Even the ordinary things bent strangely, as though the storm had left fingerprints on them all.
The kettles hiss, the rasp of the broom, the crackle of the hearth, each sound folded into memory until I could hear my father’s voice, low and steady, telling me a story as the lightning beat against the walls outside.
He had spoken in that low, careful tone that he used when he wanted me to listen.
“There was a man once,” he said, “marked deeper than flesh. The storm cut its name into his bones, and he carried it ever after. When he spoke clouds gathered, when he bled the rain fell. But such a man frightened them, they said he was a wound the storm used, and so they bound him”.
I shivered then, afraid but unable to look away.
“The rulers saw him a dangerous and did what they believed must be done. They chained him in the ruins by the sea, where the tide breaks the hardest against the black cliffs. They lashed him with stormglass, each shard thrumming with captured lightning, and pressed relics stolen from old Gods against his skin. When the chains held and his voice fell silent the courts beyond the storm cheered, declaring the skies cleansed.”
“But his own people…” My father’s voice had faltered then, softer than before, the words dragging like roots through stone.
“The storm court didn’t cheer. They?—”
The memory blurred, I can still see him glance toward the door, toward my mother, her face tight, shaking her head. The story ended there, unfinished.
The moral was always the same, spoken like a lesson.
“The storm does not forget. It always comes to collect its debts.”
Chapter 8
Where Lightning Once Lived
CAELIRA
As a child I thought it meant storms punished arrogance, that the sky devoured those who mistook its power for their own. But now, staring at the silver carved into my palm, the hum still pulsing faintly beneath my skin, I wasn’t so sure.
Thoughts lingered, ones that I shouldn’t have had, but they lodged anyway.
What if my father’s story wasn’t about a monster at all?
What if the rulers weren’t saviors, but executioners silencing someone they feared?
And what if the storm had chosen him once… and now it was choosing me?
Every small task seemed to splinter beneath my hands, so I retreated to the ledgers instead. Their weight was steady, dependable. The leather was cool beneath my palms, solid in a way nothing else felt. I held them tighter than I meant to.
Rows of numbers, precise and orderly, waited within. If anything could steady the hollow space opening inside of me, it would be the comfort of ink on the page, of something that could be counted, when nothing else seemed certain.
Numbers had long been my refuge, columns and tallies, grain shipments and debts, ink that obeyed rules when the rest of the world didn’t.
I opened the first book smoothing its spine flat, the page smelled faintly of foxglove and ash, parchment worn soft from years of entries. I set the rib to the page, ready to lose myself in ink. My hand stilled.
The numbers blurred, not entirely, not like a mistake of sight, more like water running through the figures, smearing the edges until they rippled. I blinked hard, they sharpened again, steady… as though daring me to doubt what I had seen.
I began tallying grain shipments from Verdant’s outer farms. Two measures of wheat here, half measures of rye there. My script looked neat enough, familiar strokes in each line, but as I added the sums would not sit still.
Four and three made seven, not eight. Then nine. Then seven again, it was as if the numbers themselves were arguing beneath ink.
A tremor rattled my wrist, ink pooled in the loop of a letter, bleeding outward in black veins until they nearly resembled the silver ones beneath my skin. I pulled back, startled, blotting the page with sand until the stain dulled.
“Order,” I whispered to myself. “Just keep the order.”
But even the act of whispering seemed to disturb the stillness of the cabin. The rafters groaned above me, the hearth cracked, sparks scattering across the stone. My gaze flicked to the mark on my palm, it pulsed, silver brightening once with each beat of my heart.
I passed the hand flat to the page, as if weight alone could keep the columns from shifting. The mark flared, faint but undeniable, silver bleeding across the numbers until they seemed to glow against the parchment. When I pulled my hand back the glow was gone, yet the page was changed. The sumswere correct now, every figure aligned, every column straight, as though it had never faltered, as though I had only imagined the ruin.
