The wagon shook as it moved through the forest, wood creaking. Leylin was fixated on the road ahead, eyes gleaming as if his destination was always right ahead. The soft sand and muddy ground had given way to more rocky terrain, and Leylin had fit new, sturdier wheels on either side of the wagon.

Rane was sure they had passed the Silyran borders after encountering the slaver. Now they headed ever north, towards an unknown destination. Fortunately, the animals of the wildlands and the forests they were traversing through served as a great source of food for the hauling beast, sparing Shill from its jaws.

What threatened his life now was the cold, biting into bone and turning flesh into a sickly blue. Even the weather changed rapidly. Rane had been keeping track of time using the cycles of dawn and dusk, but even that proved difficult. It was as if the storm clouds were always ahead of them throughout their journey, drowning them whenever the sky turned dark. Shill would pray during the storms, whispering words of faith like a shield. Rane caught him shivering many times and he was sure it wasn’t just the cold at fault.

“It’s going to be a fierce one. I can feel it.” Leylin gazed at the clouds gathering in the distance, lightning already crackling in their innards.

“We should find shelter,” Rane suggested. He secretly hoped that some part of Leylin would see reason, but it was to no avail.

“No.” Leylin kept his head turned to the clouds of the horizon. “We carry on.”

“This is all wrong.” Shill said, shaking his head frantically.

“What’s going on?” Rane inched closer to him and whispered. “What are you afraid of?”

Shill kept shaking his head and staring into nothing. “Forgive me. Please forgive me.” When he didn’t beg, he prayed, whispering the words too fast for Rane to understand.

Rane left him to it, but the anxiousness had rubbed off on him as well. Just where was Leylin taking them? Ahead of them, hail pelted trees and crashed against rocks. He let the wind push his head back with its chilly embrace. Just another storm to weather. The wagon felt like a tiny vessel faced with the blizzard, but the hauling beast didn’t waver. Even when dark clouds gathered overhead, Rane said nothing.

Thunder turned to lightning as Shill broke the silence. “By the gods, your insolence has not stopped!” The old ashfen snapped up, reached through the bars and pulled on the hems of Leylin’s clothes. “Do you realise what you’ve done? You intruded upon holy domain! You’ve doomed us, you bastard! All of us!" The first raindrops found his cheek. "You tore open the skies and brought us to judgement!” His eyes were wide open and his body shook whole.

“Not just judgement.” The sky rumbled in anger and Leylin raised his voice over it. “Sweet salvation!”

“Mad man!” The ashfen tried to squeeze through the bars to reach Leylin. Rane fell forward to stop him, but there was strength to his grip. Faith or madness. “Do you not see God's power? If it’s death you crave, I'll give it to you.”

Lightning struck and burst open a tree, bark smoking in red. Leylin stood, bent the bars as if they were nothing and lifted Shill by the hair. “Who do you fear?” He screamed, pointing up. “Me, or fake gods?”

“It’s coming…” Shill squirmed helplessly under Leylin’s grip, but his eyes were pinned to the sky. “The aspect is coming.”

Leylin relieved him of his head. His arm bulged unnaturally, muscles tearing through his clothes. “Have your believer back!” He threw the disembodied head up to be swallowed by the clouds.

The storm swelled and rumbled, like it was enraged. Rane saw the first of the hail dropping like a volley of arrows, curving out to reach them. Sparks of magic clung to the ice, leaving behind trails of mist as they fell. Some cracked against the stone while others left hollows in the soil, blue nora flickering. It was magic. The rolling clouds, the thunder, the hail and the lightning. It was all born of someone’s anger.

At one point in the past, he’d have been scared. Perhaps he’d have screamed or cried when faced with certain death. The thought alone made him chuckle. He’d lived a life without agency on borrowed time. What was the meaning of it? Rane opened his hands to the clouds above and dared the lightning to touch him. Leylin’s arm wrapped around his waist instead, forcing him off the carriage as it got pierced by the hail.

“Finally! Our prey got tired of running.” Leylin spoke with a madness, driven by unseen compulsions. He raised a hand over his head and his nora formed a cover to shield them. Its dark magic swirled stronger than ever, hid so many different emotions. The clouds ahead of them descended, like an ethereal beast of prey touching the ground. Priming itself for the hunt.

Yet even as the giant of turbulence and death towered over them, Leylin didn’t falter. His darkness formed a sphere around them as the storm swallowed them in its wake. The chaos inside it welcomed them. Wind, water and upturned soil left the forest a blur. Needles made of hail shred through trees, ground and rocks alike in a world that resembled streaks on a canvas. They crushed against Leylin’s magic and shattered into tiny fragments. Lightning tore holes through the shield every time it fell, but Leylin quickly mended them.

Through the crackling, the tumult and the raging winds, Rane heard a familiar whisper. The voice he had heard in the dungeon had returned, mellow and soft. Run, it beckoned. It wasn’t just his mind trying to make sense of the chaos. Thoughts raced through his head. Whoever cast this spell was an ally, was angered to see Shill killed. The voice spoke to him again, clearer this time. Safe. He looked over his shoulder at Leylin. The man was entirely focused on navigating the dark forest and deflecting enemy spells. He could do it. He could run. But at what cost? Leylin would hunt him down, and in case that failed, his family would be next.

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Trust me. The voice called out. I will keep them safe. I will lead you to freedom.

