Chapter 1: Hidden in the storm (Intro)
She knew that fighting through the most dangerous storm in Zharak would not be as easy as dancing through a banquet hall, but reading about it was entirely different from experiencing it, and Aliera was quietly cursing herself for risking everything just to chase a rumor.
But she had been at her wit’s end for too long, with no explanation for her strange powers and no one to ask, so when an envoy from Zharak came on official business and casually mentioned a mysterious man parting the storm with a wave of his hand, she knew she had to come.
There was no inherent power like this anywhere in the realms. What the wardens used as enhancements to their strength didn’t even come close. But the sandstorm was more devastating than she had anticipated, so much so that even the vehicle she had borrowed at the Void Gate couldn’t cut through it, the engine clogging with sand and dying somewhere along the way.
Continuing on foot had never been part of the plan. She could see nothing beyond the wall of sand around her, the sun unable to break through its veil, the wind strong enough to knock her off her feet more than once.
It was frustrating enough that she stopped more than once to consider turning back, her nerves getting the better of her. She was supposed to be at the memorial in the Dome right now, a three-day retreat for all the envoys; an important event she could be punished for missing entirely. But here she was anyway, risking her title and her freedom at the same time for something that might not even be true.
If it weren’t for the mask keeping the sand out and filtering her air, she would have screamed into the storm already. She had no choice now but to use it, the power she had been born with and never properly understood. The only thing that ever made her feel like she knew what she was doing. Peeking into the Void.
The world fell away the moment she closed her eyes and focused on her breathing and her heartbeat. All feelings, all sensations, all sound; gone in an instant, leaving nothing behind but darkness behind her closed eyes. The Void.
Then the green light came.
It began at her sternum - a faint pulse, like an ember catching - and spread outward in slow, breathing waves. Luminous leaves materialized around her, each one trailing soft green light as they turned and drifted, orbiting her body in unhurried spirals. The light didn’t illuminate the void so much as draw it; sketching the world in fine, glowing lines the way an artist maps a landscape before committing ink to paper.
The dunes emerged around her in quiet relief, their curves rendered in that cool, living glow. Nothing moved. No creature, no pulse of warmth, no breath other than her own. She was alone in the desert, just as she had feared.
But then - faint, at the very edge of where her power thinned and wavered - the green light caught on something. A straight line. A corner. The unmistakable geometry of a door, drawn in light so dim it was almost a suggestion. A hut. It was there.
She exhaled in relief, and the void released her.
The storm came rushing back all at once - the wind’s roar, the biting cold, the thick resistance of every breath through the mask. The sudden return of sensation hit her like a wave, and her mind went briefly blank.
As if nature itself resented her prying into its secrets, the wind surged with renewed fury, a punishment, it seemed, for daring to steal a glimpse of what was hidden. She scrambled to her feet, and pressed forward with one hand outstretched, the outline of the door still burned behind her eyes like an afterimage. She would not lose it.
Gradually, the dark shape of an oakwood door emerged from the haze, standing alone and out of place in the middle of nowhere, like a portal to somewhere else entirely, a threshold with no right to exist here. As she drew closer, the walls emerged too, battered, split in places where the relentless storm had done its patient work over the years. She reached for the handle.
The wind drove hard into her back and launched her forward before she could find her footing.
The door gave way with a crack, torn from its hinges as Aliera crashed through it and hit the floor with a resounding bang, the broken door pinned beneath her. For a moment she lay still, catching her breath, methodically checking that nothing was broken or bleeding. She didn’t dare look up yet. The man she had come all this way to find - to beg, if it came to it, to take her on as a student - was somewhere in this room, and she had just demolished his front door.
The silence pressed into her.
Dread crept in quietly as she took in the empty, decayed room. All her hope had stayed behind on the floor with the broken door. Her breathing tightened as she rushed through the room, checking every nook and cranny, the weight of everything she had risked pressing down on her - leaving her guards behind, crossing into danger alone - all of it possibly for nothing.
One volume caught her eye on the bookcase beside her. Where the rest were old and ragged, their spines uniform and unremarkable, this one had a faint golden tint and a small lock holding the pages shut. She turned it over in her hands. No title. The lock had no keyhole she recognized, just a circular opening with fine carvings inside that suggested it needed something that had no business fitting. She slipped it into her bag.
She could still make it back in time if she left now, but walking back out into the storm felt like accepting defeat; like admitting she still knew nothing, that she was alone in this, again.
Tick.
She snapped her head toward the sound, sharp and clear against the silence. Had she missed something?
Tick.
She crouched beside the bed and lowered her head. The sound was coming from underneath. Lights were flickering. Then her eyes went wide and she was already on her feet before the thought had fully formed, charging for the door as the ticking picked up its pace.
She made it outside just as the house blew apart behind her, but there was no time to reach a safe distance. She spun and threw her hands up, trusting the power that had always come when she needed it most, but she was a breath too slow. The green light and leaves erupted from her hands just as she had hoped, but the impact was stronger than anything she had faced before, the blast wave lifting her off her feet and carrying her through the storm before dropping her at the edge of it, a gift to the Void that claimed her the moment she hit the sand.
