The room was thick with silence, only the faint hum of machinery breaking the stillness. Zephyra stood, unmoving, her gaze fixed on the flickering images of the stormborn entity on the monitor. Her thoughts were far away, yet sharp, as if the very wind had carried them to the past, to a place she thought she had forgotten.
This power…
Her eyes narrowed as she studied the footage. The way the entity moved, how the wind responded to his every action, his every thought—it was unlike anything she had seen before. It wasn't just manipulation. No, it was mastery. True mastery.
Her mind was racing now, the storm of her thoughts stirring inside her. The wind was his ally, just as it had been hers. There was something... something eerily familiar about the way he controlled it, the way he used it to dismantle their forces with ease.
And then, like a flicker of lightning, a name struck her mind.
Klaus.
She hesitated, the name ringing with a haunting resonance. It couldn't be... but the evidence was undeniable. No one—no one—could wield the wind with such precision unless...
Unless it was him.
"Did he come back for revenge… here?"
Her pulse quickened, and for a moment, the weight of her realization nearly broke her composure. The entity on the screen—this was no mere opponent. This was Klaus Aetherion, the last of his bloodline. A force capable of reshaping the very air around him.
Zephyra closed her eyes briefly, gathering her thoughts, as the echoes of her past started to collide with her present. How is he here?...
Her thoughts were interrupted by the soft shuffle of boots behind her. General Caldus Varrek, ever the tactician, was watching her closely, waiting for her to speak, to give him direction. But Zephyra didn't answer him immediately. She was deep in thought, trying to process what this discovery could mean for their future.
The silence stretched between them, thick and uncomfortable.
After a moment, Caldus finally spoke, his voice careful, as if he feared disturbing the weight of the moment.
"My lady... if there's anything further you wish me to do, I'm ready."
Zephyra's eyes flickered briefly toward him, but her thoughts remained elsewhere. She was still absorbing the implications of the realization. She was still processing the fact that Klaus Aetherion—the Klaus Aetherion—was here. And he had just unleashed hell upon her soldiers.
Her lips barely parted, her voice low and controlled.
She did not say anything..., her attention still fixed on the screen.
General Caldus started to speak again, but the sound of the door opening interrupted him. A soldier entered—one of the survivors from the recent skirmish.
The soldier's face was pale, his uniform torn, his body bruised and battered. He stood tall but clearly shaken, his eyes darting
nervously between the general and Zephyra. He had survived the attack, but not without cost.
"Private Vance," General Caldus commanded, his tone sharp as he addressed the soldier.
The soldier saluted quickly before speaking, his voice strained with exhaustion.
"General, my lady, I… I was one of the scouts sent to apprehend the entity. The man… the one we were supposed to capture—he's unlike anything we've ever faced before. He killed everyone..... Only I managed to escape."
Zephyra didn't respond immediately, her attention fixed on the soldier as he spoke. She waited, her mind still churning with the knowledge she had uncovered.
"Tell me everything you saw. Every detail," General Caldus ordered, his voice firm but not unkind.
The soldier swallowed hard, his eyes focusing as he recollected the events. "He... he was moving like the wind itself. Unstoppable. We couldn't even get close. When we tried to surround him, he... he would just vanish into the wind. His control over it—it was like the wind itself was part of him."
Zephyra's eyes flickered with interest. She could already sense where this was going.
The soldier continued, his voice now a little steadier, but his hands were still trembling. "He had blonde hair. Brown eyes. He was... younger than we expected, but the power he wielded—it was unimaginable."
The moment the soldier said "blonde hair, brown eyes," Zephyra's heart skipped a beat. Her eyes went wide, though she quickly masked the surprise, her expression as cold as the air around her. It was him. She had been right all along.
General Caldus noticed her change in demeanor, but said nothing, his own expression unreadable as he watched the soldier. He gestured for the man to continue.
The soldier's gaze dropped, clearly ashamed of his failure. "We didn't stand a chance. He was... too fast. Too powerful. The wind obeyed his every command, and before I could even get away, he left me alive—alive, sir. I don't know why, but he didn't try to kill me."
