The island breathed lightning.
It scrawled white scars over the sky, hissed through the stone like serpents, coiled around the peak where the wind's blade slept. The roar of the gale pressed into Andy's chest until it felt like his ribs were a drum, and every beat spelled a single command: Claim me.
His fingers hovered above the hilt chained into the rock. Runes flickered along the blade's spine like stars torn from their constellations. The instant his palm met metal, the world convulsed—sky inverted, sea turned to glass—and the ground whipped out from under him.
[System Notice]
Stormbreaker Fang – Synchronization Trial: Initiated
Soul Projection: Active
Body State: Guarded (External Auras Unstable)
The peak vanished.
Wind seized him and spun him into a sky with no horizon—a boundless vault of slate, lit by veins of lightning that formed and unformed shapes faster than thought. He hung weightless, then dropped—as if the world remembered gravity just to see whether he could carry it.
Air burned his lungs. The storm spoke without words, a pressure against bone and memory.
A shape formed beneath him: a bridge of cloud, narrow as a blade's edge. Below, nothing—only a thousand fathoms of storm. Ahead, the silhouette of a figure with wings of tattered wind, its face masked in scudding vapor. In its hand was a long, pale shard of sky—the Fang, unchained.
"Step," the wind whispered, not in sound, but in bone. "Take what is mine."
Andy set one foot onto the cloud-bridge. It held, springy and treacherous. He breathed once, twice—the way Nia always told him to do when panic bit down—and moved.
The masked figure tilted its head, amused by the care in his steps. The bridge narrowed until only the ball of his foot could find purchase. Gusts clipped at his heel, teasing him toward the drop. When he reached the center, the sky ruptured with a thunderclap, and the bridge blew apart.
He fell.
Wind roared, claws in his hair, cold teeth on his skin. Instinct screamed to fight it, but the storm hummed in his bones: not malice, measure. He shifted his weight, found the gust that wanted him dead, slid inside its curve, and turned the drop into a glide. Air became a river. He rode it.
"Not prey," the wind said in the hollow between one heartbeat and the next. "Not yet."
He banked, eyes on the masked figure as it dissolved into a flock of knives. The knives wheeled to meet him, turning, whistling.
[System Warning]
Soul Strain Detected
Cognitive Overload Risk: Elevated
He cupped his palms. Fire gathered in the right, water in the left—the barest ember, the thinnest thread, so as not to poison the trial with borrowed weight. He whispered through his teeth, "Elemental Flow—Twin Surge."
The knives met steam.
A blossom of vapor burst around him, the edges of the knives hissing as they cut heat. He drove through the cloud, body a spear, and reached for the figure at its heart—
It wasn't there. The wind had lied. The Fang hung above him instead, a sliver of thunder suspended in a noose of air. Its runes watched him.
"Warrior of flame and tide," the storm's pressure said. "You are not yet storm."
The sky split again.
He hit ground that wasn't there until it wanted to be—weathered stone slick with rain. A plain of shattered pillars stretched away into a gray that seemed to gnaw on color. From the plain's far edge, something moved. Not a man. Not a beast. A spiral given limbs: long, lean, jointed at peculiar angles, its skin written with the same runes that stitched along the Fang.
Its first strike arrived before its image did. Air compressed to a bullet; the bullet screamed. Andy dropped, the shot clipping hair, then rolled as the spiral-thing flowed forward. It struck again, and the sonic crack stitched a line through his shoulder.
Pain lanced bright. He bit it down, planted his feet on glistening stone, and drew on what was his. "Activate: Dragon Warrior Form—Tier I.5 Enhanced."
[System Notice]
Form Activation (Soul Echo): Dragon Warrior I.5
Core Integration (Projected): 65% – Stable
Soul-Body Drift: 8%
Scales rippled across his forearms in ghostly patterns. A heat-cold braided along his bones: ember in one humerus, tide in the other. No body here, not truly, and yet the truth of his body refused to stay outside. He breathed through it, careful not to drown himself in muscle-memory.
The spiral struck again.
"Twin Surge."
