NOVEL NEXT Chapter 37: Thorns and Thunder
Scene 1: The Storm Wall's Arrival
The air tasted of metal.
Each breath Jemil took was laced with the sting of lightning, a promise that the sky would soon split open. Ahead, the Tower's 37th floor stretched into a wasteland of twisted roots and shattered spires. Above it all loomed the Storm Wall—a swirling vertical cyclone of cloud and lightning that scraped the heavens.
"You weren't exaggerating…" Kaela's voice was barely a whisper. Her golden hair danced in the charged air, strands lifting like the storm was calling to her.
"This isn't even the bad part," Jemil said, tightening his grip on the hilt at his hip. "The vines don't move until they smell blood."
Mirella, ever the optimist, gave a cheerful laugh. "So… let's just make sure it's their blood, not ours."
Lightning struck the ground less than thirty paces ahead. The impact shook the earth and revealed something horrifying—root-like tendrils bursting from the soil, writhing as though they were alive.
"That's new," Liora muttered, her bow already drawn. "The last report said the vines were dormant during daylight."
"It's dusk," Jemil said grimly. "And dusk is when she comes."
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of rain—and something else. Sweet, almost intoxicating, like the memory of a perfume he hadn't smelled in years. His chest tightened.
From within the Storm Wall, a figure emerged.
Pale skin. Hair like silver rain. Eyes that burned with a red, unnatural light.
"Ravien…" Jemil breathed.
The vines moved faster now, writhing toward them as though answering her silent command.
Kaela cursed under her breath. "Guess we found your missing wife."
"No," Jemil said, stepping forward, his voice shaking with a mixture of fear and resolve. "She found us."
[Cliffhanger #1: The vines erupt from the ground, cutting the team off from escape as Ravien lifts her hand and the storm begins to close in.]
Scene 2: The First Wave
The vines struck like serpents.
One tore through the dirt between Jemil and Kaela, forcing them apart. Another lashed toward Mirella's legs, but she spun backward, planting her halberd into the soil and cleaving the tendril in two.
The severed end twitched on the ground before withering to ash.
"Gross," Mirella muttered, flicking black sap from her blade.
"Don't let it touch you!" Jemil shouted over the storm's growing howl. "One scratch and the curse starts!"
Liora loosed three arrows in rapid succession, each one finding its mark in the writhing tangle. But even as the vines shriveled, more pushed up from beneath the earth, thick as tree trunks and far faster than their size should allow.
From the Storm Wall's edge, Ravien stepped closer, her bare feet leaving no imprint on the churned mud. Her eyes locked on Jemil's, and for a moment… he almost forgot about the battle.
"You shouldn't have come," her voice carried unnaturally through the wind. "This floor… will eat you alive."
Jemil's grip tightened. "Then I'll let it choke on me."
Kaela grinned despite the danger. "That's our leader—always making poetic threats in a death trap."
The vines struck again, this time in coordinated bursts, forcing the team into a tight circle. Jemil took the front, Kaela and Mirella guarded the flanks, and Liora covered them from the rear.
"Formation hold!" Jemil barked, parrying a vine thick enough to crush a wagon. Lightning streaked overhead, illuminating Ravien's expression—calm, but with a hint of something… hesitant.
For the briefest instant, Jemil saw it: the woman she used to be, before the Tower twisted her.
But then her hand rose, and the ground beneath them buckled.
[Cliffhanger #2: A massive root erupts directly under Jemil, hurling him into the air as the team's formation shatters.]
Scene 3: Mid-Air Gambit
The world spun.
Wind tore at Jemil's coat as he soared upward, flung like a ragdoll by the root's brutal force. The storm swallowed all sound for an instant—then the roar of thunder crashed in, rattling his bones.
Below, he saw the team scatter. Kaela's twin blades flashed as she cut through two vines in a blur, Mirella vaulted over a snapping tendril, and Liora fired arrows so fast they were little more than streaks of silver light.
But the vines weren't focused on them anymore.
They were all rising toward him.
A shadow moved in the cyclone.
Ravien.
Jemil twisted mid-air, drawing his sword—not to block, but to anchor. He slammed the blade downward, its edge biting deep into one of the climbing roots. The momentum ripped his shoulder with white-hot pain, but it slowed him just enough for him to land in a crouch atop the massive tendril.
The vine writhed violently under him, trying to shake him loose.
