The rain fell like broken glass.
Elias Reed sat beneath the awning of a ruined tavern, staring at the sky as the storm thickened. The others had gone inside hours ago, crowding around a sputtering fire, whispering prayers as if words could keep the storm at bay. Elias had never been the praying sort.
He remembered storms well enough. Thunder. Wind. Floods. Nature's tantrums.
But this was not a storm of nature.
The Drift shimmered across the horizon like oil on water, twisting the sky into impossible colors. The clouds folded inward, and for a moment, Elias thought he could see an entire street upside down, suspended within the clouds themselves—houses, lamps, even the shadow of someone walking. A city reflected in the sky.
He rubbed his eyes. When he looked again, the vision was gone.
The rain smelled of iron.
From inside the tavern came muffled voices.
"—it's heading this way."
"Don't speak of it."
"Better the Drift takes us clean than the Crucible spits us out wrong."
Elias's jaw tightened. He'd heard the stories: Crucibles were what the Drift left behind. Places where the world broke and never healed. The kind of place you entered once. If you came out at all, you weren't yourself anymore.
He turned, ready to step inside, when he noticed something.
A child stood across the empty street, barefoot in the rain. Her dress clung to her skin, and her hair was plastered across her face. She was staring directly at him.
No—through him.
The tavern door creaked open. "Elias," someone called, "get inside, fool, before the storm—"
The words cut short.
Elias turned back. The street was empty. Only the rain remained.
His chest tightened. He stepped back beneath the awning, but the storm no longer looked like a storm. The rain fell slower, each droplet lingering in the air as though time itself resisted moving forward.
Then came the sound.
A low hum, not of wind or thunder, but of voices, layered one over another, as though hundreds whispered at once in a language that scraped against his skull.
His vision blurred. The tavern, the street, the world itself… shifted.
And when he blinked—
he was no longer outside.