The Rebirth Of The Beast Tamer

The Plains were never quiet, but on the twelfth day their stillness turned to be abnormal. When a wind rolled over the horizon, which was thick with the scent of ozone and decay.

The air was dusty, bitter enough to sting their lungs, and the sky churned as though a living wound had split open above.

Clouds were black as pitch gathered and twisted upon themselves until streaks of green lightning was forced downward, striking the cracked earth with an explosive fury.

Each bolt didn't just burn, it was splitting. Fissures were spidered open where lightning touched, while bleeding a dim light into the world.

From the cracks rose vaporous tendrils, the very breath of the Veil that was curling like fingers that reached for the living. The ground shuddered, trembling with a rhythm that felt too purposeful and too close to a heartbeat.

Kelvin pulled his cloak tighter against his body, though it tried little to keep the storm's chill from gnawing at his bones.

Beside him, Xerion's coils rippled uneasily, with his golden eyes narrowing as if the End-Tyrant serpent wanted to lash out against the storm itself. Their bond was hot with a warning, Xerion could feel the tension in the air.

Darius raised his arm against the lightning's glare, with his jaw as hard as stone. "It is not natural." Darius said.

Lyra gave a humorless laugh, though her voice was trembled beneath it. "We left a hundred miles back. This is the Hollow breathing on us."

Her beast, the raven Salaris, circled low overhead with wings cutting ragged lines against the storm. Shadow-feathers were scattered from him with every beat, as though even the bird's magic recoiled from the raw, consuming energy above.

Rhoam growled, deep and resonant with the armored panther pressing close to Darius's leg. His plates clicked faintly as he shifted, restless, a predator that was cornered by forces it could not sink its fangs into.

Then the next lightning bolt fell. It struck barely a dozen paces away, while blasting stone and soil into the air. The ground yawned open, with a jagged fissure stretching toward them while glowing faintly green like a wound that was leaked of a poison.

The shockwave hurled Kelvin backward, his boots slipping on loose gravel. He felt Xerion coil behind him in a shield, with scales sparking as the serpent hissed against the storm's bite.

"We need the cover!" Kelvin shouted over the thunder. His voice was coarse, his throat was already raw from breathing Veil-tainted air. Darius pointed north. "There are ruins!"

Through the haze of dust and flickered lightning, shapes emerged. What at first they looked like broken stones that revealed themselves as the half-buried skeleton of a shrine.

Its pillars leaned crooked, cracked and crusted with age, their surfaces were carved in runes that seemed to pulse faintly in rhythm with the storm. Between them were the shattered walls that offered the barest hint of shelter.

Immediately, they ran with each step that was like a gamble, the ground groaned beneath their boots, while trembling with hidden fissures, the Veil itself tried to swallow them.

Xerion surged ahead, with a streak of dark coils, guiding Kelvin across safe patches. Salaries screeched while leading Lyra away from a crack that split open at her heels.

Rhoam leapt clean over a fresh scar in the earth, landing with Darius while leaning heavily against his shoulder for balance. The storm howled after them, a living beast that wanted its prey.

At last they crossed into the shrine's boundary. The instant they passed the leaning pillars, something shifted. The wind was dulled, muffled like a voice that heard through water. The shrieking Veil-energies slowed, circling the perimeter as if unwilling nor unable to pass fully inside.

Kelvin stumbled against a stone, while he kept panting hard. The carved pillar was cold beneath his hand and the runes etched in strange, curling strokes that hurt to look at too long. Some were chipped, but others pulsed faintly with green luminescence, while shinning the lightning above.

"This place…" Lyra's voice broke off, her eyes were fixed on the runes. Her hands trembled as she reached toward one, then stopped, while she pulled back sharply. "These are not protective wards. They are… binding. Whatever this shrine was meant for, it was not prayer."

Darius brushed dust from his beard, his expression was grim. "Binding? Then we are standing in a cage." "No," Kelvin said quietly, though his chest ached with every breath.

