The storm appeared at midnight.

  Not formed. Not approached. Appeared—like reality had simply decided that a storm should exist in that location and made it so.

  Tyrian woke to Kaelis shaking his shoulder, her face pale in the darkness.

  "You need to see this," she said. Her voice was tight, controlled, but he could hear the fear underneath. Kaelis didn't scare easily. When she did, it meant something had gone very, very wrong.

  He followed her to the cave entrance, pulling his cloak against the sudden cold. The temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees in the hours since sunset. His breath misted in the air.

  The storm stretched across the northern horizon like a wall.

  Not a line of clouds. Not a weather front. A wall—vertical, impossibly tall, churning with energy that made his echo-sensitivity scream warnings into his skull. Lightning moved through it, but wrong. Instead of forking downward, it spiraled horizontally, forming patterns that looked almost geometric. Almost intentional.

  "That's not natural," Brayden said, appearing beside them. He'd already armed himself, his hand resting on his sword hilt even though steel would be useless against whatever that was.

  "Understatement of the year," Kaelis muttered.

  Thunder rolled across the water, but it didn't sound right. Too rhythmic. Too regular. Like drums in a funeral procession or the beating of an enormous heart.

  Tyrian reached out with his echo-sensitivity, trying to understand what he was sensing. The moment his awareness touched the storm, pain lanced through his skull so sharp he gasped and staggered backward. Brayden caught him before he fell.

  "Don't," Camerise said, emerging from the cave's depths. All four of her hands were pressed against her temples, and blood trickled from her nose. "Don't reach toward it. It's… gods, it's aware. The storm is aware."

  "Storms don't have consciousness," Varden said, but his voice lacked conviction. He'd already pulled out his runestones and was taking readings, his thick fingers moving with urgent precision.

  "This one does." Camerise's voice was strained. "I can feel it in the Dreamfall. It's not just weather. It's… intention made manifest. Purpose given physical form."

  "What purpose?" Tyrian asked, still blinking away the afterimages of pain.

  "To keep us away from the Seal. Or…" She paused, tilting her head like she was listening to something only she could hear. "Or to draw us toward it. I can't tell which."

  Calven emerged from the cave, already armed, his movements sharp and predatory. He took one look at the storm and his hand went to his sword.

  "We need to move," he said. "Now. Before it gets closer."

  "Move where?" Bram asked, his voice slightly too high. He was clutching a bag of medical supplies like it might protect him. "That thing stretches across the entire northern horizon. There's nowhere to go that isn't toward it or away from the Seal."

  "Then we go through," Calven said flatly.

  "Through?" Kaelis stared at him. "Through the reality-defying consciousness-storm? That's your plan?"

  "Unless you have a better one."

  Silence answered him.

  The storm was moving now, Tyrian realized. Slowly but inexorably, sliding south along the coast like a living thing. And where it passed, the water glowed brighter, the bioluminescence intensifying until it looked like the sea was on fire.

  "Seal Two is using the storm," Varden said, looking up from his readings. His face was grim in the lightning-lit darkness. "Look at these harmonic patterns. The Wells corruption is propagating through the storm system. Every drop of rain, every gust of wind—they're all carrying trace amounts of corruption."

  "Which means?" Bram asked.

  "Which means if that storm reaches inland population centers, everyone it touches becomes a potential vector." Varden's hands were shaking as he packed away his instruments. "We're not just looking at environmental corruption anymore. We're looking at a plague."

  "How long until it reaches Saltmere?" Brayden asked.

  Varden checked the wind direction, the storm's speed, did some mental calculation. "Three hours. Maybe four."

  "And the settlements beyond Saltmere?"

  "By dawn." Varden met Tyrian's eyes. "Thousands of people. Tens of thousands if it keeps spreading."

  The weight of that settled over them like a physical thing.

  "We go through," Tyrian said. "Calven's right. We don't have time to go around. We don't have time to wait it out. We go through, we find the Seal, and we end this."

  "Tyrian—" Camerise started.

  "I know the risks. I know what the Wellsong will do to me when we get closer. I know I might not be able to resist it." He looked at each of them in turn. "But if we don't try, we're condemning everyone on this coast to drowning or worse. So we try. And if I start walking toward the water, you stop me. By force if necessary."

  "I can do that," Calven said quietly. There was something in his voice that made the hairs on Tyrian's neck stand up—a readiness, almost an eagerness. The proto-Varkuun stirring beneath his skin.

