The storm had swallowed the world whole. Wind screamed through the wrecked village, a deep unending roar that tore at the comms and filled every channel with static. Snow came sideways in relentless sheets, dense enough to bury shapes and swallow sound. Even the mechs, built for subzero warfare and hardened blizzards, trembled under the onslaught. Their reinforced joints groaned against the gusts, and their optics flickered with interference, halos of light dissolving into the white blur. The world had collapsed into movement and noise, nothing but cold, static, and the shadow of motion.

Kasala's voice broke through the open feed, sharp and fraying at the edges. "Lucy, report. Do you see anything?"

Lucy's response came in broken bursts. "Negative, High Imperator. This isn't weather, this is a wall. Sensors are useless. Visual's a smear. We're dead blind out here. If we move, we'll lose half the unit."

"Then hold position," Kasala barked. "We don't move without eyes. Does anyone, anyone at all, have sight on her?"

The storm swallowed the question. The open channel filled with overlapping static, snippets of curses, and the dull mechanical hum of engines buried in snow. No answers came. Only the storm's pulse, relentless and heavy.

Kasala's voice came back, harder now, cutting through the interference with forced composure. "We hold here," he ordered. "We need to hunker down and wait it out. If we move blind, we die blind."

The cadets began to move through the whiteout, not toward any clear destination, just toward the faint signals of each other. Their motion sensors pinged faintly through the interference, icons jittering on their visors. Shapes loomed, then vanished. The mechs towered around them like ghosts. Every step sank ankle-deep; every movement strained the joints of their suits.

Somewhere in that chaos, the cadets' private channel flickered to life. The tone was softer, full of nerves and breath, a single fragile thread holding them together.

"Someone tell me he didn't actually take her," Chime said, breath catching. "Please tell me he didn't do something that stupid."

"He did," Fenn replied, his voice trembling. "You can feel it. He's gone. It's like he tore himself out of the storm."

Lessa swore, trudging closer to Roan's position. "He's moving fast. I can feel it in my ribs. The whole storm's bending around him. The bastard's pulling her right along with him."

Roan's voice came rough and low. "Yeah. He's dragging her. The pressure's cutting through the snow like a blade. Graveholt's that way, isn't it? He's pulling her straight toward it."

Sylen steadied her voice, but even she sounded shaken. "He's not insane. He's reckless, yeah, but this… this is different."

Jurpat's bitter laugh crackled through the static. "He's a fucking idiot, that's what he is."

Elian cut through sharply. "Keep the line tight. Kasala can't hear this, right?"

"He can't," Roan said. "Private channel only. Nobody but us."

"Good," Wesley muttered. "Because if he could, he'd kill him himself."

They pressed closer together as they moved, the storm curling around them. The half-buried buildings offered brief shelter before collapsing under the weight of snow. Between two shattered walls, the figure appeared through the storm, a perfect copy of him. It wasn't a shadow or a trick of light. It was him, down to the smallest motion and breath, every detail exact. The clone walked among them without hesitation, its presence as real as the snow hitting their armor. It moved beside them, silent and precise, its steps syncing perfectly with the rhythm of their formation. None of the others questioned it; how could they? It was him, utterly convincing, the same stance, the same calm, the same flicker of purpose behind the eyes. He was there, where he should be. No one looked closely enough to notice the missing weight of Bastard or Styll.

Varnai's voice cut through the static like a blade. "He said Mondenkind told him to do this. His soul told him. That means it's him. Not her. Not the Aberrant."

Ramis asked, his voice tight, "So he's following his own soul? And it's telling him to lead her into a city to slaughter it?"

"Yes," Varnai said. "He's doing what he believes he has to."

Lessa let out a long, bitter sigh. "That sounds like something he'd say right before dying for it."

Roan's voice cracked into a grim laugh. "Still an idiot."

"A heroic idiot," Chime said softly, almost to herself.

Fenn's laughter came out strained. "An idiot we'll beat the living shit out of when he gets back."

"If he gets back," Torman said, his tone heavy.

"He will," Jurpat said firmly. "He always does. That's who he is."

