The storm that brought Aetos to Mount Helicon temple was no natural tempest.
Brother Matthias pulled his heavy woollen cloak tighter around his shoulders as he navigated the eastern corridor, his worn sandalled feet splashing through pools of water that shouldn't exist this high on the sacred mountain. The wind howled with what seemed like voices—not the simple, familiar rush of air through ancient stone, but something almost articulate, something that carried meaning, as if the storm itself were trying to speak words in a language older than human memory. Ice crystals formed impossibly in the warm summer air, glittering like suspended stars, and through the narrow arched windows, he glimpsed the ancient olive trees, those thousand-year-old sentinels of the mountainside, bent horizontal under the assault, their gnarled trunks groaning and creaking against forces that defied every law of nature he had studied in the temple's extensive libraries.
"Blessed Aether preserve us," he muttered under his breath, pressing forward with determination to check the extent of the damage.
Twenty long years of dedicated service in this remote sanctuary had shown him many storms—wild winter gales that stripped tiles from roofs, sudden summer squalls that flooded the lower gardens, autumn tempests that sent monks scurrying for shelter. But this... this was something entirely different, something that made the hair on his arms stand on end despite the thick wool of his robes. The wind spiralled upward in impossible helixes instead of flowing naturally across the mountainside as winds should. The temperature dropped and rose in distinct pockets without reason, creating a bizarre patchwork of seasons within the temple's ancient walls. His breath misted white in one room where frost gathered on stone despite the summer season, while perspiration beaded heavily on his forehead in the next chamber where heat radiated from nowhere.
The eastern wing's catastrophic collapse didn't surprise him—the morning's preliminary assessment, conducted hastily between the worst of the wind gusts, had shown serious structural damage to the supporting walls. What did surprise him, what made him stop dead in his tracks with his heart hammering, was the perfect, geometrical circle of absolute calm within the widespread destruction. Where walls had crumbled into rubble and massive ceiling beams lay scattered across the floor like the bones of ancient titans, one small alcove remained completely untouched. The stone altar within stood pristine, not even dusty, its surface clean as if freshly washed, as if the storm's fury had carved around it with deliberate, conscious care.
And on that altar, impossible as it seemed, lay a baby.
Matthias froze completely, certain his aging eyes deceived him in the strange, shifting light. But no—there, swaddled carefully in cloth that seemed to breathe and ripple with its own subtle wind, lay an infant. The child's eyes were open, alert and aware, tracking movement Matthias couldn't see, following complex patterns in the air that existed beyond normal human perception. Those eyes were the color of storm clouds at their most threatening, grey with hints of silver that caught and reflected the pale moonlight breaking through the shattered roof above.
With trembling, hesitant hands, Matthias lifted the child from the altar. The baby was heavier than expected, solid with a weight that spoke of destiny and purpose rather than mere flesh and bone. Despite the chaos surrounding them—despite the rain that had flooded every corner of the broken wing, that still dripped from every surface—the infant was completely, impossibly dry. The swaddling cloth rippled and moved without any breeze touching it, as if it remembered wind from somewhere else, some other place beyond the mortal world.
The baby made no sound, no cry or whimper, but his tiny fingers grasped at the air with clear purpose, catching at invisible currents that only he could perceive. When Matthias held him close against his chest, the howling wind seemed to quiet, just slightly but noticeably, as if the storm recognised what it had delivered and began, finally, to calm its rage.
The journey back through the temple's maze-like corridors tested every bit of Matthias's hard-won experience navigating these halls. Fallen masonry blocked previously familiar passages he had walked for decades. Water cascaded in torrents down stairs that had been bone dry for centuries, turning them into treacherous waterfalls. Yet the child remained perfectly peaceful throughout, those strange, knowing eyes watching everything with an awareness no newborn should possess, taking in details with an intelligence that seemed ancient.
"Brother Matthias! Thank the gods you're—" Brother Dimitri's relieved words died abruptly in his throat as he saw the bundle cradled in Matthias's arms. His face went pale. "What in Aether's name?"
"A child," Matthias said simply, because what else could he possibly say? That the storm had delivered a baby like some tale from the ancient myths they studied? That the infant's mere presence seemed to calm the very tempest that brought him? That he had found the child placed deliberately on an altar in the only untouched spot in a destroyed wing?
Word spread quickly through the temple like wildfire. Monks abandoned their frantic damage control efforts to cluster around in amazement, staring at the impossible child with expressions ranging from awe to fear. Brother Benedictus, ever practical despite his advancing years, was the first to act sensibly and break the spell of wonder.
"Well, he's here now, isn't he? Storm-brought or not, baby needs feeding." The kitchen master's rough, no-nonsense voice cut through the amazement like a well-honed blade. "Kozis, fetch goat's milk from the stores. Fresh, mind you, not yesterday's. And warm it properly—not too hot, not too cold. A baby's stomach is delicate."
The first feeding revealed another layer of strangeness to add to the growing mystery. The child drank with an appetite that would have deeply concerned Matthias in any other infant. He consumed eagerly what should have satisfied three babies his size, then looked around with those storm-coloured eyes as if wondering why the meal had ended so soon, as if his hunger was as vast as the sky itself.
"Healthy appetite," Benedictus noted with forced lightness, but Matthias caught the worry beneath the attempted joke. Resources were always tight at the isolated mountain temple, and a child who ate like three would strain their careful management.
As dawn finally approached with fingers of gold and rose, the storm at last began to die. The impossible, upward-spiralling winds settled gradually into natural patterns. The wild temperature fluctuations stabilised into normal summer warmth. Water stopped its uncanny habit of falling upward in the courtyard fountain, returning to natural behavior. And in Brother Matthias's tired arms, the foundling child slept peacefully at last, his breathing deep and steady as the mountain wind itself, as if he had always belonged here, as if the temple had been waiting for him all along.