"Ash in the Wind."
The smell of smoke hit before the silence did.
Rajieru slowed his pace, the world narrowing to the crunch of char under his boots. The forest ahead was blackened — trees bent and broken, ash drifting through the air like gray snow. The sky hung heavy, bruised with leftover magic that made the air shimmer faintly.
He crouched, brushing his fingers across the ground.
The soil was hot on one side and frozen on the other.
Two opposing forces — wind and fire — tangled together in the residue.
"That's… not supposed to happen," he muttered.
He took another step forward, hand hovering near his weapon. The deeper he went, the worse it got. The forest wasn't just burned — it was ripped apart. Chunks of earth floated midair for seconds at a time before falling, like the world itself hadn't fully decided which way gravity should go.
Then he heard them.
Whispers.
At first, it sounded like the wind brushing past — but the words were too deliberate.
Fragments of sentences. Pleas. Screams.
Shapes flickered in the smoke — half-human silhouettes made of light and shadow. Their faces were weird, stretched and shifting, and when they moved, they did so in skips, like broken frames of a memory.
Rajieru's eyes narrowed. "Echos."
They shouldn't be here — this close to Faelinor.
He moved like lightning, darting between their glitched movements. His eyes glowed faintly gold as his precognition tried to map them out, but it kept stuttering. Every prediction was shattered halfway through.
He slashed at one that lunged, the blade cutting clean through its center. Instead of bleeding, it unravelled — like smoke drawn back into the wind.
"They're… unstable," he breathed, watching another flicker out of sight entirely. "Like ghosts stuck between moments."
A low hum pulled his attention forward. The Echos retreated — as if something stronger called them off.
Rajieru followed the sound to a wide clearing — and froze.
The ground was a crater, glassed over by heat. Trees near the rim were scorched black, their branches melted into spirals that still glowed faintly.
At the center lay a single figure.
A boy — no, a young man — crumpled on one knee, surrounded by air that shimmered like flame. His hair was a tangled mess, white ash streaked through dark strands. Faint embers danced in the circle around him, carried by invisible wind.
He wasn't dead. His chest rose and fell, shallow but steady.
Rajieru approached slowly, senses sharp. The closer he got, the heavier the mana became — not wild, not evil… just in pain.
The ground around the stranger pulsed with two colours: faint blue from the swirling air, and deep orange from the dying flames. The two elements met in bursts of static, each refusing to yield to the other.
Rajieru crouched beside him. "Hey… can you hear me?"
No response. Just a quiet exhale that stirred the ashes into a soft spiral.
The moment Rajieru reached out, the wind shifted — sharp enough to cut his cheek. The flame around the boy flared, warning him to keep his distance.
Rajieru steadied his stance, not drawing his weapon yet. His eyes softened. "Alright… guess we'll do this slow."
He looked over the devastation again, reading it like a crime scene. Everything burned, everything frozen, and somehow — this one survived the center of it all.
He glanced down one last time at the unconscious stranger. "Whoever you are," he muttered under his breath, "you've got a hell of a story waiting to burn out of you."
The wind picked up, scattering ash across the clearing.
Rajieru pulled his cloak tighter, staring once more at the faint glow rising off the stranger's skin — the flicker of two elements locked in a fragile truce.
He sighed, rubbing the cut on his cheek. "…Yeah," he murmured, turning toward Faelinor's direction. "The others need to see this."
──⊱◈◈⊰───⊱◈◈⊰──⊱◈◈⊰──⊱◈◈⊰──
"The Shadow Awakens."
By the time Rajieru made it back to Faelinor, night had already swallowed the forest.
He didn't waste time. He burst through the inn's door, ash still clinging to his boots, breath sharp from the run. Kiyoshi and Celosia looked up instantly — Ceng-tae was mid-conversation with one of the guards, but the moment he saw Rajieru's face, his expression hardened.
"What happened out there?" Ceng-tae asked, standing.
Rajieru didn't answer right away. He leaned against the wall, trying to steady his breathing. "The reports were right. Something hit one of the border villages… hard. Fire and wind mana, twisted together like a storm that couldn't decide what it wanted to be."
Celosia's gaze flicked toward the window. The breeze outside had changed — the air hummed faintly and restlessly.
She placed a hand over her chest. "That mana… It's familiar," she whispered.
Kiyoshi turned slightly, his expression tightening.
He felt it too — a rhythm pulsing in the distance, like a heartbeat syncing with his own. It wasn't hostile, but it was loud. Too loud.
