembered how it ended.

'This isn't personal,' he repeated silently.

But he still hadn't gone to check on him.Still hadn't looked him in the eye.Still hadn't answered that last question Warren never got to ask.

Because he was afraid.

Afraid that the moment he did…

He'd regret everything.

So he stayed away.

Tried to tell himself it was safer that way—easier.

Tried to believe the silence was duty, not guilt.

But the guilt lingered anyway.

Eventually, it got too heavy. He found his feet moving before his thoughts could catch up. Winding through the quiet streets of the settlement, past shuttered shops and flickering lamps, toward the old jail house near the eastern wall.

Toward the one place he hadn't dared to go.

He deserves to know…Vin clenched his fists at his side.He deserves the truth—even if he never forgives me.

But just as the jail came into view, he stopped.

There, under the fading light of a flickering lantern, was Kaela.Head bowed. Shoulders shaking.Tears streaked down her face as she stood still in the street, as if the world had moved on without her.

Without a word, Vin crossed the distance and stepped in front of her.She didn't look up—not right away. But the moment his hand gently touched her shoulder, she collapsed forward into him.He caught her without hesitation.

She buried her face into his chest, fists weakly clutching at his shirt as sobs racked through her body.

He didn't say anything.He didn't need to.

He simply held her.Tightly.Quietly.Letting her pain bleed into him.

Because he knew it wasn't just her pain.

It was his, too.

And for the first time in years, Vin didn't feel like a scout.Didn't feel like a soldier.Didn't feel like the elite.

He just felt like a boy.Standing in the aftermath of something he didn't know how to fix.