Fire and water intersected, birthing steam that clipped the strike aside; a second later, he slashed with nothing but intent, and cuts appeared in the rain as if the air were cloth. The spiral uncoiled mid-strike and slid away, pleased. Then it shivered into a dozen coils that surrounded him, each eye-rune turning to taste.
"Choose," the storm said.
The coils opened.
There was Nia—hair whipped by wind, sapphire eyes wide, standing on the edge of a cliff that began to crumble under her feet.
There was Aurelia—amber gaze fierce, one knee in the surf as riptide dragged at her waist, golden hair pasted to her face.
There was the crew—their captain with tattooed cheeks hauling a snapped rope while a broken mast slewed toward them like a guillotine.
Three gusts. One breath. Not enough hands.
His heart pounded once, heavy.
The wind listened for fracture.
Andy hissed out a breath through clenched teeth. The test tasted of Hunter logic—the old cut: choose, or be weak. He set his stance over the slick stone and made his voice a nail.
He pushed his palms apart. Fire and water braided out, not as a spear but a net. He cast it wide. Heat rose at one edge of the illusory cliff. Ice formed at the riptide's tooth. Steam bloomed between the falling mast and the crew, turning its drop into a glide and buying breath.
[System Notice]
Bond Principle Affirmed
Resonance: +9% (Integrity)
The coils hissed. Several shrank from him, runes flaring in displeasure. A few remained, thoughtful. The storm pressed harder, asking again without asking: Will you split for speed? Will you break to become blade?
From the corners of his mind—not illusion—two voices bled through, as if the metal of the Fang had become a wire between worlds.
"—Andy! I'm here—stay with me, listen to me, breathe with me—" Nia, angry and soft, a shaking anchor.
"—Don't let it decide the shape of you. You decide. You always have." Aurelia, quiet and flint, the warmth of a hand he could not feel and yet did.
[System Notice]
External Input Detected: Partner Channels (2)
Bond Progression: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 87%
Stability: Rising
Real wind howled somewhere beyond this seasonless sky. Real rain hammered scales that weren't fully here. Part of him—left shoulder, right ribs—ached with a pain that didn't belong to this trial's body. The lines blurred. The trial wanted it that way.
The surviving coils bunched like muscles under a pelt. Then they slammed the air itself at him, flattening the world to a pane and flinging it. He went with it, shifted just before impact, and the pane shattered against stone instead of his skull. He hit hard anyway. The ground took a tooth from his breath.
"Again," the storm said.
So he gave it again. And again.
They fought until his arms were lead and his will felt scraped with glass. He refused the false choices each time: burning a path between illusions; freezing the ground beneath one danger while hurling steam to lift another; shaping wind—not his yet, but listening—to cup where he couldn't reach.
The storm began to change its questions and created illusion.
A low hum threaded the gale. The plain of pillars buckled and became a narrow street of Everhart in winter. Flags snapped and rattled, their colors torn. On the balconies, nobles watched with shuttered eyes. At the street's end: a gallows. On the platform: a man with his face covered by a hood. Beside the rope, a blade hung—Stormbreaker—its runes a cold blue. Behind the hooded man stood Lord Everhart. His gloved hand rested on the man's shoulder. The crowd, coin in their eyes, breathed blood.
The Lord's voice was the wind's voice. "Power for deference. Bow, and your blade is yours."
Aurelia stood to his right in the watching crowd, hair coiled back, eyes bright, lips pressed into a line—ready to move, but not without his say.
Nia stood to his left, face pale, chin lifted, staff in both hands.
Bow, and the blade would fall into his palm like rain. Do not bow, and—
Andy straightened. The rain cut his cheek. The crowd leaned in. He lifted his chin the way Nia did when nobles spat in her path.
"I don't kneel to keep my hands on my friends," he said, and the word friends burned, because it contained more than one kind of love.
He stepped forward. He reached, not for the blade. For the rope.
The world broke. Not exploded—broke, like a glass sucked inward by vacuum.
He stood again on the peak.
Stormbreaker Fang still hung in its chain, but the chain had frayed. A single strand remained, white-hot.
The storm was closer now, the pressure so intimate it felt like a palm spread over his heart.