  "Then we pack," Brayden said, already moving. "Light loads. Emergency supplies only. Anything that slows us down stays here."

  They packed with military efficiency, years of mercenary work making the process automatic. Weapons, water, basic medical supplies, Varden's essential instruments. Everything else—bedrolls, cooking equipment, spare clothing—stayed behind.

  Kaelis stood at the cave entrance, watching the storm approach. Her wind-touched senses were sharper than the others', attuned to the subtle movements of air and pressure.

  "It's beautiful," she said quietly. "In a terrible sort of way. Like watching the end of the world painted in lightning."

  "Don't romanticize it," Calven said, checking his sword one final time.

  "Why not? If we're about to walk into a consciousness-storm that might kill us all, I'd rather face it thinking it's beautiful than thinking it's just horrifying."

  "It can be both," Camerise said softly.

  Within twenty minutes, they were moving.

  The storm hit them half a mile from the cave.

  One moment they were walking through cold but clear air. The next, the world turned to chaos.

  Rain fell in sheets—not drops, sheets—each one glowing faintly with that sickly blue-white bioluminescence. The moment it touched Tyrian's skin, he felt it. A tingling. A wrongness. Like the water itself was trying to seep into his pores and rewrite him from the inside out.

  "Cover up!" Varden shouted over the sudden roar of wind. "Don't let it touch bare skin!"

  They pulled up hoods, wrapped scarves around their faces, anything to create a barrier between flesh and the corrupted rain. But it was impossible to block completely. Water ran down collars, seeped through bootlaces, found every gap in their defenses.

  Bram started humming. Quietly at first, then louder. The Wellsong, rendered in his nervous tenor.

  "Bram!" Kaelis grabbed his shoulder, shaking him. "Stop it. Don't listen to it."

  He blinked, confused. "Was I humming? I didn't… I didn't realize."

  "The rain carries it," Camerise said, her voice strained. "The Wellsong is in the water. In the air. In everything the storm touches."

  Wind hit them like a physical force, nearly knocking Bram off his feet. Brayden caught him, steadying him, and they pressed forward into the teeth of the storm.

  Lightning struck close—too close—and in the flash, Tyrian saw something that made his blood freeze.

  The lightning wasn't random. It was forming shapes. Patterns. Almost like runes, but wrong. Inverted. Like someone had taken the language of order and creation and written it backward.

  "Varden!" he shouted. "The lightning—are you seeing this?"

  "I see it!" The Dvarin's voice was nearly lost in the wind. "It's Wells corruption manifesting as atmospheric phenomena! The storm isn't just carrying the corruption—it is corruption!"

  Another flash. Another pattern. This one looked almost like a serpent, coiled and waiting.

  Kaelis suddenly stumbled, gasping. Her wind-touched senses—usually an asset—were overwhelming her. She could feel every gust, every shift in pressure, every movement of corrupted air as if it were pressing directly against her mind.

  "Too much," she gasped. "There's too much wind. Too many currents. They're all wrong. They're all—"

  Her legs buckled. Calven caught her before she hit the ground.

  "I've got you," he said. Then, louder: "We need shelter! She can't handle this level of atmospheric chaos!"

  "There!" Brayden pointed toward a rocky outcropping about fifty yards ahead. "It'll block the worst of the wind!"

  They ran. Or tried to. The wind fought them every step, changing direction seemingly at random, trying to drive them back or push them toward the cliff's edge. Tyrian felt his echo-sensitivity screaming warnings—danger everywhere, no safe direction, the storm itself hunting them.

  They reached the outcropping and huddled in its lee, gasping for breath. The wind was slightly less vicious here, the rain slightly less intense.

  Kaelis was shaking, her eyes unfocused. "The wind is singing," she whispered. "Can you hear it? The wind is singing the same song as the water."

  "Don't listen," Camerise said urgently. She pressed one of her hands against Kaelis' forehead, trying to use her Dreamweaver abilities to shield the Lyfan's mind. "Don't follow it. Stay here. Stay with us."

  "It's so beautiful though," Kaelis said, tears streaming down her face. "Why is something so terrible also so beautiful?"

  Calven moved to the edge of their shelter, staring out into the storm. Tyrian saw his shoulders tense, saw his hand tighten on his sword.

  "Calven?" he called.

  "Something's wrong," Calven said. His voice had changed—lower, rougher. "The storm. It's not just moving toward us. It's focusing on us."