The soldier's words echoed in the room, and for a moment, Zephyra stood still, her thoughts in turmoil. "Why would Klaus Aetherion spare this soldier? Was it a message? A warning?"
She didn't know, but the uncertainty gnawed at her.
Without a word, Zephyra's form began to fade into the air, her body dissolving into the wind. The soldiers in the room watched in awe, her departure as fluid as the element she controlled. They knew nothing more of her thoughts, but they felt the weight of her presence lift.
"General Caldus," Zephyra's voice was a mere whisper on the wind, "I'm going there myself"
The wind around her intensified, and in the blink of an eye, she was gone, leaving only a faint gust behind.
Above the capital skies, thunder screamed in Zephyra's wake.
She cut through the stratosphere like a blade honed on fury—wreathing the heavens in wild, electrified currents that trailed her descent toward the far reaches of the forbidden Wastes.
Below, the sprawling city of Veltraxis braced as sensors lit up like they'd caught fire.
---
Zephyra never left the Citadel.
The Storm Monarch had stood unshaken through alien sieges, intercontinental breaches, and the northern rebellions—commanding from her throne of wind. But now she was gone.
Rocketing away. Alone.
The capital trembled.
Citizens stopped mid-step.Archeons dropped their tea, their books, their weapons. Every radar, every comm line, every elemental gauge red-lined simultaneously.
And then—someone whispered what no one dared say.
"She's initiating a Verdict-Class Response…"
"Gods above… who triggered her judgment?"
---
Inside the Command Centre, General Caldus stood frozen in front of the central war table, the video feed of Zephyra's elemental trail spiraling beyond the city perimeter.
He slammed his comms back to life.
"Zephyra, do you copy?" Caldus's voice came through the comms, calm but confused.
There was static—then wind.
Then her voice: clipped, electric, final.
"It's Klaus Aetherion."
Caldus blinked.
"Who—?"
But the call was already dead.
---
He stood there, fists clenched at his sides, heart racing harder than in any of the empire's last five wars. That name.
Why does it sound familiar…?
Then it hit him.
She'd spoken it once.
Just once.
A Month ago—after returning from a secret audience with the Emperor himself. The meeting was sealed, classified above even Caldus's rank. But afterward, Zephyra had looked… shaken. And when he pressed, she'd only muttered one name before warning him never to speak it again.
"Klaus Aetherion."
Now she was chasing it like the world itself was ending.
And judging by the pressure gauge still spiking from her elemental velocity, maybe it was.
---
Klaus sprinted through the scorched wasteland.
His bare feet struck broken stone and ash-blown sand, but every step felt heavier. Not from exhaustion—but distance. The flare of Zephyra's descent had split the skies like divine judgment. And she was still leagues away.
"Hmm..it's gonna take a day or two on foot to reach the nearest City or town," he thought, halting mid-run. His breath came steady, but his mind was racing.
He looked at his hands—faint arcs of wind- still snapping off his knuckles.
Then—his thoughts reached backward.
---
The Crucible of Gales.
A place outside time. There, the wind did not blow—it judged.
He stood on pillars of ancient stone, wind roaring around him like a choir of specters. The Echo stood before him—not as a figure, but as pressure in the lungs. A voice in the storm. A whisper of memory.
"You think wind is something you control. Something you shape. But wind isn't a weapon, Klaus."
"It's a choice. It's freedom."
"To be wind—you must unmake yourself."
"No mass. No anchor. No fear. Just motion."
---
Now. The Wasteland.
Klaus stood still.
His muscles no longer strained. He released the tension from every nerve, let his heartbeat slow. The howl of the wind became clearer. The dust danced at his ankles. His golden hair lifted with the rising air, flickering like the last light of a dying sun.
He closed his eyes.
His thoughts flattened into a single stream of presence.
No doubts.
No hesitation.
Only will.
"We move as one… I am everywhere the wind dares to go."
The words weren't shouted. They didn't need to be. They were a truth the world was forced to obey.
And then—
The change began.