"Name what you are," it said.
Not what you want. Not what you will kill. The wind had no throne. It had space. A thousand roads. The question was a cliff-edge.
He saw himself reflected in the runes: fire brightening along his right arm in the shape of Ember Edge's memory; tide flickering rain-blue along his left like Tide-Singer's song; behind his sternum, a coal that was not coal but wing—Phoenix Ember; behind his spine, scale that was not scale but oath—Dragon Core. And between all of it, two threads: one sapphire, one gold. They did not strangle. They did not knot. They crossed and crossed again, a figure-eight drawn around his ribs.
He spread his fingers. He let the wind see the inside of his throat when he said it.
"I am a man of bonds," Andy said, voice hoarse. "I carry what I love. I won't strip myself thin to fit your gust. If you choose me, you choose all of me."
Silence. Even the rain paused. The last strand of the chain shivered, brightened—and snapped.
Stormbreaker fell.
He caught the hilt with both hands.
It bucked. Lightning clawed up his arms and dug into his chest like talons. For a heartbeat he was sure his ribs had become harp-strings and the sky was plucking them too hard. He gritted his teeth until they threatened to crack.
[System Notice]
Synchronization Progress: 23% … 37% … 44%
Warning: Dual Core Interference (Dragon × Phoenix)
Overflow Risk: High
He shouted, not with fear but with fury at the thought of surrender. He anchored himself in two places at once: the memory of Nia's palm over his racing heart, her breath counting him down from panic; the memory of Aurelia's voice in the stairwell in the dark, low and steady as a hand on a tremor.
Outside the trial, the island howled.
---
Nia saw the change first. "Get back!" she cried, shoving sailors away as a cyclone of raw air burst from Andy's kneeling body. He hadn't moved since his hand closed on the hilt. His eyes were open, but looking into miles none of them could see.
Feathers of light—blue-white—flickered along his shoulder blades. Not real plumage. Echo. They rose and fell with the heating of his chest, Phoenix Ember stirring like sunrise.
At the same time, a ring of translucent scales shimmered along his forearms, then spread to his neck, glinting with the shadowed sheen of Dragon Core.
Fire hissed from the seams of his closed fists. Water beaded out of empty air and spun around his wrists.
Wind lifted his hair, but it didn't touch his face—as if it had become his breath.
"He's going to overload," the captain yelled, eyes round as plates. "That… that isn't normal weather!"
A bolt of lightning struck near—too near—and split into harmless threads the instant it neared the boy. It bent. The crew fell to their knees. Some prayed to the sea. Some to the sky. A few to the boy.
Nia planted her staff. Glyphs raced across the stone like rivers, then stood up around Andy in rings of pale light.
"Stabilize," she whispered through clenched teeth. "Stabilize, damn you—listen to me, love." The last word left without permission. She didn't take it back.
[System Notice]
Partner Anchor: Nia – Lumina Barrier (Soul-Form Link)
Stability: +12%
Bond Progression: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 88%
Amber cut the white.
Aurelia stepped into the gale like a prayer that had learned to fight. She sheathed her daggers and knelt opposite Nia, not touching Andy—knowing better than to bridge the wrong circuit—but close enough that when she spoke, the words could find him despite the thunder.
"Andy," she said, and didn't try to make it a command. "Hear me. Wind breaks what clings to fear but carries what earns it. Let it see you. Not just your teeth. Your throat."
Nia's jaw flicked. She wanted to snap I've got him, wanted to push Aurelia back down the mountain. The mask of calm that the political courts had taught her slid for an instant, and beneath it something bared teeth.
Aurelia's gaze met hers over the cyclone. It didn't flinch. It didn't apologize. It also didn't try to steal. It simply stood. That infuriating steadiness.
Lightning braided between the two rings of women and sank into the boy between them.
The gale screamed—and dropped into silence so sudden the mountain seemed to lean.
[System Notice]
Synchronization Progress: 61% … 68% … 74%
Overflow Risk: Moderate → Contained
External Anchors: Effective
---
Wind became a voice again in the trial. Not words now, but a tone like a across-sky bow.
"Choice kept," it said.