  "What do you mean?" Brayden asked.

  In answer, Calven pointed.

  The lightning had changed patterns. Instead of random strikes, it was forming a circle. Around them. Hundreds of yards in diameter, but tightening. Slowly but inexorably drawing closer.

  "It knows we're here," Varden breathed. "By the Forges, it actually knows we're here."

  Thunder rolled, and this time it sounded like words. Not words Tyrian could understand, but the suggestion of words. The shape of language without the content.

  "We need to move," Tyrian said. "Now. Before it traps us completely."

  "Move where?" Bram asked desperately. "We're surrounded by corrupted weather that wants to kill us!"

  "Then we go up," Kaelis said suddenly. She'd pushed herself upright, her eyes clearer now but still distant. "Storms are strongest at ground level. If we can get to higher elevation—"

  Lightning struck the outcropping directly above them. Stone exploded, showering them with razor-sharp fragments. They dove for cover, hands over their heads, as debris rained down.

  When the thunder faded, Tyrian looked up to see a massive crack running through the rock above them.

  "Or we could not go up," Kaelis amended.

  "The storm won't let us climb," Camerise said. She was pale, all four hands trembling. "I can feel its intention in the Dreamfall. It wants us on the ground. Vulnerable. Exposed."

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Then we give it what it wants," Calven said. His voice was calm. Too calm. "We go back down to the beach. We face it directly."

  "That's suicide," Brayden said.

  "Maybe. Or maybe it's the only way through." Calven turned to look at them, and Tyrian's breath caught. Calven's eyes were different. Brighter. More focused. Predatory. "This storm isn't natural. It's Wells corruption given physical form. Which means it can be fought. Wounded. Maybe even killed."

  "You can't kill a storm," Bram said.

  "You can if it's alive." The shadow behind Calven intensified, that smilodon-shape becoming almost visible. "And this one is definitely alive."

  They descended to the beach against every survival instinct they possessed. The storm seemed to intensify in response, as if it recognized their defiance and wanted to crush it.

  The beach was transformed. What should have been sand and stone was now something else—a surface that pulsed with bioluminescent veins, as if the ground itself had become a living thing. The water glowed so brightly it was painful to look at directly.

  And rising from that water, emerging from the depths like a nightmare given form, was the storm's heart.

  It wasn't a natural phenomenon. It was a creature.

  Massive. Impossible. A Wells-corrupted elemental that had been formed from the storm itself. Lightning for veins. Thunder for a heartbeat. Rain for blood. It took vaguely humanoid shape—two arms, a torso, something that might have been a head—but the details kept shifting, reforming, as if it couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be.

  When it "spoke," the sound was wind and thunder and the Wellsong all tangled together into something that made Tyrian's bones ache.

  "This is bad," Kaelis said, her usual humor completely absent.

  "Worse than bad," Varden agreed. "That thing is a localized manifestation of Seal Two's corruption. It's not just defending the Seal—it is part of the Seal. If we destroy it, we might destabilize the entire structure."

  "And if we don't destroy it?" Brayden asked.

  "It'll kill us and keep spreading corruption until half the continent is drowning."

  "Fantastic options all around," Kaelis muttered.

  The storm-elemental moved, and the beach shook. One massive arm swept toward them, trailing lightning and corrupted rain.

  "Scatter!" Calven shouted.

  They scattered. The arm hit the beach where they'd been standing, and stone exploded into crystalline fragments. Where it struck, the corruption intensified—the ground pulsing brighter, veins of bioluminescence spreading like infection.

  Kaelis was moving almost before the order was given, her wind-touched grace letting her surf the currents of air around the creature. She darted in, blade flashing, and struck at what might have been an arm. Her steel passed through wind and rain and lightning, and the creature screamed—a sound like a hurricane dying.

  But it didn't fall. Didn't even seem particularly wounded. It just reformed, the wounded section rebuilding itself from storm and corruption.

  "Conventional weapons won't work!" Varden shouted. He was sketching runes in the air with desperate speed, trying to create stabilizing barriers. "It's elemental! You can't kill wind and rain!"

  "Then we don't kill it!" Tyrian shouted back. "We disrupt it! Break its cohesion!"

  The creature swung again, faster this time. Brayden barely dodged, rolling across the corrupted sand. His military training showed—he came up in a defensive stance, already planning his next move.

