The Storm Within

The funeral was not a ceremony. It was an ache, a silence wrapped in soil and shadow. Beneath the twisted remains of Sunspire Daycare, in a shallow trench marked by burning candles and silver blossoms, they laid Lily to rest alongside the others.

Silas lowered her tiny body into the earth with hands that once split tanks in half. Jenna wept quietly, her face turned from the others. Elena knelt by the edge of the trench, fingers brushing the dirt as if trying to hold onto the last warmth of a vanished flame. Aerin sang a mourning song from her homeland—soft, ancient, cracked with grief. Mason stood vigil, hands clenched. Kai whispered a benediction, vines curling from his fingertips to wrap around each small grave like an embrace.

No words could reach Silas.

He didn’t speak when they returned to the garage. He didn’t look at the armbands now resting on the workbench or the projection still spinning on the wall. He only stood in the center of the room, his eyes shadowed, breath uneven.

Kai noticed first. Silas’s pulse was surging in chaotic bursts. The air around him crackled, heavy with pressure. Tools rattled on shelves. The concrete beneath his boots was cracking.

“Silas,” Kai said carefully, approaching him like one would a wounded predator. “You’re burning too hot. You need to let it out. I can help—”

Silas didn’t respond. A faint violet shimmer flickered around his frame, tendrils of smoke seeping from his skin.

Kai turned to the others. “We need to get him outside. Now.”

Outskirts of Newhaven – Old Training Grounds

The earth here was barren, flat—an old staging ground for military drills before the city expanded. Here, the wind blew clean, and the sky cracked with stars.

Kai drew sigils in the dirt, forming a large healing sphere lined with stabilizing glyphs. A bioluminescent glow pulsed gently along the symbols, and the circle locked into place.

“Step inside,” Kai said.

Silas walked forward without a word, entering the center of the ring. He turned once, met Kai’s gaze, and gave a barely perceptible nod.

“Let it go.”

It began slowly.

Purple smoke bled from Silas’s pores, curling around him in thin wisps. Then the smoke thickened—dense, suffocating, roiling with weight. The ground trembled. Air warped.

Kai’s sphere strained against the pressure, the glyphs pulsing wildly.

Then came the lightning.

Cyan bolts arced through the smoke, slamming into the earth with ground-splitting force. The clouds above churned into a vortex. The wind howled.

Silas’s eyes glowed with a blinding amethyst hue. He dropped to his knees, his mouth opened in a silent scream, and the roar that followed wasn’t human—it was the echo of a god in mourning.

A scream of loss.

A scream of fury.

A scream that made the world remember who Silas Ward truly was.

Then the smoke shifted.

Within its chaotic swirl, light shimmered and bent. A shape took form. A small figure with curls of light and soot-streaked cheeks.

“Lily...” Jenna whispered, hand over her mouth.

The hologram stood smiling. A ghost of memory rendered in pain and love. She waved. Her lips moved but made no sound. Her image flickered as the smoke pulled away like a curtain—and then vanished.

Silas collapsed, sobbing, clawing at the dirt. Raw, broken sobs ripped from his chest like shrapnel.

No one moved.

Kai approached slowly, knelt beside him, and placed a hand on his shoulder. Healing vines crept into Silas’s skin, glowing softly, stabilizing the surging magic within. The storm inside him began to ebb.

Minutes passed.

The wind died. The sky cleared. The earth stopped shaking.

Elena stared at the burn marks in the dirt, stunned. “I thought... I thought our magic was the same. That we shared a tether. But this... this is beyond anything I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s not just strength,” Mason said, still breathless. “It’s grief, forged into godhood.”

Aerin whispered a blessing, brushing away tears. “We were playing with Lily just last week. She made me a daisy crown.”

“She stole one of my throwing knives and said she was starting a ‘sneaky school,’” Jenna added, voice cracking.

“She called me ‘Mr. Roots,’” Kai said with a faint, broken laugh. “Said I smelled like trees and cookies.”

Silas sat in the dirt, silent now, eyes red and hollow.

They circled him. No one dared break the moment. Each of them lost in memories—of Lily, of laughter, of simpler times before shadows returned.

Then Jenna spoke, quiet and resolute.

“We burn the world to the bones of whoever did this.”

Elena nodded. “Every trace. Every lab. Every buried serpent.”

Mason slammed his gauntlet into his palm. “No mercy. No prisoners.”

Aerin’s hawk screeched from above, its cry piercing the sky like a war horn.

Kai helped Silas to his feet. “We heal you. Then we hunt.”