As the mourners began forming a line to release their stormbloom petals into the wind, Thalen Virell stepped forward. He was seventeen, tall and composed, his silver-blond hair tied neatly at his nape. His stormbloom petal was tucked behind his ear, as tradition required.
He bowed his head respectfully. “Seren… I’m sorry for your loss.”
She didn’t look at him. “Thank you.”
He hesitated. “Your father once told me you’d change the world.”
Seren’s head snapped up. “He said that?”
Thalen nodded. “He said you were born with lightning in your bones.”
Seren’s throat tightened. “He said that to everyone.”
“No,” Thalen said quietly. “Just to me.”
For a moment, she saw something in his eyes—something soft, something almost vulnerable.
But she couldn’t hold it. Not today.
She turned away. “I need to be alone.”
Thalen bowed again, stepping back without protest.
---> "Thalen’s Point of View" <---
The wind on the Skycliff bit through Thalen’s mourning shroud, but he barely felt the cold. His attention was fixed on the girl standing at the edge of the cliff—Seren Caelen, wrapped in indigo and grief, her dark braids whipping wildly in the stormwind.
She looked like she might break apart at any moment.
Or like she might become the storm itself.
Thalen swallowed hard. He shouldn’t have come this close. He was only here because his father insisted their House pay respects to Caelen, a respected stormweaver. But the truth was simpler, and far more dangerous:
He wanted to see her.
Seren.
The girl he’d been promised to.
The girl who barely knew him.
The girl who looked at the sky like it was both her prison and her escape.
He stepped forward, heart pounding. “Seren… I’m sorry for your loss.”
She didn’t look at him. Her voice was raw. “Thank you.”
Thalen hesitated. He wasn’t good with grief. He wasn’t good with people. But he remembered something Caelen had told him once, during a Council gathering when Thalen was thirteen and Seren was a small, fierce shadow at her father’s side.
“My daughter will change the world one day,” Caelen had said, pride shining in his eyes. “She was born with lightning in her bones.”
Thalen had never forgotten it.
He took a breath. “Your father once told me you’d change the world.”
That made her turn. Her eyes—storm-violet, rimmed with red—locked onto his. “He said that?”
Thalen nodded. “He said you were born with lightning in your bones.”
Her throat tightened. “He said that to everyone.”
“No,” Thalen said softly. “Just to me.”
For a heartbeat, something flickered in her expression—surprise, maybe even warmth. It made his chest ache.
He wanted to say more. He wanted to tell her she wasn’t alone. That he saw her. That he wished he could take her pain and carry it himself.
But Seren turned away, shoulders trembling. “I need to be alone.”
Thalen bowed his head, stepping back. “Of course.”
He should have left. He should have returned to the other mourners, to the safety of distance and propriety.
But he couldn’t move.
He watched her walk to the cliff’s edge, watched her open her hand and release the stormbloom petal into the wind. Watched the wind still—unnaturally, impossibly—around her.
Then the mist rose.
Silver. Spiraling. Alive.