  But there was no good move. The creature was too big, too fast, too fundamentally wrong to fight with conventional tactics.

  Camerise threw up mental shields, trying to protect the group from the psychic assault of the Wellsong. She was bleeding from her nose now, the strain of maintaining defenses in such a hostile environment pushing her past her limits.

  "I can't hold this!" she gasped. "The Dreamfall is tearing! I can't—"

  The storm-elemental struck at her, sensing weakness. Its massive fist came down like a falling mountain.

  Calven moved.

  He was just there, faster than thought, his sword raised to intercept the blow. Steel met corrupted wind, and there was a sound like reality breaking.

  The creature's fist stopped. Held back by a single man with a sword.

  For a moment, everyone froze, staring.

  Then the shadow behind Calven exploded into visibility.

  The proto-Varkuun aura had been subtle before. Suggestions. Hints. Flickers of something ancient and terrible.

  Not anymore.

  It manifested as a translucent smilodon made of winter light and ancient fury. Massive. Predatory. Its fangs were longer than swords, its eyes burned with cold fire, and when it roared, the storm itself flinched.

  Calven roared with it, and the sound was human and inhuman at once.

  The storm-elemental stumbled backward, its form flickering like a candle in the wind. For the first time since it appeared, it seemed uncertain. Afraid.

  "Calven!" Tyrian shouted, running toward him. "Calven, can you hear me?!"

  Calven's head turned, and for a terrifying moment, Tyrian wasn't sure if his friend was still in there. His eyes were too bright, too focused, burning with predatory intensity.

  Then he blinked, and something human flickered back into focus.

  "I'm here," he said, his voice rough but recognizable. "I'm still here. But I can't hold this for long."

  "You don't have to hold it long," Tyrian said, an idea forming. "Just long enough."

  He turned to Varden. "Can you bind an elemental? Force it to take solid form?"

  "In theory, yes, but—"

  "Do it. Calven will keep it distracted. Camerise, I need you to find its core—the point where the corruption is most concentrated. Kaelis, Brayden, guard them while they work. Bram, stay back and be ready to run if this goes wrong."

  "What are you going to do?" Brayden asked.

  "I'm going to stabilize it." Tyrian's voice was steady despite the fear coiling in his gut. "If it's part of Seal Two's corruption, then I should be able to interact with it. Calm it. Maybe even redirect it."

  "That's insane," Kaelis said.

  "Probably. But it's what we have."

  The storm-elemental had recovered from its shock and was moving again, gathering power for another attack. Lightning coalesced around its arms, thunder building in its chest.

  Calven charged.

  What followed was violence that defied description. Calven moved with speed and grace that shouldn't have been possible, the proto-Varkuun shadow moving with him, amplifying each strike. His sword found weak points that shouldn't have existed—places where wind and rain and lightning intersected in just the wrong way.

  Each strike made the creature scream. Each scream made the storm intensify.

  Varden was chanting now, old Dvarin words that resonated with stone and earth and permanence. His hands moved in complex patterns, and where he gestured, runes appeared in the air—glowing, solid, binding.

  The storm-elemental's movements became more restricted. Slower. Its form was solidifying, forced to take consistent shape by Varden's runework.

  Camerise had her eyes closed, all four hands extended, feeling through the Dreamfall for the creature's core. Blood streamed from her nose freely now, and she was shaking with effort.

  "There!" she gasped, pointing at the creature's chest—the place where lightning met thunder met rain. "That's where it's anchored! That's where the corruption is strongest!"

  Tyrian ran forward before he could think better of it. Reached out with his echo-sensitivity toward that point of concentrated corruption.

  Pain hit him like a hammer to the skull. The Wellsong screamed in his mind, beautiful and terrible and demanding and hungry. He felt his feet moving toward the water, felt the compulsion to walk and walk until the glowing sea closed over his head.

  Calven grabbed him, physically restraining him. "Tyrian! Stay with me!"

  "The song," Tyrian gasped. "It's so loud. I can't—"

  "You can." Calven's voice was fierce, cutting through the fog of compulsion. "You're stronger than it. You're stronger than anything trying to control you. Now stabilize that gods-damned elemental before I have to tear it apart myself!"

  Tyrian focused. Pushed past the pain, past the Wellsong's call, past his own fear. He reached for the pattern he'd felt at the First Seal—that sense of resonance and discord, of energies that needed to be aligned.

