Another voice joined her sister's—her mother's, hoarse with fear."They're coming back!Thalia, we can't—" The words dissolved into a scream that made Thalia's blood freeze.
She fought harder against her body's strange paralysis, straining toward the storm wall.Her mother and sister were there, just beyond reach, surrounded by Isle Wardens with their black-metal blades raised high.
"No!"The word tore from her throat, raw and desperate."Stay away from them!"
The tempest roared louder, drowning out their voices.Lightning struck closer, blinding her.In that white flash, she saw Mari clearly—her sister's face contorted with terror, hand outstretched toward Thalia, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her cheeks.Behind her, dark figures advanced, their features obscured by the storm but their intent unmistakable.
"Mari!"Thalia screamed soundlessly, her voice lost in the howling chaos."Mother!"
The white light intensified, consuming the vision in a searing flash.Pain lanced through her head, sharp and sudden.The storm collapsed inward, and Thalia found herself gasping on her hands and knees on the frost-covered plateau, the morning sun harsh in her eyes, reality reasserting itself with brutal efficiency.
Brynn knelt beside her, one hand gripping Thalia's shoulder, the other holding both blades well away from them.Her face was drawn with concern, all traces of her usual reserve vanished.
"Thalia," she was saying, her voice sharp with urgency."Come back.Whatever you're seeing, it's not real."
Thalia blinked, struggling to orient herself.The storm was gone.The plateau stretched empty around them, silent but for their ragged breathing.No Mari.No mother.No Isle Wardens.Only the cold ground beneath her palms and the lingering echo of screams that had never actually sounded.
"What..."she managed, her throat raw as if she'd been screaming.Perhaps she had been."What happened?"
Brynn's eyes flicked to the silver-blue blade, now lying several paces away."Something's wrong with that weapon," she said grimly."You collapsed.Started screaming about someone named Mari.I couldn’t get you to listen again until you’d dropped that sword."
Thalia pushed herself to a sitting position, her limbs still trembling.The vision had been so real, so immediate.Even now, the echo of Mari's scream lingered in her ears.
"It showed me my family," she whispered."In danger.Surrounded by a storm.I could hear them… screaming for help."
Brynn's expression hardened."That’s not a weapon," she said flatly."It’s its own wielder’s nightmare."
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
The watchman's horn pierced the dawn stillness, three sharp notes that cleaved through the fog like an axe through ice.Thalia drew her cloak tighter as she stood among the line of soldiers on the frost-crusted pier, her breath clouding before her face in the pale morning light.In the distance, emerging from the mist that clung to the fjord's surface, a fishing vessel limped toward them—its sails hanging in tatters, its hull scorched the color of midnight.
"Another one," muttered a Northern soldier beside her, his voice as cold as the air between them.
Thalia said nothing, watching as the vessel drew closer.Its weathered hull bore the marks of a desperate escape—blackened planks splintered near the waterline, the figurehead at its prow burned away to an unrecognizable stump.The mainsail hung in ribbons, whipping in the wind like the tattered banners of a defeated army.
The wooden dock creaked beneath her boots as Thalia shifted her weight, fingers brushing the hilt of her blade, a habit formed from months of constant vigilance.This was the third refugee ship this week, each bringing tales darker than the last.Each brought her no word of her family.
With a hollow thud that reverberated through the pier's weathered planks, the vessel collided with the posts.Rope lines sailed through the air, caught by waiting hands that secured the battered craft to the dock.The crew moved with the sluggish motions of the utterly spent men and women whose faces were etched with the hollow-eyed stare that came from watching their world burn.
One by one, they helped the passengers disembark.Children with eyes too wide and faces too still.Women clutching simple cloth bundles to their chests as though they contained priceless treasures.Men with shoulders bent not by age but by defeat.All of them wrapped in threadbare cloaks stiff with salt, all of them carrying the mingled scent of brine and smoke—the perfume of refugees.
An older man stumbled as he crossed onto the dock, his arm bound in a crude sling fashioned from what looked like a torn sail.Two younger refugees—a woman and a man with similar features, perhaps his children—steadied him on either side.His salt-and-pepper beard was matted, his eyes bloodshot from salt spray and sleepless nights.
Thalia stepped forward from the line of soldiers."Is this your vessel?"she asked, her voice softer than she'd intended.
The fisherman looked up, squinting against the growing daylight.He nodded once, a short jerk of his chin."It is," he said, his voice a rasp."Been in my family three generations.Won't see a fourth now, I reckon."
"What happened?"The question was simple, direct—the same one she'd asked dozens of refugees.But each answer brought new horrors, new variations on the nightmare that was consuming the South.
The man's chest rose and fell with a labored breath.When he spoke, the words came between coughs that shook his frame."Isle Wardens.They came at first light, just as we were heading out for the morning catch."He gestured weakly toward the blackened hull."Their weapons—they tore through our defenses like they were made of parchment.Our ice-metal shields...just...dissolved."
Thalia's fingers tightened around her sword hilt.This matched what they'd learned from the Warden attack on Frostforge—the black metal that negated their greatest strength.
"Then they lit the harbor ablaze," the fisherman continued, his gaze distant, seeing horrors Thalia could only imagine."But it wasn't normal fire.It was...it twisted the wind itself.Hurled embers like shards of lightning."His voice dropped to a haunted whisper."Storm-fire, some called it.Burned even in the rain."
A chill that had nothing to do with the morning air crawled down Thalia's spine."Storm-fire?"
The man nodded, wincing as the movement jostled his injured arm."Ships, warehouses, even the stone piers—all immolated.And the fires...they remained burning without fuel.Electric, they were.Unnatural."
