KAELEN STORMRIDER
After he was dragged back into his cell by the guards, Kaelen's thoughts were scattered. As the days passed, his mind raced with endless questions, but they were all tethered to one thing: escape. Druumari was not just a prison—it was a force, alive and pulsing with something ancient, something far beyond his understanding. The magic that had bound him here was suffocating, a constant pressure against his chest. But that was not all.
The spirits.
They had begun to appear on the edges of his vision, at first just fleeting shadows—nothing more than whispers in the dark corners of his mind. He thought he was hallucinating, the result of too many sleepless nights, too many hours spent pacing in the confines of his stone prison. But the longer he stayed in this forsaken land, the more persistent they became.
One night, as the moon hung heavy and pale in the sky, he saw them clearly for the first time.
It was just after the evening meal when the coldness seemed to seep deeper into his bones. The torches in the corridor flickered uneasily, casting long, shuddering shadows on the walls. Kaelen stood at the barred window of his cell, staring out at the land beyond. The wind carried a strange, mournful hum from the trees, the sound like voices, but not human voices. More like a chorus of whispers that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
His eyes narrowed as he squinted into the darkness. At first, he thought it was his mind playing tricks on him. But no. There, in the dense mist of the land, he saw something move—something faint, almost invisible, yet undeniably there. Figures, shaped like people, walking through the night as though they were part of the mist itself. Their forms were translucent, their features indistinct, but their presence was unmistakable.
Kaelen's heart pounded in his chest as he moved away from the window and paced back to the center of the room. He had been alone for so long, his mind fraying at the edges. But this—this felt real. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Something was wrong, something far beyond what he had bargained for.
The next night, it happened again.
This time, the figures were closer, standing at the edge of the small courtyard outside his cell. Kaelen could feel them watching him, their eyes hollow and empty, as if they were waiting for something. He had been pacing once more, angry and restless, when the air in the cell grew colder. So much colder.
He froze.
For a moment, he thought he heard a voice—a whisper, a barely audible breath in the stillness of the night. It was as if the voice was coming from inside his own head, but it wasn't his. He turned sharply, scanning the room for any sign of movement, but there was nothing. And then, the whisper came again, louder this time, clearer.
Kaelen Stormrider.
His pulse quickened. He knew his own name, but the voice—it was not familiar. It wasn't human.
Kaelen Stormrider, son of Thalren, heir to Vyrdantia, first of your name... you are bound here. Bound to the land.
He gritted his teeth. His heart hammered against his ribcage. "Who's there?" he growled into the empty space. But there was no answer, only the haunting whisper of the wind and the rustling of the leaves outside his window.
And he knew it. There was something more at work here—something far darker than he had realized.
As the nights passed, the spirits grew bolder. They began to appear more frequently, drawing nearer with every encounter. Their faces were twisted, distorted—some were men and women in tattered clothes, others were more ethereal, their forms hazy and translucent, flickering in and out of view like fleeting dreams. Their eyes were always the same—hollow, empty, as though they had seen too much, as though they were caught between worlds.
They would stand at the edges of his vision, never quite touching him, but always watching, always waiting. Sometimes, they would speak, their voices like the wind, soft and ethereal. But the words they whispered made no sense, and they came in fragments—cryptic messages that only served to confuse and torment him.
The storm is coming for you... You are not meant to be here...
He couldn't understand it. He could barely make out the words, but he felt their weight. His breath came faster now, his frustration growing, his mind spinning. He wasn't just a prisoner of stone and chains anymore. He was being hunted, stalked by something he couldn't fight, something he couldn't touch.
One night, he tried to confront one of them—one of the spirits. He had been particularly furious that evening, his anger boiling over after another failed attempt at escape. As he stomped down the corridor of the stronghold, he saw one of them, standing just beyond his cell door. It was a woman, her face shrouded in shadow, her eyes glistening like dark pools of water. She was motionless, watching him with an intensity that sent a chill crawling up his spine.
"What do you want from me?" Kaelen demanded, his voice hoarse with frustration. "I've done nothing to you."
The spirit did not answer, but instead stepped forward, closer than she ever had before. Her form flickered as she passed through the stone, as if the walls could not contain her. Kaelen froze. Her presence was suffocating, an invisible pressure weighing down on him.
You are bound to the land, she whispered, her voice like the rustling of dead leaves. There is no escape from what is coming. You cannot outrun the storm.
The coldness in her words was enough to freeze his blood. He took a step back, a cold sweat forming on his brow. "What storm? What do you want from me?" He reached out, his hand brushing the cold air, but the spirit was gone. Just like that—vanished into nothing.
Kaelen's heart was racing. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was being dragged deeper into something beyond his comprehension. The spirits were connected to Druumari in ways he couldn't fathom, and their whispers—those cryptic, maddening messages—they were more than just the ramblings of the dead. They were a warning. A warning he wasn't sure he understood.
But one thing was clear: Druumari was alive in a way he had never experienced before. It was a place of death, of spirits, and magic, and he was bound to it. The curse, the spirits, the land itself—they were all part of a larger force that Kaelen was helpless against.
And the worst part? Seraphine knew. She had to know. But she never spoke of the spirits, never acknowledged the presence that haunted the land. Every time he asked her about them, she would look at him with that same unreadable gaze—cold, distant, and unmoving.
Her silence spoke volumes. It was as if she was letting him unravel on his own, letting him fall deeper into this curse without offering a single word of explanation. The frustration boiled over in Kaelen, turning his thoughts into a haze of anger and confusion. He had no answers, no clarity—only spirits that whispered nonsense and a cursed land that refused to let him go.
The darkness in the stronghold seemed to grow thicker with each passing day. Kaelen was no longer sure if he was losing his mind, or if the spirits truly had a message for him. All he knew was that he was trapped—physically and mentally—in a world that he couldn't escape, surrounded by whispers, spirits, and a curse that bound him to the very land that would never let him go.
But one thing was certain: He would never stop fighting. He would never stop searching for a way out. Even if the storm was coming, even if the spirits whispered of doom—Kaelen Stormrider was not one to surrender. Not now. Not ever.