  The storm-elemental's core was a tangle of corrupted harmonics. Wells energy twisted back on itself, feeding on its own wrongness, growing stronger with each iteration.

  But underneath that corruption, he could feel something else. The original purpose of the energy. The reason it existed before the Wells warped it.

  Protection. Not destruction. The Seal's original function had been protective—containing, guarding, preventing something from escaping. The corruption had inverted that purpose, turning defense into attack.

  Tyrian reached for that original pattern. Found it buried under layers of wrongness. Started to pull it back toward what it should have been.

  The storm-elemental shuddered. Its attacks slowed. The lightning in its veins pulsed irregularly, as if fighting something internal.

  "It's working!" Varden shouted. "Keep going!"

  But the effort was enormous. Tyrian felt like he was trying to move a mountain with his bare hands. Every second of contact with the corruption made the Wellsong louder, made the compulsion to surrender stronger.

  The creature was fighting him now, trying to resist the change. It lashed out wildly, and one massive arm caught Kaelis full in the chest, launching her thirty feet backward. She hit the ground hard and didn't get up.

  "Kaelis!" Bram screamed, running to her.

  The distraction nearly broke Tyrian's concentration. He felt the pattern slipping, felt the corruption surging back.

  Then Camerise was there, pressing one hand against his back. "I'm with you," she said, her voice weak but determined. "Use my strength. Use my connection to the Dreamfall."

  Her Dreamweaver power flowed into him, and suddenly he could see the pattern more clearly. Could feel the exact points where the corruption needed to be unwound.

  He pulled. Hard.

  The storm-elemental broke.

  Not destroyed. Released. The corrupted energy that had been holding it together dispersed, flowing back into the water, into the air, into the storm that was already beginning to dissipate.

  The creature collapsed into rain and wind and fading lightning.

  For a moment, there was silence.

  Then the storm began to die. The unnatural wall of weather started breaking apart, the clouds dispersing, the rain slowing to a normal downpour instead of corrupted sheets.

  Tyrian collapsed. Calven caught him before he hit the ground.

  "I've got you," Calven said. His voice was back to normal, the proto-Varkuun shadow fading to almost nothing. "You did it."

  "We did it," Tyrian corrected weakly.

  Brayden was kneeling beside Kaelis, checking her pulse, her breathing. "She's alive," he called out. "Unconscious, maybe some broken ribs, but alive."

  Bram was already moving, medical supplies in hand, his training overriding his fear.

  Varden sat down heavily, exhaustion written in every line of his body. "That was too close," he muttered. "Far, far too close."

  Camerise had collapsed completely, all four hands limp, blood staining her face. She was breathing but barely conscious.

  The storm continued to die around them, the corrupted rain becoming just rain, the impossible lightning fading to normal weather patterns.

  They made camp in a sheltered cove, too exhausted to push forward, too battered to risk another encounter. Bram worked on Kaelis with shaking hands, binding her ribs, checking for internal bleeding, administering what limited medicine they had.

  Camerise woke after an hour, disoriented and weak. "Did we win?" she asked.

  "Barely," Tyrian said.

  "That's still winning."

  Calven sat apart from the group, staring at his hands. The proto-Varkuun shadow was gone, but Tyrian could see him shaking. Experiencing the aftermath of whatever he'd become during the fight.

  Tyrian sat down beside him.

  "Want to talk about it?" he asked.

  "Not really." Calven's voice was hollow. "But I probably should."

  "What did it feel like?"

  "Like drowning in power. Like being too small for the force trying to pour through me." Calven finally looked at him, and his eyes were haunted. "I wanted to keep fighting. Even after the elemental was down. I wanted to find something else to hunt. To kill. To tear apart with my bare hands."

  "But you didn't."

  "Because you called me back. Again." Calven's laugh was bitter. "How many times can you do that before it stops working?"

  "As many times as it takes."

  "You shouldn't have to. I should be able to control this myself."

  "Maybe. Or maybe control isn't about managing it alone. Maybe it's about knowing when to ask for help."

  Calven was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I felt it, you know. When I manifested the full shadow. Just for a second, I felt what it would be like to give in completely. To let the Varkuun bloodline take over entirely."

  "What would that be like?"

  "Powerful. Terrifying. Free." Calven's hands curled into fists. "And empty. Like everything human in me would burn away, leaving just the predator. The hunt. The kill. No fear. No doubt. No me."

  "Then we make sure that doesn't happen."

