I couldn't remember how long I'd been walking. Days blurred together, marked only by the rise and fall of a sun I barely saw through the mist. My legs moved without my permission, guided by the storm that pulsed beneath my skin with growing urgency.

  The wound from the glass creature burned. Veins of light had spread from my shoulder, tracing patterns like lightning across my skin. When night fell, they glowed faintly, a cruel reminder that whatever had touched me was changing me from the inside.

  I rubbed at the leather bracelet on my wrist, my fingers finding the familiar pattern Mira had woven years ago. The worn leather against my skin, the only piece of home I had left. The only reminder of who I used to be, before I destroyed everything.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered to no one. My voice cracked from disuse, strange and hollow in the heavy silence of the forest. "I'm so sorry, Lior."

  His name caught in my throat, and I couldn't say it aloud. Not here. Not when the storm inside me hummed with anticipation at the sound.

  That faceless thing in the mist. It had recognised me. Not with anger or fear, but with something worse—satisfaction. As if I were fulfilling some purpose by wandering lost through these endless woods. As if my suffering were expected, planned.

  I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to quiet the storm's excited humming. Since that encounter, nothing felt real. Trees repeated themselves. Shadows moved when I wasn't looking. Time stretched and compressed without warning.

  "Am I even going anywhere?" I asked the empty air, my voice slurring. The forest offered no answer, just the endless whisper of leaves and the occasional crack of branches that sent my heart racing, convinced the creature had returned.

  Another wave of fever washed over me, and I stumbled against a twisted pine. My vision swam, the forest tilting and blurring around me. In the haze, I saw Lior's smile, bright as always, firelight in his eyes as he reached for me.

  "You shouldn't be here," I told the hallucination, tears burning trails down my dirt-streaked face. "Go away."

  But he stayed, walking beside me as I forced myself forward. The storm pressed against my ribs, insistent. Keep moving. This way. Forward.

  Was I walking in circles? The trees looked the same. Or were there more of them now? The mist coiled and twisted like something alive, toying with my senses. Sometimes I thought I heard voices calling my name—my mother's gentle tone, Mira's worried whisper. Once, terribly, I heard Lior screaming as lightning struck him.

  I hadn't eaten in... how long? My stomach had stopped complaining days ago, settling into a dull, constant ache. My water skin was empty again. I couldn't remember the last stream I'd passed. Time slipped through my fingers like the mist that curled around my ankles.

  "I don't know where I'm going," I said to the storm, to Lior's ghost, to the trees—I wasn't sure anymore. My lips were cracked, my tongue thick in my mouth. "Why won't you leave me alone?"

  The storm surged in response, sending pinpricks of light dancing along my fingertips. Not anger—something else. Almost like... concern? No. The storm wasn't alive. It was a curse, a weapon. The thing that had killed Lior.

  But it felt different now. Since I'd faced the faceless creature in the mist, the storm had changed. It was less chaotic, more... purposeful. As if it had been waiting for that moment, that recognition.

  They know what I am.

  That thought terrified me more than anything else. Because I didn't know what I was becoming.

  I tripped over a root and fell hard, unable to catch myself. The ground spun beneath me, and for a moment, I couldn't tell which way was up. The sky and earth traded places in my vision, and I retched weakly, bringing up nothing but bitter bile.

  "East," I mumbled, though I had no idea if it was true. "We need to go east." Who was I talking to? The storm? Myself? Lior's ghost?

  The wound on my shoulder pulsed, sending waves of nauseating light through my veins. I clawed at it, fingers scraping against the glassy hardness forming around the edges. It was spreading faster now, tendrils of corruption reaching toward my heart.

  I forced myself to stand, legs trembling beneath me. The forest doubled, then tripled in my sight. Which path was real? The storm nudged me forward, but I no longer trusted its guidance. Not after the creature had seemed so pleased to find me.

  "What if it's leading me to them?" I whispered, terror clenching my stomach. "What if you're taking me to more of them?"

  The storm didn't answer, just pressed insistently against my ribs. Forward. Always forward.

  Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was awake or dreaming. The mist played tricks, forming shapes that disappeared when I looked directly at them. Once, I thought I saw my mother standing among the trees, her hands outstretched. I ran toward her, only to find myself face-to-face with a withered stump.

  "Mira," I whispered, clutching at her bracelet. "Mom." Their faces blurred together in my fever-dream. "I'm afraid."

  The storm pulsed against my heart, a strange counterpoint to my fear. I could feel it stretching outward, sensing something I couldn't see.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  The light beneath my skin flickered with each unsteady heartbeat. I was becoming something else—something like those creatures. The thought made me stumble again, panic closing my throat.

  "I don't want to be a monster," I gasped, clinging to a tree for support. "Please. I don't want to hurt anyone else."

  When the second wave of fever hit, I collapsed beneath an ancient oak, its massive roots creating a hollow large enough to crawl into. I curled against its trunk, shivering despite the heat burning through my veins.

  "I can't," I told the storm. "I can't go any further."

  The pressure in my chest built, insistent and demanding. My wound throbbed in time with it, the light beneath my skin brightening with each pulse. I pressed my palm against it, feeling the unnatural heat.

  Somewhere in the distance, I thought I heard that faceless creature moving through the trees. Or was it the glass one, returning to finish what it started? The forest sounds warped in my ears—every rustle a threat, every shadow a predator.

  "Leave me alone," I begged, my voice breaking. "Just let me die here."

