Vigil: The Gathering Storm
The sea had been quiet too long.
Ever since they left Kel-Rimak, the skies above Ridgefall bore an unnatural stillness. No rain. No wind. No birdsong at dawn. Mira said it felt like a world holding its breath, waiting for something terrible to arrive. Alaric believed her.
The shard buried beneath the drowned city no longer pulsed in his dreams—but something else did. A looming weight behind the stars. A rhythm, deep and slow, like a beast dragging chains across a continent.
Preparation became obsession.
Alaric rose before dawn and walked the ramparts, armor incomplete, eyes heavy but alert. He watched the horizon, knowing the next storm wouldn't come from land or sea—but from beyond.
He called a summit of the Vigil.
Tova, her arm still in a sling from the salt-guardian's spear, brought word from the highland tribes: strange dreams and lost children, bones reappearing in ceremonial sites thought long sealed. Anden's scouts from the eastern fold returned burned and trembling, claiming the land itself had whispered to them. Caelen said fire spells began to whisper old names. Names not spoken since the First walked.
But it was Mira who brought the truth.
"There are five markers," she said in the high chamber, chalking runes into the stone. "Five gates. The first we sealed beneath Kel-Rimak. But one has now opened—far north, in the Vale of Hollow Stars."
She looked at Alaric. "It's not a gate of entry. It's a gate of summoning."
He nodded slowly. "Then we cannot wait for war. We must train for it. On our terms."
And so, Ridgefall became a crucible.
Training halls burst with steel and fire. Night drills echoed through the valley. Alaric personally selected twenty to bear the crest of the Vigil's Vow—a mark inked in dreamblood, binding them to resist not only death, but corruption.
Each warrior was broken and reforged. Not with cruelty. With purpose.
Caelen taught them how to shape fire that did not burn flesh but scorched nightmare.
Anden led the mental trials: fasting in the Deep Maze, confronting illusions seeded by the First.
Mira—when she could still bear waking—taught them dreamwalking, drawing upon fragments of what the First had once known: how to walk across the veil, how to listen for truth beneath lies, how to remain themselves even when memory rebelled.
But it was Alaric who taught them to lead.
He trained beside them, bled beside them, and when one fell during a test, it was Alaric who bore the body to the pyre. Not as commander. As kin.
Whispers spread among the people of the valley.
"They are not men," some said. "They are echoes of the old wolves."
"Storms follow them."
"Night flees their eyes."
But the wolves did not howl.
They waited.
Until the day came when Mira rose in the hall, her voice shaking not with fear—but certainty.
"It has begun," she said.
The sky turned crimson that evening.
And a rain of glass fell from the northern peaks.