"When he does," Vexa said, her voice cold and sharp, "we make him regret it."

"Twice over," Leron added, and the twins echoed together. Their unison made the channel buzz, eerie and perfect.

They pushed forward, closing the distance between themselves and the main force. The storm pressed harder, howling like a living thing. Around them, the mechs adjusted formation, their searchlights slicing through the blizzard in sweeping arcs. The air shimmered as energy shields cycled, flashes of blue and green cutting through the dark.

Beside Lessa, a hulking shadow moved. Momo lumbered forward, her massive frame outlined by faint amber glow. She was as big as one of the mechs, fur slicked with ice, eyes wide and uncertain. Her head turned toward the cadets as they trudged through the snow, confusion rolling off her in waves. She huffed, a low sound muffled by the wind. Lessa reached up to touch her flank as they moved side by side.

"It's okay," Lessa muttered to her bond, voice half swallowed by static. "He'll come back."

Momo made a low rumble of disagreement but stayed close, her massive paws leaving craters in the snow.

The private channel crackled again. Varnai's voice came back, softer but carrying through the wind. "Listen, all of you chuck fucks. He's doing this for us. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, but it's his decision. That's the truth and no one else can make it for him."

Rokhan grunted, tired and rough. "Then he's a moron with good intentions."

Xera's voice followed, low but sure. "Maybe, but we'll still beat his ass for it."

Lessa glanced toward the clone walking ahead of them. "We better. He deserves it."

"Promise," Chime whispered, her words almost a prayer.

"Promise," Fenn echoed, his voice raw.

The others joined in one by one, Roan, Sylen, Jurpat, even the twins, their promises weaving through the storm like a quiet vow. For a moment, it almost sounded like hope.

The wind roared, and the world blurred. The snow struck their armor like gravel, and through it all, Kasala's voice thundered again over the main net, demanding reports, demanding order. But on the private line, none of them answered.

Class One kept moving, gathering under the mechs' lights, silent shadows pressing together in the storm. The copy of Vaeliyan walked among them like nothing was wrong. Momo growled softly, unsettled, eyes fixed on where the real one had vanished. And still, the cadets said nothing, marching toward the others, carrying the silence he'd left behind.

The walls of Graveholt stretched into the white, towers half-swallowed by snow and light. Floodlights cut through the frozen air, their beams scattering against the blizzard that surged from the south by southeast. The city had seen storms before, endless, punishing, predictable. But this one was alive in a way that made the metal underfoot tremble, like the city itself could feel something vast approaching beneath the storm.

The wind keened between the crenellations, carrying with it a low, almost human sound. It wasn't a howl or whistle, not quite. It was a rhythm, a rise and fall that made the guards along the rampart glance at each other and then look away, pretending they hadn't heard it. The light from the floodlamps flickered in short, stuttering bursts, making the world pulse between brightness and blindness. The air smelled faintly metallic, the scent of ozone mixing with the salt of the ice, and every gust came sharper than the one before. Graveholt had always been cold, but this was different. This was movement. The storm was coming alive.

Timmy stood at his post along the southern wall, boots half-frozen to the metal grate, visor flickering as interference bled through his optics. He'd lived in Graveholt all his life. He'd seen whiteouts that lasted for weeks, storms that buried outposts, frost so thick it cracked armor seams and split stone. But this wasn't that. The snow didn't fall, it moved. It twisted in spirals that pulled toward the city instead of away from it, like the storm had a direction, a will. It felt like the blizzard was hunting something. Every gust seemed to breathe. Every crack of lightning rattled his teeth like the sound had weight.

He rubbed the frost from his visor and peered into the white. The horizon was gone, consumed by motion. He thought he saw shapes within it, massive, rolling, like something swimming beneath the storm, but when he blinked, there was nothing. His comms hissed and popped. Even the static sounded strange, layered with faint pitches that rose and fell, almost like a song. He swallowed hard and keyed the comm.

"Command, this is Rampart South," he said, voice tight. "Blizzard front's accelerating. It's… it's moving faster than any I've logged before. Direction: south by southeast. Estimated approach in minutes."

