The sky broke without a sound.
No thunder.
No wind.
Only silence — vast, suffocating, eternal.
Across the northern continent, the kingdom of Aurenheim stood bathed in pale sunlight — a kingdom that had once thrived under banners of gold and song. But as dawn rose, its people found the world muted. Voices faded mid-sentence. Bells swung without tone. The very air seemed to swallow sound whole.
And then came the fire.
It was not flame as mortals knew it. It moved like mist, glowing with spectral white and streaks of shadow. When it touched a tree, the bark shimmered — then turned to ash, frozen mid-burn. When it brushed against a child's toy, it left behind a perfect sculpture of soot, hollow within.
Within an hour, the entire city was silent.
Within two, not a heartbeat remained.
The Silent Storm had begun.
Far away, deep beneath the mountains, the Organization's facility went dark. Emergency glyphs flickered on the walls. Sid stood in the command room, eyes locked on the live feed of Aurenheim — now nothing but static.
Lucien's voice cracked through the intercom. "We're losing all data channels— the interference is… alive."
Kael, pale and furious, slammed a fist into the console. "That's not interference. That's erasure. The storm isn't destroying... it's rewriting."
Yara sat in the corner, bound again, trembling as the mark on her arm pulsed faintly in rhythm with the storm. "He's ascending," she whispered. "Velgrin's silence… it's not destruction. It's perfection."
Sid turned toward her, fury barely restrained. "Perfection?! You call this... " he gestured toward the flickering screens "...perfection?"
She met his glare with haunted eyes. "You wouldn't understand. You still hear. When you've lived long enough in chaos, silence feels like mercy."
Her words sent a chill through the room.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Kael muttered, "We have to stop it."
Lucien's fingers flew over the controls. "Sid, I've triangulated the storm's center. It's converging near the old capital — the Citadel of Glass."
Sid's chains shimmered faintly against his arms. "Then that's where he is."
The world above the Citadel was unrecognizable. Ash fell like snow, silent and weightless. Every statue, every wall, every body stood frozen mid-motion — perfect outlines of life carved in silence.
Sid landed amidst the ruins, boots sinking into pale dust. Each step echoed faintly inside his head, though the world itself made no sound.
He could feel Velgrin here. The air hummed with restrained power, an eerie harmony between flame and void.
"Velgrin!" Sid called, voice echoing unnaturally.
No answer. Only stillness.
Then — a flicker.
Atop the Citadel, a figure appeared — cloaked in white flame, motionless yet radiant. Velgrin's eyes opened, twin embers of molten silver.
His voice didn't reach Sid's ears — it appeared in his mind, smooth and cold:
"Noise is what breaks the world, Sid. The gods screamed as they died. The daemons howled as they fell. I offer peace."
Sid's grip tightened around his blade. "You call this peace? You've erased an entire kingdom."
"They are not gone," Velgrin's voice resonated. "They are quiet."
The silence thickened — pressing against Sid's skull like a physical force. His heartbeats grew faint. His breath muted.
Ravh'Zereth's whisper flickered in his thoughts. "He wields the true inverse of flame — the death of sound, the stilling of chaos. Be careful, vessel… he is closer to godhood than any before him."
Sid raised his sword, black chains flaring crimson. "Then I'll silence his silence."
He leapt forward, breaking through the air like a spear of light. The storm roared — though no sound escaped. Shockwaves rippled silently through the ruins as Velgrin extended his hand.
The air crystallized.
Sid's flames dimmed — snuffed out like dying candles. His lungs screamed for sound, for breath, for anything. He couldn't even hear his own heartbeat. The silence crawled into him, suffocating thought, swallowing everything.
Velgrin descended slowly, each step fracturing the world beneath him into glowing shards.
"I offered you peace once," he whispered directly into Sid's mind. "But you cling to your chains — to the screams that built your world. Tell me, Sid… do you fear silence, or the truth it hides?"
Sid's chains flared, pulsing violently.
Crimson fire erupted around him — the only light left.
His voice, rough and defiant, tore through the silent air:
"I fear nothing that kills meaning!"
He drove his sword upward.
Velgrin caught the strike with his bare hand.
No sound, no clash — only a burst of light.
Then, with a flick of his wrist, Velgrin shattered the ground beneath them. Aurenheim's ruins fell away, swallowed by a maelstrom of white void. Sid tumbled, chains whipping through the air as he caught himself mid-fall.
Velgrin hovered above him, calm as a god.
"You cannot chain silence," he murmured.
Sid's eyes burned. "Then I'll make it scream."
He unleashed the daemon-fire within — black and red flames tearing open the silent sky. The two powers collided: one of erasure, one of defiance. The clash formed waves of light and dark, freezing everything they touched.
For a moment, the silence cracked — and Sid heard something faint.
A scream.
Not his. Not Velgrin's.
The scream of the world itself, trying to remember sound.
By the time the light faded, the storm had vanished.
The Citadel lay in ruins.
Velgrin was gone — leaving only his words echoing in Sid's head.
"The Eighth Brand awaits."
Sid knelt amidst the ashes, breathing heavily. His chains were cracked, glowing dimly. His body trembled — not from pain, but from realization.
The Silent One's power wasn't just flame. It was absence.
And absence could devour everything — even the will to fight.
He looked around at the kingdom of statues — faces frozen mid-laughter, mid-cry, mid-life.
Lucien's voice crackled faintly through the comms, distorted:
"Sid… did you stop it?"
Sid closed his eyes.
"…No."
The ash fell silently around him, blanketing the dead in perfect stillness.