  Lior's hallucination sat across from me, his face sombre now. In the shadows between the roots, I could see Mira too, her soft green eyes watching me with a sadness I couldn't bear.

  "I never meant to hurt you," I told them. "I never wanted any of this."

  The vision of Lior reached toward me, his hand passing through mine like smoke. Behind him, more figures gathered—people I didn't recognise, with eyes that glowed like mine. Were they real? Were there other storm-bearers? Or just more fever dreams?

  "Am I going mad?" I asked no one in particular. The world spun around me, trees bending impossibly. The ground beneath me felt both solid and insubstantial, as if I might fall through it at any moment.

  The storm swelled suddenly, pushing against my skin from the inside. Not in rage, not in power—but in something that felt horribly, impossibly like grief. My grief, reflected and amplified until it filled every hollow space inside me.

  And then it broke free.

  Not like the explosion that killed Lior. Not like the defensive surge that shattered the glass creature. This was different—raw and achingly sad.

  Light poured from me in weeping streams, cracking the earth beneath me into veins of glass. The storm rolled out of me in waves, and I couldn't tell if I was screaming or sobbing or both. Every memory—Lior's laughter, Mira's gentle touch, my mother's steady hands—crashed through me and into the storm.

  For the first time, I understood that the storm wasn't separate from me. It wasn't just destruction living inside my skin. It was part of me, changing with me, feeling with me.

  The realisation came too late. My body was failing, hollowed out by hunger and fever and grief. The light from my wound was blinding now, spreading up my neck and across my face. I could taste it—sharp and metallic, like lightning.

  I closed my eyes, too exhausted to fight anymore. The storm quieted to a gentle hum, almost soothing in its familiarity. If this were death, at least the storm would die with me. At least I couldn't hurt anyone else.

  In the darkness behind my eyelids, I thought I heard voices—ancient whispers in a language I couldn't understand but somehow recognised. Faces flickered through the fog of exhaustion: men and women with storm-grey eyes like mine, their features etched with the same light that now mapped my skin.

  Were they calling to me? Were they warning me? I couldn't tell which direction was real anymore—past or present, dream or waking. The storm inside me seemed to know them, reaching toward the whispers like an old friend.

  "Who are you?" I tried to ask, but my lips wouldn't form the words. My body felt distant, disconnected from my mind. Was I finally dying? Had the corruption from the creature's wound reached my heart at last?

  Then a touch on my forehead—cool, steadying. The storm inside me didn't surge in defence. Instead, it calmed, recognising something in that touch.

  I forced my eyes open, vision blurring. A woman knelt beside me, barefoot despite the cold ground, her hazel eyes flecked like autumn leaves. She wasn't afraid of me. She wasn't afraid of my storm.

  Was she real? Or another fever dream, another cruel trick of the mist? I tried to reach for her, to confirm her solidity, but my arm wouldn't obey.

  "Here," she said, her voice steady and certain. "I've found her."

  More footsteps approached through the mist. "Is she alive?" a male voice called.

  "Barely," the woman answered. "Daro, Elyra—quickly now."

  I tried to speak, to ask who they were and how they'd found me, but my voice was gone. The storm had taken everything I had left.

  The world tilted again, reality fragmenting into shards of light and shadow. Were these people here to help me, or were they with the creatures? Had I been led into a trap after all?

  Panic fluttered weakly in my chest, but I couldn't move, couldn't run. The storm inside me had gone quiet, almost peaceful. It trusted these strangers even if I didn't.

  As consciousness slipped away, I felt the weight of Mira's bracelet against my pulse and wondered if I would ever make it back to fulfil my promise.

  The last thing I saw was the woman's face, calm and unafraid as my storm-light reflected in her eyes.

  "Rest now, storm-bearer," she murmured. "You've been wandering long enough."

  And then darkness swallowed me whole.

  Thalia knelt beside the unconscious girl, her bare feet sensing the transformed earth beneath them. The ground around the girl had crystallised into smooth glass, lightning patterns frozen in mid-strike. It was a signature she had seen only once before.

  "She's burning up," Elyra said softly, her hand hovering over the wound on the girl's shoulder. "The corruption is spreading. Another day alone out here, and she would have been lost."

  Daro crouched on the girl's other side, his broad shoulders blocking the wind. "She's so young," he muttered, voice rough with memory. "Younger than Nira was."

  "Don't," Thalia warned sharply, glancing up at her companion. "We don't speak that name."

  The storm-light beneath the girl's skin pulsed weakly, tracking her heartbeat. It had responded to Thalia's touch—recognising, perhaps, what the others couldn't see in her. The girl's storm-grey eyes had registered brief terror before closing, and Thalia felt a pang of empathy. The girl had been running, afraid, lost—just as she had been warned would happen.

  "Can you carry her?" Thalia asked Daro, who nodded grimly.

  As he lifted the girl's slight frame, Thalia noticed the leather bracelet on her wrist—worn smooth with constant touching, a nervous habit perhaps. This wasn't just any storm-bearer. This was a girl with connections, with people who loved her. People she had left behind.

  The storm-bearer stirred briefly in Daro's arms, her cracked lips forming what might have been a name before she slipped back into unconsciousness.

  "Hurry," Thalia said, already moving through the trees with certainty. "Her storm is fading. If we lose her now, we might not find another."

  Behind them, the glass-transformed earth glinted in the filtered sunlight—a marker of power and grief that would remain long after they were gone.