"Familiar how?" Rajieru asked.
Celosia shook her head, brow furrowed. "It feels like… grief. The kind that burns."
The room fell quiet. Even the wind outside stilled, waiting.
Kiyoshi finally spoke. "Where exactly?"
Rajieru looked up. "North ridge. Half a day's walk. The place is wrecked — but I found someone there. Unconscious. He's alive… barely. Whatever he was fighting, it wasn't human."
Ceng-tae exhaled slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And you brought that cursed energy right to our doorstep."
Rajieru shot him a look. "Didn't bring it here. It's coming on its own."
He wasn't wrong. The wind through Faelinor had turned strange — gusts rising and falling in uneven bursts. The lanterns outside flickered without a breeze, light bending as if reacting to an unseen current.
Kiyoshi moved toward the door, grabbing his coat. "I'll go."
Ceng-tae frowned. "You shouldn't. We don't even know what it is—"
"Exactly," Kiyoshi cut in softly. "That's why I should."
Celosia stood too, her voice firm. "Then I'm coming with you."
Rajieru smirked faintly. "Guess I'm not sitting this one out either."
Ceng-tae muttered something under his breath — likely a prayer, though it sounded more like a curse. "If this brings trouble to Faelinor again, it's on your heads."
The three exchanged a brief glance — and without another word, stepped into the night.
As they left, the sky over Faelinor shimmered faintly, as though the stars themselves were pulsing. The boundary between Ethera and whatever lay beyond it trembled — unseen, but felt.
The path ahead glowed with streaks of dim ember light carried on the wind. Celosia's fingers brushed the air, feeling warmth and chill tangled together.
Kiyoshi slowed, closing his eyes for a moment. The mana trail ahead wasn't foreign — it hummed like an echo of his own.
Rajieru noticed. "You feel it too?"
Kiyoshi nodded slowly. "Yeah. It's… resonating. Like something trying to wake up."
Celosia glanced back toward Faelinor, the lights flickering behind them. "Let's just hope it's not something that's better left asleep."
They continued toward the ridge as a cold gust blew through the valley — carrying with it the faint scent of burnt ash and the promise of something ancient stirring awake.
──⊱◈◈⊰───⊱◈◈⊰──⊱◈◈⊰──⊱◈◈⊰──
"The Path Through Ash."
The trail beyond Faelinor was darker than it should've been.
Mist clung to the ground like smoke that refused to rise, and the air shimmered with faint streaks of red — mana residue caught in the wind, pulsing irregularly, like a heartbeat out of rhythm.
Rajieru led the way, his hand hovering near his blade. "These readings don't make sense," he muttered. "Mana doesn't just linger this long unless something keeps feeding it."
Celosia trailed behind, fingers brushing a tree trunk as they passed. The bark crumbled under her touch — not burned, but aged, as if the forest itself had lived and died in seconds. "This place feels... sick," she whispered.
Kiyoshi didn't answer right away. He just kept walking, eyes fixed ahead. The wind tugged at his cloak, carrying faint whispers — voices half-formed, names swallowed by static.
When he finally spoke, his voice was a low tone. "It's reacting to something. Or someone."
Rajieru glanced back at him. "You saying this is natural?"
"I'm saying it's personal."
The path opened slightly, revealing the burned husk of a village in the distance. Houses collapsed inward, stone blackened, and glass melted. Yet the flames hadn't spread beyond the borders — as if the fire had been contained by an invisible hand.
A faint wind stirred, carrying ashes in slow spirals.
Celosia's gaze softened. "They said this place was attacked last week… but this doesn't look like a monster raid."
Rajieru crouched beside a shattered wall, running his fingers through the dirt. The soil was still warm. "No tracks, no mana trails. It's like the fire came from inside the air itself."
Kiyoshi's expression darkened. "That's what I felt before. It's not destruction — it's collision."
"Collision?" Celosia asked.
"Two elements fighting to exist in the same space."
A long silence followed, only broken by the wind shifting direction — carrying with it a faint hum, rhythmic and pulsing, like a breath drawn too sharply.
Rajieru straightened, his eyes narrowing toward the treeline. "There. You hear that?"
Kiyoshi did — a faint crackle of flame beneath the sound of twisting air. His mana stirred, pulsing in time with it.
He exhaled slowly. "He's close."
The three exchanged a glance — tension rising like static before lightning. Then they moved.
──⊱◈◈⊰───⊱◈◈⊰──⊱◈◈⊰──⊱◈◈⊰──