Jin rode the night winds above Zephyrgale’s highest peaks, her silver-white hair streaming behind her like a comet’s tail. The cloud birthmark on her face pulsed with each new current she touched, writing stories in the air.
The sky was especially chatty tonight.
“Show me again,” she whispered to the wind. The air currents shifted, carrying starlight like ink, painting tales of unrest in the darkness.
Fire-ships moving south.
Water-cities stirring deep.
Mountains singing old songs.
And through it all, patterns. The same geometric shapes she’d first discovered while conducting starlight through the currents. The same patterns now appearing in birthmarks across all four elements.
“Cadet Jin!”
The voice cut through her concentration, scattering the star-script. Her patrol partner, Senior Skyguard Torres, pulled his wind-rider alongside hers. His expression was stiff with disapproval.
“The Skyhost wants all cadets back at the Aerie,” he said. “Immediately.”
“But the currents—” Jin started.
“Are behaving irregularly, yes. All the more reason to return to base.”
Jin bit back her response. The currents aren’t irregular. They’re finally making sense.
As if to prove her point, a high wind brushed past, humming with information:
Coral spheres singing in the deep.
Fire dancing to water’s tune.
Stone giants watching, waiting, remembering.
Her cloud-mark tingled as the star-script formed again, turning the very air into pages of light. Torres’ eyes widened – he could see it too. All the Skyhost could, these days, though they pretended not to.
“This isn’t natural,” Torres muttered.
“No,” Jin agreed, heart racing with the possibility of it all. “It’s better. It’s true.”
A new current swept in, colder than the others. Urgent. It carried the tang of sea-salt and wood smoke, the rumble of stone and the whisper of stars. Four elements, four messages, all spinning together in the night sky.
The star-script blazed brighter:
The time of separation ends.
The elements remember their dance.
Four must gather where the powers meet.
“Cadet Jin!” Torres’s voice cracked with authority. “Return to base now, or—”
“Or what?” Jin turned to face him, feeling the winds wrap around her like eager puppies. “You’ll report me for listening? For asking questions? For seeing what’s right in front of us?”
She pulled out her logbook, filled with sketches of the patterns she’d been tracking. The same patterns now appearing in birthmarks, in coral spheres, in dancing flames, in singing stones.
“The air isn’t just carrying messages,” she said. “It’s carrying memories. And it’s trying to remind us of something we forgot.”
Torres reached for her wind-rider’s tether. “This ends now.”
The winds surged, pulling them apart. Not violently – playfully, like children separating squabbling adults. And in their movement, Jin heard laughter. Not human laughter. Something older. Something waking up.
“You’re wrong,” she told Torres as the currents lifted her higher. “This isn’t ending.”
The stars blazed overhead, their light bending through the air in impossible ways, writing truth in the darkness. Below, she could see the Skyhost Aerie erupting with activity, torches blazing as guards mobilized.
But higher up, where the air was thin and pure and honest, the winds sang their secrets freely. Tales of a water-mage with singing spheres, a fire-dancer who moved like the sea, a stone-speaker who heard the mountains’ memories.
All of them seeing the same patterns.
All of them hearing the same song.
All of them being drawn to the same place.
Jin smiled into the star-lit wind. “This is just beginning.”
The elements were done being separate.
And the sky?
The sky knew exactly where they needed to meet.