The plain of broken pillars collapsed into a cliff-edge of sky. Andy stood on it alone, Stormbreaker Fang in his hands. The runes along its spine no longer watched him—they regarded him, which was different.
A current came up from the abyss and pressed under his soles. It felt like A— like a letter of an alphabet he had always known but never spoken. He let his weight rest on it and imagined a step forward without ground.
He didn't fall.
The wind took him.
He rode.
When he breathed, the blade hummed. When he shifted a hand on the hilt, the gale rounded its edges to match. He sliced once, careful as a surgeon, and a lightning vein in the sky snicked neatly and flowed down into the runes like water.
[System Notice]
Synchronization Progress: 82%
New Affinity Gained: Wind (Unsealed – Basic)
Technique Unlocked: Storm Step (Lv. 1)
The storm peeled its mask. For a heartbeat Andy saw a face—not a face in features, but in will. The space-between-things that refuses cage. It inclined. It was the closest thing to yes wind knows.
"Then keep what you are," it said. "But do not expect me to be gentle."
He grinned, mouth split and aching. "Wouldn't dream of it."
The last of the pressure lifted his arms like a blessing. The trial thinned. Edges of the illusion frayed and let stone light through. The sky folded itself back into rain.
A single thread remained between him and the Fang—fine as hair, bright as noon.
He set his teeth against his palm, cut a shallow line, and let one drop of blood fall on the runes.
Not because the wind demanded blood. Because bonds take vows, and he had said he was a man of bonds.
The runes lit.
[System Notice]
Stormbreaker Fang – Synchronization: 91%
Oath-Binding: Accepted
Secondary Core Interference: Dormant (Monitored)
Technique Resonance: Storm Step (Lv. 1) – Learned
---
Reality slammed back in with a sound like breath regained after drowning.
Wind ripped outward from Andy in a ring that knocked sailors flat and flung sparks off Nia's glyphs. Feathers of light hissed and burned away; scales of shimmer sank back into skin. He was on his knees, breath tearing at his ribs, hands white-knuckled on a blade that had not existed here a moment ago and now had weight: a long, pale saber kissed by stormlight, hilt wrapped in dark leather, spine etched with runes that traveled like migrating birds.
Stormbreaker Fang sang once—too soft to be heard, too clear to be misunderstood.
Nia sagged with a sob she turned into laughter and caught halfway to keep from gasping on it. She reached for him, then stopped, eyes wet, hands shaking, terrified to break the moment she had fought to protect.
Aurelia exhaled like she had been holding the mountain together with her teeth. She didn't smile. She looked—and it was more than smile.
[System Notice]
Bond Progression: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 89%
External Anchors: Stable
Overload: Cleared
Andy lifted his face. Rain slicked it. Lightning framed him, but this time it didn't try to bite.
He rose.
Stormbreaker Fang balanced in his palm as if the air itself learned his pulse. Ember Edge at his hip flared a jealous crimson and settled; Tide-Singer thrummed in blue, curious and pleased in its quieter way. The three tones braided tight in his skull until they were chord and not noise.
Down the slope, the sea went strange.
A shape turned in the breakers—a black back, a broad skull, a jaw filled with hook-white teeth—and the water itself recoiled from it. The Boundless Sea remembered its fear.
The captain swore, and not even the storm could swallow it. "Leviathan," she whispered, and then louder, as if saying the name could put bones in men, "Leviathan!!!!"
Nia flung her head toward the cliff's edge. "Andy—"
He had already moved. Storm Step took him three strides, each landing where the wind set down a foot for him first. He stopped at the lip and turned. The gale curled around his shoulders like a beast's mane.
He met Nia's eyes—promise there, not apology—and Aurelia's—flame there, not petition. Both answered. Not in words. In the way hard light turns warm without dimming.
The Leviathan's back broke water, and the storm tried to crown its skull.
The sword in his hand hummed.
[System Notice]
Stormbreaker Fang – Synchronization: 91% (Rising)
Wind Affinity: Online
Body-State: Ready
—
Real-Time Continuation Enabled…
The wind leaned forward with him.
And the next heartbeat belonged to the sea.