"Bad idea," Jemil muttered.
With a roar, he drove his blade down through the root. Black ichor exploded upward, hissing as it splashed against his armor. The vine convulsed and collapsed, slamming into the ground and throwing him forward into a roll.
He came up just in time to see Ravien a mere ten paces away, her hair whipping like strands of liquid silver in the wind.
"You've improved," she said, almost approvingly.
"And you've… gotten creepier," he shot back.
For a heartbeat, her lips twitched—like she might smile—but then her eyes hardened. The vines behind her surged all at once.
[Cliffhanger #3: Four enormous roots burst from the ground, each aiming directly for one of Jemil's wives at the same time.]
Scene 4: The Wives' Stand
The roots didn't just strike—they hunted.
Each one lunged for its chosen target with terrifying precision, moving like it had studied their every move.
Kaela met hers head-on. Her twin sabers blurred into arcs of silver, each slash precise enough to shave the edge off a falling leaf. She wasn't trying to cut through the root—she was dismantling it piece by piece, carving away its momentum until it slowed, shuddered, and collapsed at her feet.
"Too easy," she smirked, flicking ichor from her blades—until three smaller vines shot from the carcass, forcing her back into motion.
Mirella laughed as her halberd sang through the air, each swing carving a crater in the mud. She didn't parry—she overpowered. The sheer force of her strikes sent shockwaves through the ground, cracking the soil and disorienting the root's aim.
"You picked the wrong girl to wrestle with!" she shouted, driving her weapon down and pinning the tendril like a hunter staking prey.
Liora didn't even seem to breathe as she loosed arrow after arrow. Each shot landed in a subtle weak point—the knots and bulges that pulsed faintly like hearts. She moved backward with the grace of a dancer, never letting the root close the gap, turning its every lunge into another opening for her bowstring.
The battlefield was chaos—lightning, rain, vines, and steel—but Jemil saw all of it in sharp detail.
"Ravien!" he shouted over the roar. "Why are you doing this?"
Her voice was cold, but her eyes flickered with something unreadable.
"Because I have to know… if you're strong enough to keep what you claim is yours."
The roots shifted, changing tactics. Instead of overwhelming the wives, they all converged—on Jemil.
He braced himself, the wind at his back, the storm in his lungs.
"Fine," he said. "Let's finish this dance."
[Cliffhanger #4: All four roots strike at once, and Ravien raises her hand to unleash the Storm Wall's full force.]
Scene 5: The Storm Wall Breaks
The roots came in from all sides—thick as towers, fast as whips.
Jemil didn't retreat. He moved into them.
The first tendril slammed down where he'd been a heartbeat earlier, splintering the earth. He sprang off its coiling surface, vaulting into the path of the second root. His sword blurred, carving a deep diagonal slash that made the tendril convulse and withdraw.
Lightning flashed—no, not lightning.
Him.
His blade crackled with arcs of pure white energy, every strike humming with the storm's rage. The third root reared to impale him, but he caught it on the flat of his sword, twisted, and redirected the force into the fourth root behind him. Both shattered with a deafening crack.
Rain hammered down harder. The wind was no longer a backdrop—it was a weapon.
Ravien raised her hand.
The Storm Wall responded, funneling into a singular, spiraling vortex that roared toward Jemil like the mouth of a giant.
The pressure was suffocating. His ears rang. His vision blurred.
But instead of resisting, he stepped forward into it.
For a heartbeat, the world slowed—rain suspended in the air, lightning frozen in jagged threads across the clouds. Jemil's voice was calm, almost quiet:
"Not even the Tower can take her from me."
He slashed.
The blade sang through the vortex, splitting it apart in a violent explosion of wind and light. The shockwave flattened vines for a hundred paces, tore open the mud, and sent Ravien skidding backward.
When the storm cleared, Jemil stood alone in the center, steam rising from his armor, his sword humming like it was still drinking the lightning.
Ravien steadied herself. Her eyes… weren't cold anymore. But they weren't yielding either.
"You're closer than I thought," she said softly. "But not close enough."
She vanished into the mist.
[End of Chapter Cliffhanger: The wives regroup around Jemil, but a new shadow moves within the Storm Wall—something far larger than Ravien.]
💬 Author's Note:
What's moving in the Storm Wall now… is not human. Jemil's biggest battle yet is about to begin, and it might cost him more than he's ready to pay.
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