Eight years had passed since the night of Aetos's arrival, eight cycles of seasons on the sacred mountain, and once again, unnatural storms lashed Mount Helicon with familiar fury.
The parallel was too perfect, too precise to be mere coincidence. The same upward-spiralling winds that defied natural law, the same impossible temperature drops that created ice in summer air, the same unmistakable sense of intention behind the tempest's fury. Older monks exchanged knowing glances as they moved with practiced efficiency to secure shutters and gather sacred texts from vulnerable areas.
"It's like the mountain remembers," Brother Dimitri murmured, his voice hushed with awe as he watched ice crystals form in the warm evening air. "Like it's been waiting for this night."
Aetos felt it too—a deep resonance in his bones, a familiarity that went deeper than memory, older than his conscious mind. All day he'd been restless, unable to focus on lessons or training, his usual concentration scattered like leaves before a gale. The approaching storm pulled at him like a lodestone draws iron filings, inevitable and undeniable.
"Inside, young eagle," Master Zephyrus commanded as evening fell and the first winds began to howl with increasing violence. "Whatever calls to you in that storm, you're not ready to answer. Not yet."
But readiness had never stopped Aetos before.
He tried to obey, truly he did, joining the evening meditation as winds built to a deafening crescendo outside. The other students fidgeted nervously on their cushions—storms always unsettled pneuma users, the chaotic energies interfering with their careful control, making precision impossible. But for Aetos, the opposite occurred. The wilder the storm grew, the clearer his mind became, as if the chaos outside brought order within.
Deep in meditation, he felt himself... expanding. His consciousness, usually contained within his small body, began to spread outward, carried on the storm winds like a leaf on a river. He was in the meditation hall but also beyond it—touching clouds heavy with rain, racing between raindrops, dancing in the electric spaces between lightning and thunder.
Come, the wind whispered in a voice like home. Remember what was hidden. Remember who you are.
And suddenly, impossibly, he did.
The vision struck with the force of a physical blow, driving the breath from his lungs. He was an infant again, but aware, seeing through eyes that perceived more than the physical world. Around him, figures in robes that seemed woven from mist itself argued in ancient Greek dialects that predated the common tongue.
"The convergence approaches," a woman's voice said urgently, each word heavy with power. "He must be hidden until his power ripens. The signs are clear—the Void stirs."
"Hidden where?" A man, older, his voice weighted with authority and fear. "There is no place the Voidcallers cannot eventually find him. Their reach grows longer each year. Unless..."
"The temple." A third voice, younger, fierce with determination. "Zephyrus still holds to the old ways. He'll recognise what the child is, what he could become. The pneuma runs strong there."
"And if he doesn't? If they cast him out as another orphan?"
"Then he was not the promised one after all." The woman again, her voice breaking like waves on stone. "But if he is... Aether help us, if he is what the signs proclaim, then the storm itself will ensure his survival. The elements don't abandon their own."
The vision shifted like smoke in wind. Aetos saw himself being lifted by hands that sparkled with contained lightning, wrapped in cloth that had been blessed by all four cardinal winds. The woman holding him had eyes the exact shade of his own—storm-grey with silver threads that caught light like struck steel.
"My heart," she whispered against his downy hair, pressing trembling lips to his forehead. "My little eagle. May the winds carry you to safety. May the storm be your guardian until you're strong enough to guard yourself. And may you forgive us for choosing the world's need over our own."
She began to sing—not words but pure tones that resonated with the storm's frequency, notes that made the air itself shiver. The tempest responded like a trained beast, cradling them both in a cocoon of wind, and Aetos felt himself being passed from his mother's arms to the wind's embrace.
The last thing he saw was her face, tears streaming but expression resolute as granite, as she spoke words that branded themselves into his soul with fire: "When the Void rises, remember—you are the breath that holds it back. You are the storm that cleanses. You are the wind that carries hope. You are loved beyond measure, my son. Never doubt that."
The vision shattered like glass.
Aetos found himself floating three feet above his meditation cushion, a perfect sphere of calm air surrounding him while a localised tornado raged through the hall with devastating precision. Scrolls and cushions whirled in the cyclone, but nothing was damaged—the wind obeyed his unconscious will too completely for destruction.
"Aetos!" Master Zephyrus's voice cut through the chaos like a blade. "Breathe, child. Draw it back into yourself. Control!"
But Aetos couldn't hear him over the sound of his mother's voice echoing in his memory, each word a revelation and a wound. His power, fuelled by raw emotion and sudden recognition, continued to build exponentially. The very stones of the temple began to resonate with his pneuma frequency, singing a deep note that made the mountain tremble.
"Everyone out!" Zephyrus commanded with rare urgency. "Now! Before the resonance spreads!"
The other students fled in barely controlled panic, but Zephyrus remained, fighting through winds that could shred flesh to reach his pupil. He found Aetos rigid as stone, eyes rolled back to show only white, tears streaming down his face as his small body channeled forces far beyond what any eight-year-old should contain.
"Your mother was right to trust us," Zephyrus said urgently, gambling everything on what the boy might have seen. "But she would not want you to burn yourself out reaching for her memory. Breathe, young storm. Breathe and return to us. She saved you to live, not to die."
Something in those words reached Aetos through the maelstrom. The rigid control cracked like a dam giving way, and with a sound like a sob torn from the depths of his soul, he collapsed. The winds died instantly, dropping everything they'd lifted with surprising, almost apologetic gentleness.
Zephyrus caught the boy before he hit the ground, noting with genuine alarm how hot his skin burned—pneuma overflow at dangerous levels. Potentially fatal if not managed with extreme care.
"Master?" Aetos's voice was tiny, confused, lost. "I saw her. I saw my mother. She... she sang to me."
"I know, child. Rest now. We'll speak of visions when you're stronger."
But Aetos gripped his robes with desperate, fever-hot strength. "She loved me. She didn't throw me away like storm debris. She... she saved me from something. Something terrible called the Void?"
Zephyrus's blood turned to ice in his veins, but he kept his voice steady through sheer will. "Rest, Aetos. Whatever comes, you're safe here. That's what she wanted."
As Brother Alexei arrived at a run to tend the boy's pneuma burns, Zephyrus's mind raced through implications. The Voidcallers—he'd thought them legend, cautionary tales from the oldest, most fragmentary texts. If they were real, if they were hunting this child...
The storm outside was already breaking apart, its purpose apparently fulfilled. It had come to awaken memory, to prepare the boy for truths he would need. But eight years old was far too young for such terrible burdens.
Watching Alexei work with desperate efficiency, seeing the patterns of power still flickering like heat lightning under Aetos's skin, Zephyrus made a decision that would change everything. The boy would need more than standard training. He would need preparation for a destiny that even prophecy only hinted at, education in arts the temple hadn't taught in generations.
But first, he needed to heal. And to grieve properly for a mother whose love had saved him and doomed him in equal measure.
In his fevered sleep, Aetos whispered words in languages he shouldn't know, couldn't know, and the wind carried them through the temple like a promise or a threat: "I remember now. I'll be ready. I won't let the breath fail. Mother, I understand."
Whatever storm had brought him eight years ago, Zephyrus realised with dawning dread, had been only the first gentle wind of a hurricane yet to come.