A normal Archeon might summon wind, shape it, weaponize it. But they remained separate. User and element.
But Klaus?
He didn't command it—he became it.
First, his outline flickered—trembled as the particles of his body began vibrating faster and faster, heat and pressure converging.
Then came the dissolution.
Skin, flesh, bone—molecular bonds unraveled. Matter became mist. Mist became breath. Breath became motion.
Oxygen. Nitrogen. Carbon vapor.
Each atom of his body split, scattering into invisible filaments of air. His mind didn't vanish—it stretched, flowed. He was no longer standing on the ground. He was the ground's breath.
To any observer, it looked like Klaus had simply vanished—evaporated into the dry wind, leaving behind only a faint shimmer of violet-tinged pressure in the air.
But to Klaus, it was freedom.
No sound. No form. Just infinite reach. Speed beyond mortal measurement. He was the gust sweeping across stone, the whisper between blades of wrecked grass, the scream above the clouds.
He wasn't moving through the wind.
He was the wind.
---
The sky above the Wastelands was a muted sheet of iron, cracked with the distant rumble of thunder. Ash spiraled like phantom mist as Zephyra stood alone, wind curling silently around her armored boots. The wind recognized her. But nothing else greeted her in the devastation. No signs of life. No boy.
Her lips pressed into a razor-thin line.
She raised two fingers to her ear, the small communication chip clicking to life.
General Caldus," Zephyra's voice came through the channel, sharp and unwavering like a blade drawn in silence. "He's not here."
There was a moment of stillness in the comm line, then—
"What?" Caldus's voice came back, clipped but strained with tension. "You're saying... Klaus isn't at the site?"
"I stand in the eye of what he left behind. Ash. Silence. And wind that still remembers his presence," Zephyra replied, eyes scanning the still-burning remnants of the scorched basin. "But he's gone."
A beat. Static. Then Caldus again—lower, but heated.
"But, Your Grace… with respect, the soldier saw him. He said Klaus Aetherion let him escape. On purpose.
Zephyra's gaze narrowed at the horizon. Her silence stretched, then snapped.
"This wasn't a performance, Caldus. It was a message. And I'm not questioning his presence." Her voice grew colder. "I'm questioning how someone like him can vanish even from my eyes."
Caldus inhaled sharply. "That shouldn't be possible. Not from a Monarch. Not from you."
"It isn't supposed to be," she said, almost to herself. Then louder, "But it's Klaus Aetherion. You know what that name means."
"You told me once," Caldus said slowly, dread rising in his voice, "that only the Emperor and the Monarchs were present when the truth of that name was revealed. I didn't understand it then."
Zephyra turned her eyes to the sky, the wind curling around her like a living cloak.
"Now you do."
A heavy silence settled over the channel.
"What do we do?" Caldus asked at last.
"Pray he's not already behind us," Zephyra said. Then the line cut.
---
Elsewhere—hundreds of miles east—wind coalesced between rusted buildings.
In a forgotten alleyway near the edge of a sprawling border city, Klaus Aetherion reformed.
The gust that brought him twisted sharply, circling like a serpent before dissolving into nothing. Ash and smoke fell away as muscle, skin, and bone reassembled from the scattering of invisible particles. The scent of burnt metal clung to his skin.
He staggered forward once—barefoot against cold stone—and steadied himself on a rusted pipe.
Steam lifted from his back.
He was shirtless, scarred, and breathing like he'd outrun a storm.
"Damn," he exhaled.
The alley was narrow, the walls pressing in like a coffin. Cracked neon signs flickered at the far end. Garbage bags rustled beside rusted bins. Klaus leaned against the wall, jaw clenched, letting his senses ground him.
His heart still thumped from the molecular ride.
He remembered the Echo's voice, from the Crucible training:
"To become the wind, you must forget you were ever flesh. Be movement. Be the in-between."
He had done just that.
He had ceased to be.
But now he was back. And time was running thin.
He glanced toward the alley's mouth. He didn't know how long before he would be found.But every second bought him ground.
Klaus stepped forward into the city shadows, disappearing again—but this time, with feet on the ground.