The wind howled like a creature mourning its own death.
Kael stood on the cliff's edge, stormlight caught in his hair, face lifted toward the sky that churned with roiling clouds. Lightning flashed in jagged pulses—too close, too frequent. The air was thick with pressure, as though the mountain itself was holding its breath.
He should have felt whole.
His wolf had returned. After weeks of silence—of absence—he could feel it again: that other heartbeat within his own, that untamed echo of the wild. But it wasn't the same. The reunion was... wrong. Twisted.
Kael fell to one knee, clutching his chest as the storm within him clawed at his ribs.
It wasn't just the wolf. It was something more.
"Stormrage," whispered Thorne behind him, approaching slowly, his steps careful over the icy stone. "It's true, then. The blood remembers."
Kael's eyes flicked toward him—silver and stormlit, almost alien. "What do you know about it?"
