“Anchor your feet!” Velnari commanded. “Visualize the weight of the stone, give the wind somewhere to go!”
Stone. Ground. Anything solid. Thaelyn reached for the image, the blacksmith’s forge, the weight of the hammer to the metal, the solid ring of steel on the anvil. For a heartbeat, she thought it worked. Her boots touched stone again.
Then the powerrecoiled.
The light beneath her pulsed darker, veins of red turning black. A violent updraft slammed into her chest and sent her sprawling backward, arms flailing as she was lifted higher than before.
“Thaelyn!” The instructor’s shout cracked with something she’d never heard from Velnari before, fear.
“I can’t hold it!” Thaelyn cried.
“You must! Find your center andlet it go!”
“How?”
“Through the breath, through your heart! You are not its vessel, only its passage!”
But the storm didn’t want a passage. It wanted ahome.
The pressure inside Thaelyn’s chest exploded. She couldn’t breathe. Her eyes watered, her veins seared with heat. The runes below the platform dimmed and then flared again, feeding the vortex that spun tighter around her.
The air changed. It was no longer the bright, wild freedom she’d felt moments ago. It was cold. Metallic.Alive.
Thaelyn’s mind splintered into panic. She tried again to exhale, topushthe wind away as Velnari had said, but each breath only drew more in. Her lungs filled with fire and frost all at once.
“Professor!” one of the cadets yelled. “She’s, she’s burning!”
Velnari raised her arms, summoning her own gale, shouting an incantation lost beneath the roar. Wind clashed with wind, the air crackling in violent resistance.
Thaelyn screamed. The sound vanished into the cyclone. The world tilted. The clouds themselves seemed to twist around her, shadows moving within them, human in shape but larger, darker, and hollow. And beneath their whisper came something worse, avoice, old and dry, coiling through her mind.
“Do not release me. I’ve waited too long.”
Thaelyn’s body convulsed. Her vision fractured in streaks of red light.
Velnari’s magic slammed into her, cutting through the connection with a deafening crack. The force sent Thaelyn hurtling backward; she hit the stone hard, the breath ripped from her lungs, and everything went still.
Silence.
Rain pattered softly across the platform. The red glow faded to ash.
Thaelyn lay on her side, coughing, the air raw in her throat. Around her, cadets edged backward, eyes wide, whispering prayers.
Professor Velnari knelt beside her, jaw set, one hand trembling as she hovered it over the burned runes. “The wind obeys instinct,” she murmured. “But that wasn’t instinct. That was corruption, pure evil.”
Before Thaelyn could ask, the sound of horns split the sky, long, rolling notes that vibrated through the mountain.
Commander Dareth appeared at the spire entrance, cloak snapping in the gale. “Professor Velar! Dark winds are along the southern border, the patrol’s been hit!”
Velnari’s face hardened. “So that’s what it was reaching for.”
He looked past her, eyes landing on Thaelyn. “Get her to the healers. Then, ready the cadets.”
Thunder rolled overhead, black and red bleeding together across the clouds. Somewhere below, dragons roared in answer to the horns. Thaelyn’s breath shook as Velnari helped her stand. Her body ached, her palms scorched. She could stillfeelthe storm inside her, whispering through her veins.
“You called me,”it said, faint and patient. “I will answer again.”
Velnari’s grip tightened on her arm. “Whatever that was, Marren,” she said, voice low, “the border may not be the only thing that’s been breached.”