  "How?"

  "I don't know yet. But we'll figure it out. Together."

  Kaelis stirred from her bedroll, wincing with pain but forcing herself to sit up. She stared out at the water, her expression troubled.

  "If this storm reaches the Estwarin League," she said quietly, "the islands could drown."

  The words hung in the air like a death sentence. Tyrian had never heard Kaelis sound so serious, so afraid. Her homeland—the floating islands she'd fled years ago—was out there somewhere across the sea. And if the Wells corruption spread that far...

  "It won't," Brayden said firmly. "We're going to stop it."

  "Are we?" Kaelis looked at him with haunted eyes. "Because it feels like we're just barely surviving. And every time we think we've won, something worse appears."

  No one had an answer for that.

  The storm had fully dispersed now, the clouds breaking apart and drifting away on normal winds. The unnatural lightning had faded. The corrupted rain had stopped.

  But something was wrong.

  Tyrian felt it before he saw it—a strange stillness in the air, like the world was holding its breath.

  "Look," Camerise whispered, pointing.

  In the space where the storm-elemental had collapsed, directly above the spot where Tyrian had unwound its corrupted core, something hung suspended in the air.

  A single water droplet.

  It glowed with that familiar blue-white bioluminescence, brighter than it should be, hanging motionless despite the breeze. Perfectly still. Perfectly spherical. Like a tiny star that had fallen from the sky and forgotten how to fall the rest of the way.

  "What is that?" Bram asked nervously.

  Tyrian stood, drawn toward it despite every instinct screaming at him to stay back. He moved to the edge of their camp, staring at the impossible droplet.

  Inside it—visible through the translucent, glowing water—was a shadow.

  Serpentine. Coiled. Watching.

  The shape moved, writhing slowly within its tiny prison of corrupted water. And as Tyrian watched, transfixed, he realized with dawning horror what he was seeing.

  Not a reflection.

  Not an illusion.

  A fragment. A piece. A part of the thing that lived beneath the Second Seal, separated from the whole and contained in this single, impossible drop of water.

  The Serpent was watching them. Had been watching the entire fight. Had sent a piece of itself into the storm-elemental, and now that piece remained, trapped in this glowing prison.

  Or waiting.

  As Tyrian stared, the shadow inside the droplet seemed to stare back. And he heard—faint but unmistakable—the Wellsong.

  Not from the water. Not from the distant Seal.

  From the droplet itself.

  Soon, it sang. So very soon, Bridge. I am waking. And when I wake, you will understand.

  "Tyrian?" Calven was beside him now, hand on his sword. "What are you looking at?"

  "The Seal," Tyrian whispered. "Seal Two. It's... it's awake. Not just failing. Not just breaking. Awake. And it's looking at us."

  The droplet pulsed once, the serpent-shadow writhing.

  Then it fell.

  The moment it hit the ground, it shattered into a thousand smaller droplets that immediately soaked into the corrupted sand and vanished, leaving no trace that it had ever existed.

  But Tyrian could still hear the song.

  Louder now.

  Closer now.

  Coming.

  THANKS FOR READING!

  Holy. Shit. That storm sequence was INTENSE. A consciousness-storm made of corrupted Wells energy that literally hunted them? And then Calven manifesting the full proto-Varkuun shadow—translucent smilodon made of winter light—to fight an elemental made of weather? This is the kind of escalation I live for.

  But we need to talk about that ending. That water droplet hanging in the air, with the Serpent's shadow coiled inside it, watching them. The Second Seal isn't just breaking—it's AWAKE. It's conscious. It's aware of Tyrian specifically. And when that droplet shattered, the Wellsong got louder. Closer.

  The Serpent is coming.

  And Calven's confession about what full transformation would feel like: "Powerful. Terrifying. Free. And empty." He's getting closer to the edge every time he manifests, and the only thing pulling him back is Tyrian's voice. How many more times can that work before the rope breaks?

  Also—Kaelis' fear about the Estwarin League drowning? That's pure Season 2 foreshadowing, and it HURTS. Her homeland is in danger, and there's nothing she can do about it yet.

  What do you think happens next? The Second Seal is awake and calling to Tyrian. The Wellsong is getting impossible to resist. And somewhere out there, Tiressia's blockade is tightening. This can't end well.

  Drop your theories below!

  Next update: Wednesday! Don't forget to add The White Fang to your reading list so you never miss a chapter.

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