The words filled his mind, like a short break of light drizzle amid the storm. Hadn’t his siblings been trying to save him all this time? What would they think if they knew he had wasted a chance to escape? That he’d let it slip by as he watched idly? Rane shook his head. He had let Leylin get into his head and plant the seed of terror. The moisture in the air responded to his will and gathered in his palms. It was time to risk it all. He counted each moment, watched Leylin’s shield and measured how quickly the gaps formed by lightning closed each time. Openings formed and vanished under the storm’s terrible power. Lightning struck and the part of the shield next to him vanished. He cast, pressing against the ice shield to push himself out of the hole in Leylin’s defences. And into the storm outside. He shielded his face from the hail, but there was none. The eye of the tempest welcomed him.

“You dare?” Leylin screamed behind him, grabbing his ankle before he even hit the ground.

Rane turned his body and called fire to his fingertips. A blade of ice whizzed past as he focused, tearing Leylin’s hand from his arm. Rane fell and hit the ground hard. He fought for balance as he tumbled down a hill, but the mud couldn’t hold his weight. Broken branches cut into his skin and exposed stones scraped against his back, but the cold rain numbed the pain. A tree bark stopped his awkward descent and –after a short pained grunt– he pushed against it to break into a run. The storm’s eye followed him. Uprooted trees, boulders and hail parted wherever he walked, forming a path through the upturned world. Even the ground levelled beneath his feet. The winds that had dug into his back now pushed against it, cold and liberating.

“You belong to me!” Leylin’s screech nearly drowned out the storm’s. “I will kill everything you value. Everything you love! Then I will find you!”

Leylin’s dark magic pulsed behind him, reaching for his hair. The storm raged within arm’s reach, bolts of light hammering Leylin back with cracks of power. Hail turned into a blur of silver and white to stop the man. The ground itself crumbled into nothingness behind Rane after every stride, swallowed by Leylin’s darkness. This was something beyond simple magic. It was the force of nature itself that aided him. Rane ducked under a branch and the wet soil gave underneath him. He slipped and Leylin grabbed his shoulder.

Then there was darkness. The force of Leylin’s magic almost knocked him unconscious, but the sudden chill it brought shocked him awake. For a moment, he couldn’t feel anything except that cold darkness, and how its pressure forced the breath from his lungs. He felt his own nora being crushed, shrivelling back to its hiding place inside his soul. The wind inside Leylin’s spell made the storm seem like a gentle breeze. Sparks of light –like distant stars– whizzed past in the blackness of the maelstrom. Gusts crushed against him from different directions and dark voices crept inside his mind, whispers formed of the wind.

So he mustered what strength he had left and ran. Ran from this place of terrible madness. The dead followed after him, crimson eyes in the darkness. Each burst of wind knocked his body aside like a broken doll, whipping him up into the air and down again. Like everything else in life, it toyed with him. Until the warmth of his blood contrasted the cold of Leylin’s world, and until his mind had numbed. One gust crushed him against the ground and all feeling faded. There was no sound, no wind, no voices or souls.

Rane raised his head to the light. A man on one knee held a giant eye aloft between his arms, half of its form vanishing into the darkness above. Blood flowed down his back and pooled around his feet. The iris twitched and the monstrous pupil snapped to Rane, swallowing him into its vast blackness.

The image faded and the winds returned. So did the voices. They grew wrathful, drowning out each other’s words in a chorus of pleas, curses and cries. He felt their pain and their anguish, and they felt his. They screamed at him, begged him for death, for sleep, for release from this twisted world of chaos and terror. Different tongues intertwined and invisible hands tugged at his clothes, one after the other, sapping the warmth of life from his body.

“Leave me alone!” Rane screamed back at the darkness. His voice didn’t reach his own ears. More hands gripped onto his body, their cold fingers numbing flesh and bone alike. Each motion became arduous and heavy, like trying to walk through thick mud.

“Leave me alone,” he cried as the dead forced him to kneel. He pushed his eyelids shut to the point of dizziness. A different hand coiled around his throat, this one all too real. Leylin heaved with each breath, and bled.

“I give you power.” Leylin’s lips trembled. He raised his other hand with effort and his fist found Rane’s numbed cheek, filling his mouth with the taste of copper. “I give you life.” The fingers tightened around Rane’s neck. “I give you purpose!” Leylin struck again, making his vision blur. “And this is how you repay me?”

Rane flashed him a bloody smile. “You gave me nothing but trouble.”

“I thought you’d understand.” Leylin’s voice turned harsh. “No more chances. Starting now you are–”

A blade of ice tore through Leylin’s chest and stopped just shy of Rane’s lip, before carving through the man’s shoulder and arm. Suddenly, there was no force behind his grip. The darkness shattered, and Rane found himself back in the forest, sitting on flat leaves and mud. A breath of cold air burned in his chest as he stood. Beneath him, Leylin gazed up with wide eyes before his mangled body got swallowed by the storm.

The path to freedom revealed itself in front of Rane, free of hail, wind and thunder. There was only one thing left to do. He lost himself to the running and time left him. The pain from his battered and cut body faded. All that mattered was dodging roots and barks and running. Placing one foot in front of the other and getting away from Leylin. From his past life. Even when the voices in his head grew silent and the man’s magic vanished, he pushed his legs until they burned. Even when the edges of his vision darkened and exhaustion threatened to take hold, he screamed at the top of his lungs to keep himself awake.

Soil turned to mud and mud to snow under his feet as the storm faded. The cold dug into him, turning screams to dry panting and fits of coughing. His knees finally surrendered to the strain and he fell, planting his hands into the snow. Just a little more, and he could be free. With the last of his strength, he crawled, until that ran out as well. Rane lay there, panting. He fought to keep his eyes from closing as blue nora drifted down from above in tiny droplets of mist. It reached his face, and he succumbed to its warmth.