The air crackled with tension, an oppressive weight pressing against the skin, heavier than any armor or chain. Zarin took a deep breath, the sharp mountain air filling his lungs, each inhale an act of defiance against the relentless storm brewing on the horizon. In the valley below, the remnants of the village he had once called home lay in smoldering ruins. Blackened stone walls stood as skeletal remains, silent witnesses to a battle long lost. Zarin’s knuckles were white against the hilt of his sword, his grip not out of fear, but from the memory of holding on too tightly to things already slipping away.

He had not been born with power.

In the land of Veridale, where elemental forces danced at the fingertips of the chosen, Zarin was an anomaly. He had no control over fire like his brother, who could summon flame with a mere thought. He could not command the winds like his sister, whose laughter had always carried the breeze with it. No, Zarin was ordinary, and in Veridale, ordinary was the same as being invisible.

But the world had a way of noticing you when it wanted to break you.

Zarin stood at the edge of the cliff, eyes fixed on the dark clouds swirling in the distance, their violet hue signaling a coming storm far worse than any natural occurrence. It was the work of Them—the Ascendants. Beings who wielded their power with cruelty, who sought to reshape the world according to their will. They had taken everything from him—his family, his home, and, perhaps worst of all, his sense of belonging. His brother and sister had been captured, their powers shackled, leaving Zarin to wander the wilderness, powerless and alone.

At first, he had wanted to run. The forests were vast, the mountains uncaring. He could have disappeared, lived the rest of his life among the trees and the rivers, forgotten like so many others. But something deep inside him refused to break. It was not a sense of duty or honor. It was anger. Cold, unrelenting anger. And anger, Zarin found, was enough to keep moving.

The nights were long and sleepless, the air thin and biting. His body, though hardened by years of work and battle, was not immune to the toll of survival. Blisters formed and healed, only to form again, and his muscles ached with the effort of climbing, walking, fighting. But it was his mind that bore the deepest scars, haunted by images of flames and screams, by the look on his sister’s face when she was taken. He had sworn to find her, to save her from the Ascendants, but every day that promise felt like a weight around his neck, pulling him deeper into despair.

The sound of footsteps behind him broke the silence. Zarin’s grip on his sword tightened, though he did not turn around. He knew who it was.

“Still here?” came a voice, as familiar as his own shadow. It was Reya, the last of the Wanderers, and the closest thing Zarin had to a friend in these dark days. Her dark eyes glimmered with a mix of amusement and exhaustion, her long, raven-black hair tangled from the wind.

“I thought you’d be halfway to the Borderlands by now,” she said, stepping beside him, her gaze fixed on the same storm.

“I will be,” Zarin replied, his voice rougher than usual, “once I know where They are.”

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Reya let out a soft sigh, her lips curling into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re not going to find them by staring at the sky, you know. The Ascendants aren’t gods, Zarin. They bleed like the rest of us.”

“But they don’t die like the rest of us.”

Reya chuckled, though there was no humor in it. “No. No, they don’t. But they’ve got weaknesses.” She paused, turning to face him. “We just need to figure out what they are.”

Zarin met her gaze, seeing the determination in her eyes. Reya was a fighter, one who had lost just as much as he had. But where Zarin’s anger had turned to ice, Reya’s had burned into something more potent—a drive to change the world. She believed that there was a way to defeat the Ascendants, that their reign of terror could end. Zarin wasn’t so sure, but for now, he needed her hope.

“Do you ever think about how we got here?” he asked, more to himself than to her. “How everything fell apart so quickly?”

Reya’s expression softened. “Every day,” she whispered. “But thinking about the past won’t change it. We survive by looking forward, by becoming more than we were.”

Zarin frowned, his thoughts wandering back to the days before the Ascendants, when his village was still standing, and his family was whole. He had never been anything more than a farm boy, someone who lived in the shadows of greater people, people with power. He had learned to live with that, to find his place. Now, there was no place for him anywhere, except on the front lines of a war he didn’t understand.

“What if we’re not enough?” he asked quietly, his voice barely carrying over the wind. It was a question he had never asked aloud, one he feared the answer to.

Reya placed a hand on his shoulder, her touch grounding him. “Then we become more,” she said firmly. “We keep pushing, keep fighting. Until we are enough.”

Zarin wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that there was a way forward, that his struggle, his pain, would mean something in the end. But in the back of his mind, there was always the doubt, the voice that whispered that they were just pawns in a game far larger than themselves.

As if sensing his thoughts, Reya stepped back, her eyes scanning the horizon. “We’ve got work to do,” she said, her voice snapping back to the business at hand. “There’s a rumor of an old mage who knows how to weaken the Ascendants. He’s in the Northern Wastes, beyond the mountains.”

“The Wastes?” Zarin asked, raising an eyebrow. “No one survives there.”

Reya’s smile returned, this time with a hint of mischief. “Good thing we’re no one.”

Despite himself, Zarin felt a small flicker of something like hope. Maybe Reya was right. Maybe there was more to this fight than just surviving. Maybe there was a way to strike back, to make the Ascendants pay for what they had done.

Or maybe this journey would be their end.

But one thing was certain—he couldn’t stop now. He had come too far, lost too much. If there was even a chance of saving his brother and sister, of freeing them from the Ascendants’ grasp, then Zarin would take it, no matter the cost.

The storm was still raging in the distance, but Zarin turned his back to it, following Reya down the narrow mountain path. The journey ahead would be long, filled with dangers they couldn’t yet imagine. But Zarin’s heart was no longer weighed down by fear. He had his purpose, his anger, and his will to fight.

And as long as he had those, he knew he could survive anything.