He could feel Xerion's unease through the bond and could taste the serpent's warning like iron on his tongue. "Not a cage but a lock. Something was meant to be kept down."

As if in answer, the relic they carried which was the necrotic fang pulled from the Alpha and began to hum. It vibrated faintly against Kelvin's chest where he kept it is wrapped in cloth, its glow was pushed through like a heartbeat.

The storm outside thundered again, with lightning so bright it visited the cracked shrine in stark relief. Shadows leapt along the walls, bending into grotesque shapes that seemed too deliberate and too magnificent.

The hum of the relic grew stronger, it kept rising in pitch until it seemed to thread into the storm's own song. "Take it out," Darius said quickly. "We can not carry something that sings to this storm."

Kelvin's hand hovered over his chest, with hesitation. He wanted to argue, but before he could, a whisper slid through the ruin. A whisper that is not a sound, not a voice. But it seems like a memory.

Kelvin. His eyes was widened. The voice was unmistakable, warm, urgent, full of the steady calm noise he had not heard in years.

"Did you hear that?" Kelvin rasped, scanning the shrine. Lyra had frozen. Her face had gone pale and her bow trembling in her grip. "No.... No, it is not possible."

Salaris screeched low, with a warning. Kelvin turned to her and asked. "Lyra, what did you hear?" Her lips parted, and the single word fell like a wound torn open: "Elara."

The storm roared outside, but inside the ruin its echoes had changed. The thunder carried voices that are too sharp, too personal to belong to mere noise. They were not the storm's, they were theirs.

Darius became stiffened. His fists clenched at his sides, his breathing ragged like Ironholt. The word cracked, low and ragged and torn out of him like a blood. His eyes were wide and fixed on something that none of the others could see.

Rhoam pressed against him, growling deep in his throat. The armored panther's eyes glowed faintly, locking on Darius with desperate loyalty, as though trying to anchor him against the storm's pull.

Kelvin swallowed hard. The relic against his chest throbbed in rhythm with his racing heart. The shrine, the runes, the storm, together they were not just weather but they were a forge, a crucible pulling their pasts into the present.

And none of them could yet tell of illusion from reality. Kelvin drew his cracked glaive and held it ready. "Stay close," he said, though his voice was a shook.

Xerion hissed behind him, coils ready to strike. "This storm is not just trying to kill us. It is trying to unmake us." Outside, another bolt split the plains, so bright that it blinded him.

When his vision cleared, he was not standing in the ruin anymore. He was a boy again, and his parents were calling his name.

The shrine's cracked stone walls did little to silence the storm. The Veilstorm howled outside, a maddened chorus of green lightning tearing fissures open across the plains.

Each strike poured veins of dim light through the darkness, so bright and unnatural that it seemed less like illumination and more like wounds that are carved into the world itself.

Kelvin sat with his back against a weathered pillar, one hand unconsciously rested against the Veilstone relic that pulsed faintly on his belt. It throbbed in time with the storm's rhythm, as though eager to answer it.

His other hand pressed against the hilt of his blade, with his knuckles white. The relic's hum burrowed into his bones, unsettling, like the echo of a voice that is not yet spoken.

Xerion crouched near him and his obsidian eyes flickered with unease. The beast's scales glimmered faintly under each lightning flash. His tail tapped the ground in restless patterns, sensing something that Kelvin could not sense.

That was when the first whisper came. It was not loud. Just a trembling echo, that was half-drowned by the storm's roar. A voice that Kelvin had not heard in over a decade.

"Kelvin… run!" His chest was constricted. The sound was too raw and too familiar. He looked up sharply, but none of the Crest was stirred.

Lyra sat with her blade across her knees, her head was bowed. Darius leaned against Rhoam's armored flank, with his eyes shut in rest.

Salaris shifted uneasily with feathers rising, but none reacted as if they had heard. The whisper came again and louder. And this time he saw it.