A burst of static answered him, then a steady tone before a calm, authoritative voice cut through. "Rampart South, this is Knight-Captain Avros. We see it, son. It's a blizzard. Nothing new."

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Timmy hesitated, squinting through the whiteout. The snow pulsed with light, soft flashes at first, then jagged streaks of crimson tearing through the haze. The ground vibrated under his boots. "Sir, there's lightning in it. Red lightning. Confirmed multiple strikes."

Avros's voice came back, measured and dismissive, the sound of a man too old to be startled by weather. "Lightning happens. Static discharge in dense air. Red's odd, sure, but snow refracts anything. Could be vehicle lamps out in the wastes mixed with ionization. You're seeing things through a lens, boy. Don't work yourself up."

"With respect, sir," Timmy said, breath fogging inside his helmet, "I've seen storms my whole life. This isn't one of ours. It's moving wrong. It's pulling against the wind. And that red light, it's not reflection, it's burning through the snow. It's making it glow from the inside. It seems alive, sir. The air's… heavy. Like it's watching us."

Silence followed. The blizzard roared loud enough to swallow the sound of his own breathing. Then Avros returned, tone slightly sharper. "What's your name, son?"

"Timmy, sir."

"Well, Timmy," Avros said, half sighing, "with all due respect, I've lived through hundreds of these things. Graveholt gets one every other day, and they all swear they're different. Red lightning might be rare, but it's not unheard of. Could be deep storms, could be glass reflection, could be anything. That's weather. You know that. Now sound the blizzard alarm and close the gates."

Timmy hesitated. The lightning flickered again, and this time the red didn't fade, it held, hanging in the sky like a wound, a bleeding halo pressing closer. The ground beneath his boots shuddered faintly, a vibration too low to be wind. He heard the armor of the nearby guards creak as they turned toward the light, their voices rising in quiet confusion. Someone swore softly. Someone else prayed.

He swallowed, nodded to himself, and spoke into the mic. "Yes, sir."

He turned toward the control box, the snow clawing at his armor plates, and slammed the activation rune with a gloved hand. "Sound the alarm," he muttered. "Close the gates." The sirens burst to life, low and warbling, echoing through the frozen streets. Spotlights swiveled to the southern wall, their light cutting through the storm in pale, trembling beams. Down below, heavy gates began to grind shut, their gears screeching under the cold. Steam hissed from vent shafts, curling upward and freezing midair.

Other wall guards called out to each other, voices muffled by the wind. "What's happening?" "New front coming in?" "Red lightning, what the hell's that supposed to mean?" Nobody had answers. The blizzard drowned their words, turning them into shapes of sound. The air smelled sharp and electric, like heated metal and ozone. The world was supposed to be silent under snow, but the storm was humming now, steady and low, like something alive breathing just beyond sight.

Timmy kept staring out at the horizon. The red flashes deepened into a pulse, slow and deliberate, as though something vast was walking through the white toward them. The pulse matched his own heartbeat, syncopated and steady, impossible to ignore. He gripped the railing tighter, metal biting into his gloves. For a moment, he thought he saw something, movement, humanoid, gliding through the storm, but it vanished before his eyes could focus.

He shivered. The blizzard screamed louder, drowning out even the sirens. His pulse synced again to the rhythm outside the walls. He thought he heard laughter in the storm, high, light, and playful, like a child's voice echoing down the wind, but the sound faded as soon as he turned his head.

Timmy tightened his grip on the rail. "Blizzard, right," he whispered, voice shaking. "Just another blizzard." But his stomach knew better. The metal beneath him shuddered again, faint and rhythmic, like footsteps buried beneath miles of ice. And from somewhere deep in the white, the red light pulsed once more, brighter than before, as if answering his words.

The storm churned and twisted, alive with thunder and ice. Within its heart, Bastard and Melody played, two forces of chaos moving through a storm that wasn't theirs. Warren was the storm. Every gust, every roar of wind, every arc of lightning bent to his will. He kept the blizzard close, folding its power around them like a shroud. It was his shield, his mask, his only hope of hiding her. The more she laughed, the harder he worked, shaping every gust and every flare of light to conceal her from sight. He could not let the world see what followed him through the snow.

