The wind always spoke to her.
Even when she hated it.
Long before she became a name whispered in taverns, before her spirit burned across her arm like a scar of light, the bounty hunter had another name — Sera Valen.
She was born in Aerithal, the kingdom of the Wind Dragon's Spirit. There, the skies were never still. The people of the wind carried wings of light, feathers that shimmered when they danced through clouds. Freedom wasn't a word there; it was a birthright.
But Sera's wings never grew right. They were small, soft, fragile. "You'll fly when the wind learns your name," her mother told her. Sera laughed, believed her.
Until the raiders came.
They descended from the southern plains — slave traders from the black coasts, men who smelled of blood and metal. They burned the sky gardens, shattered the wind towers, and stole what they couldn't understand.
Sera remembered the smell of smoke. The screaming. The chains.
She remembered her father shouting her name as the sky tore apart.
When she woke, her wings were gone.
Not cut clean — torn, broken. Feathers and blood mixed with the dirt under a wagon. She screamed until her voice went raw, but the slavers only laughed. "Grounded bird," they called her.
By the time she reached Veyrahn, she was nothing but a commodity — a wingless child from the sky.
Years blurred into chains. Then one day, during an auction, a man stepped forward from the crowd. Not cruel, not sneering — just quiet, with kind eyes and an old scar across his chin.
He paid without a word and took her away.
His name was Taran.
A merchant, once rich, now tired. He didn't ask her to speak, didn't ask her to forget. He just gave her a home — a real one.
He built her a small room with open windows so she could feel the wind. He bought her books about flight and gave her a pendant shaped like a feather. When she woke from nightmares, he sat by the door until she slept again.
For the first time, the air didn't hurt to breathe.
But good things don't survive in Vulmir for long.
One night, she woke to shouting. Smoke again. The air stank of iron and fire. She ran to the courtyard — saw men in red armor, the mark of Vulmir's guards, dragging Taran to his knees.
He'd been accused of trading with Lumeria — "a crime against the crown."
Sera screamed for them to stop. The captain turned, saw the faint mark of wind glowing on her wrist — and smiled.
"Another spirit-borne," he said. "We'll take her too."
She fought. Claws, teeth, nails — anything. But the blade fell before she could reach them.
Taran didn't beg. He looked at her once, and smiled.
"Run, little wind," he said.
The next breath ended him.
Something inside Sera broke that night — not the way her wings had, not the way her childhood had. It broke quietly. Like a candle snuffed out.
When dawn came, she stood alone in the ashes. The wind was silent.
That was the day the Hawk Spirit found her.
It came not as a voice, but a storm — a shriek through her mind, tearing through her grief until nothing remained but purpose. The mark burned into her skin, shaped like wings that would never grow back.
She didn't ask why it chose her. Maybe it pitied her. Maybe it just wanted someone angry enough to carry it.
From then on, she hunted.
She hunted the guards who killed Taran, the traders who broke her wings, the men who sold others like cattle. Her blade became her language, her silence her comfort.
Veyrahn began to whisper about a woman who could slice an arrow mid-flight, whose spirit turned the air into razors.
The Hawk of Vulmir.
She took bounties not for money, but for direction. Each name crossed off her list filled the empty space where her wings used to be.
Now, when she looked at her reflection — the eyes like gold flame, the scarred shoulders where feathers never grew — she didn't see a victim.
She saw survival.
And when she heard rumors of a masked thief with ice in his veins, a runaway princess at his side, and a bounty high enough to buy a kingdom, she didn't think twice.
The wind whispered, and she listened.
She tightened her gloves, checked her blades, and stepped into the current.
The Hawk had found her next storm.