Page 197 of Shadowvein

Barely mine.

The sound of something breaking apart and reforming simultaneously.

I am being unmade.

I am beingremade.

The shadows that were once Sacha’s familiar merge with the silver light that’s been growing inside me. The power swells, feeding on my grief, my rage, my refusal to let what happened be the end. His essence, or what remains of it, floods through me, amplifying everything, transforming it beyond understanding, until even the storm knows my name.

Rain crashes down. Sheets of water that feel alive with purpose, with will. The storm doesn’t just reflect my fury. Itismy fury. My loss. My vow.

I fall to my knees. The earth trembles beneath me, small stones bouncing with the vibration.

A sound emerges.

Not human. Not animal. Something beyond both.

The pressure peaks.

Light pours from my eyes. My mouth. My skin. Coalescing beside me.

My power expands outward in a second, more powerful wave. Trees at the edge of the clearing where Sacha fell are uprooted, torn from the ground by forces beyond nature’s understanding.

Authority soldiers scream as the edge of the wave catches them, lifting them and flinging them like broken dolls across the landscape. Bodies tumble, broken and lifeless, across the ground.

Yet Mira and Mishak remain untouched, as though the destruction recognizes them as allies. Severen staggers two steps backward, arm lifted to shield his face. The glow from the crystal flickers, destabilized by the backlash as the storm lashes out in every direction. His composure breaks. His grip no longer absolute.

And beside me, something monstrous, something beautiful is building.

A figure forms from storm and fury. Not conjured. Not imagined. Born of this moment. Elongated limbs. A head too large. Too strange. Eyes that glow like lightning trapped in glass, reflecting the storm tearing through me.

It towers over me where I kneel, unnatural and magnificent. A god in the shape of a nightmare.

Primordial. Hungry. Ancient beyond reckoning.

Its gaze locks onto mine, and recognition lances through me. As our eyes meet, something snaps into place with such force I gasp.

No words. No thoughts. Just knowing.

The creature from the Veil Mists. The mist stalker that haunted the valley. It wasn’t hunting us. It was waiting.

For this.

It was drawn to me. To the silver threaded through my blood. To the shadow Sacha gave me. To the storm I’ve become.

My awareness reaches outward. Past the boundaries of my body. Past sight. Beyond sound.

I feel the land. The wind. The roots in the soil. The charge in the air. The storm above and beneath.

All of it is mine.

No.

All of it isme.

My pulse thrums in time with thunder. With lightning that splits the sky in two. With rain that drowns the world in sheets of silver fire.

I am the storm, and the storm is me. A living force unbound by flesh, no longer merely human. No longer entirely mortal.

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