He'd expected the cold to bite, to numb his fingers and crawl into his lungs, but it hadn't. The storm was his, and somehow that made the cold part of him too. Snow was only rain slowed down, reshaped, forced to take a different form. Every form of water answered to Rain Dancer, whether it fell, froze, or burned in the air. Still, nothing in the description said anything about heat, or endurance, or immunity. Yet he wasn't freezing. He wasn't even shivering.

What unsettled him more was that Melody wasn't either. She should have been a corpse in this weather, not laughing in it. Whatever she was, whatever he'd dragged through the storm, she didn't feel the cold any more than he did.

The snow whipped in spirals around them, motion unnatural and precise, shaped by Warren's intent. He breathed with the wind, moved with the weight of the air, feeling the storm as part of his body. The blizzard wasn't just cover; it was an extension of himself. When he clenched his fists, the clouds tightened. When he exhaled, the wind howled. When his pulse spiked, lightning cracked in answer. Melody darted through the white, her laughter bright and child-like, echoing across the sky. Warren drove the storm forward, pushing it deeper toward the heart of Graveholt. The storm answered his heartbeat, not hers, and he forced it to move faster, heavier, tightening the circle around her so that no light could reveal her path.

Lightning tore through the sky, flashing white, then red as it reflected off Bastard's battered armor. The glow caught the blood-stained mist that clung to Melody's form, casting her in hues of crimson and gold. She spun through the air, wild and unrestrained, her voice full of manic delight. "Your kitty is awesome!" she cried, spinning so fast her laughter seemed to cut through the thunder. "I love him! He's so big!"

Before Warren could speak, she body-checked Bastard with a deafening impact. The hardened scales along his flank shattered, scattering into shards of black across the snow. He roared, not in pain but in exhaustion, his body already trembling from the strain. Warren's control on the storm tightened, the wind screaming in sympathy as he steadied the massive beast's balance. Hold on, buddy, he thought through the bond, forcing calm into the link even as his own nerves burned. We're almost there.

Bastard rumbled a low response, his breath breaking in flashes of blue-white light that arced across his teeth. His muscles shook under the weight of the storm and Melody's relentless games. He had been her playmate for the entire run through the wastes, enduring every impact, every burst of lightning she threw at him. She treated him like a toy, one that fought back, but even his immense endurance was wearing thin. Warren could feel it through their bond: the ache in his bones, the static fatigue crawling through his veins.

He had thought about stepping in, about drawing her attention to himself instead of letting Bastard endure her chaos. But Mondenkind had warned him against it, no, persuaded him. A clash between the two of them would have been ruinous. The storm would have rebuilt him faster than she could break him, and that would have only fed the spiral. Every strike, every burst of destruction would have multiplied, storm against storm, until there was nothing left to contain them.

Warren clenched his jaw and pushed the storm harder, layering snow and wind around them until visibility dropped to nothing. The blizzard pressed down like a living wall. "Melody!" he called out through the roaring dark. "Do you want to play a new game?"

"Oh yes!" she cried instantly, spinning midair. Her eyes glowed through the white, ruby-bright and full of mischief. "I love games! What game do you want to play?"

He watched her blur past him, lightning trailing from her fingertips. The glow looked red through the dense storm, the snow refracting every spark into a shimmer of bloodlight. "Let's play Who Can Jump the Highest."

"I love that one!" she said without hesitation. "I always win! No one can jump higher than me!" She stuck her tongue out and slammed into Bastard again, laughter cutting through the wind like glass.

"We'll see about that," Warren shouted, pouring his focus into the blizzard, pulling the storm's edges tighter. He needed to keep her covered, every movement hidden beneath the veil. "Can you jump that wall?" He pointed through the whiteout toward Graveholt's distant silhouette, its vast, pale barrier rising into the dark like a mountain carved from ice.

Melody tilted her head so far back her hair whipped around her face, eyes wide and feverish with glee. "Yeah! I can jump that!" she said, grinning like a child about to break something precious. Then she shouted, "Last one there's a stink-butt-butt!" and bolted before he could respond. The snow exploded behind her, a cyclone of red and white spiraling through the storm. The air cracked open in her wake, and Warren's control slipped for an instant before he wrestled it back under his command.

He surged forward, every step a struggle against his own creation. The storm pressed against him, thick and heavy, alive with power. Still amplified his reach, weaving the wind into controlled arcs that folded around Melody's path. Every gust became a curtain of concealment, every flicker of lightning angled to distract or blind the watchers beyond the walls. Keep her hidden, he thought. Keep her covered. I can't let them see what I'm doing.

Lightning split the sky again, red from reflection, not intent. Melody's laughter carried through the roar of the storm, bright and terrible. She danced through the air, oblivious to the destruction her joy left behind. Bastard stumbled through the snow after her, each step leaving trenches that filled instantly with blood-tinted slush. Every breath he took flashed with light, and Warren could feel the cracks forming in his armor, the pulse of pain that rippled through their link. She's breaking him, Warren thought grimly. What in the hells was I thinking.

The walls of Graveholt loomed ahead, colossal, ancient, unyielding. The lights on the ramparts flickered under the storm's weight. Warren could feel the resistance as his power collided with the city's atmospheric shield, the field flaring faintly before bending to his will. He gritted his teeth, forcing the storm to curl over it, spreading like a dome. Just a little further, he told himself. Get her there. Get her inside. Then run like there is no tomorrow.

The blizzard broke over the city's outer ring like a tidal wave of sound and color. Snow burst upward, lightning flashing in chaotic arcs that bent in unnatural directions. Red illumination rolled through the haze, not true lightning, but reflection, blood, and fragments of Bastard's broken scales burning in the air. Warren's focus wavered for a heartbeat under the pressure, and he nearly lost the hold. He could feel the storm threatening to unravel, to reveal everything, but he pushed harder, grinding his teeth until his jaw ached.

Melody was laughing again, pure and unrestrained, spinning as she neared the wall. The sound cut through the storm like music, high and bright and full of something that didn't belong to the living. Her voice echoed in his skull, bouncing between the thunder. She didn't understand what she was about to do, or maybe she did, and she didn't care. Either way, Warren couldn't stop her. The best he could do was make sure the city wouldn't see what was coming.

He drove the storm harder, burying her laughter in thunder, pushing the storm until even her light vanished behind the veil of white. The blizzard screamed as it met the wall, and for an instant, the whole of Graveholt seemed to disappear beneath his storm.

As the storm hit the wall, the three of them leaped clear over it, soaring through the curtain of lightning and snow. They landed on the inner side of Graveholt's wall with a crash that sent up a shockwave of powder and debris. The city below was a blur of spires and ice-lit streets, muffled beneath the storm's roar. Melody looked around, wide-eyed and delighted. She turned to Warren and Bastard, her grin stretched bright through the stormlight. "I win!" she shouted, voice echoing between the towers.

Warren stood on the wall's edge, the storm still coiling around him like a living cloak. He nodded once, exhaustion heavy in his voice. "Yeah," he said. "I guess you do." He forced a smile, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Now go on. Have fun. We'll see you later."

Melody blinked, confused. "You're not coming with me?" she asked, head tilted, her hair sticking to her blood-streaked cheeks.

He shook his head, keeping his tone as light as he could. "No. I have other things to do."

She frowned for a moment, then shrugged, her expression returning to its usual mischievous brightness. "Fine," she said, her voice sing-song. "I'll find you later!" She giggled and leapt down into the city below, vanishing into the swirling white with a flash of red light.

Warren felt the words cut through him like a blade. The sound of her laughter echoed inside his skull, growing fainter as she disappeared into the storm. He stared after her, heart pounding. She will, he thought, the dread sinking deep. She'll find me. Somehow, she will.

Beside him, Bastard slumped against the wall, sides heaving. The blizzard still raged above them, but Warren didn't feel its cold anymore. He only felt the hollow weight in his chest and the faint tremor running through his bond to Melody, wild, erratic, distant.

He tightened his grip on the storm and whispered, "We did what we had to." But even as he said it, the words rang hollow. The laughter still lingered on the wind.

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