The lanterns were strung too brightly across the village square. I could feel each flame pulsing against my eyes as I huddled deeper into my hood, rubbing at my wrist where the skin always felt too tight. Mother had sewn new patches onto my cloak for the festival, but I'd already picked the edge of one loose, the threads giving way between my restless fingers.

  "You're doing it again," Lior said, his voice warm against the evening chill. He caught my hand, stopping me from unravelling the fabric further. "The world won't end if you let yourself enjoy something, Kaela."

  I couldn't meet his eyes—those impossible eyes that held more light than all the festival lanterns combined. Instead, I watched how the firelight caught in his golden hair, making it glow like he'd swallowed a piece of the sun.

  "There's something wrong with the air," I whispered, pulling my hand free to lower my hood. The villagers of Ashgrove moved around us in their celebration, laughing and dancing beneath the Harvest Moon, oblivious to the pressure building at the edges of everything. "Can't you feel it?"

  Lior's smile didn't fade, but it softened with concern. At eighteen, he stood nearly a head taller than me, his broad shoulders blocking the worst of the crowd. He always knew how to position himself between me and whatever felt too much.

  "I feel a night worth remembering," he said, flicking a strand of my dark hair back under my hood with familiar ease. "The first good harvest in three years. Music. Your mother is finally smiling again." He nudged my shoulder. "You, outside for once. Historic events all around."

  I almost smiled then. Almost. But the wrongness twisted tighter inside my chest, a counterpoint to the drums and pipes playing at the centre of the square. The dying ash trees surrounding our village swayed, though there was no wind. Their branches scraping against a sky that had been clear moments before, but now gathered clouds at unnatural speed.

  "We should go," I said, the words catching in my throat as a low rumble of thunder answered from miles away. My hand flew to my wrist again, rubbing circles against my pulse. "Lior, please—"

  "Five more minutes," he insisted, misunderstanding my fear as merely my usual desire to retreat. "Just watch the altar lighting. Then we'll go, I promise."

  The carved stone altar had stood in Ashgrove's centre since before anyone could remember, ancient symbols etched into its weathered face. Each Harvest Festival, the elders would light the sacred fire in its hollow centre, a tradition meant to carry us through winter. People were already gathering around it, their faces bright with anticipation, unaware of how the clouds now swallowed the moon whole.

  I felt it before I saw anything—a shifting under my skin, a humming vibration I'd carried for as long as I could remember, but stronger now, urgent in a way it had never been. The ever-present storm inside me that usually whispered was suddenly screaming. My vision blurred, the edges of everything suddenly too sharp and too bright, sounds distorting into painful vibrations.

  "Something's happening," I gasped, doubling over. "Lior, I can't—"

  The first lightning bolt struck not from above but from below, erupting from the ground beneath the altar stone with a deafening crack. The stone split in two, ancient fragments exploding outward as screams replaced celebration. People scattered in panic, but I couldn't move. My feet seemed rooted to the earth as energy surged through me, around me, pulling at something inside I'd never fully understood.

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  Lior grabbed my shoulders, his face wavering in my fractured vision. "Kaela! We need to run!"

  "I don't know what's happening," I tried to say, but the words wouldn't come. The familiar tingling in my fingertips that came with rainstorms had exploded into something terrifying and wild. Whatever had always lived inside me was responding to something, reaching for something I couldn't see.

  The sky tore open above us. Lightning struck again, closer this time, and I felt it like a scream in my bones. My hair whipped free of my hood, crackling with static energy as the winds rose to a howling pitch around us.

  "Stay back," I managed to choke out, pushing Lior away with trembling hands. "Please—I can't control it—"

  But he wouldn't leave. Of course, he wouldn't. Lior, with his sunlight hair and his stubborn heart, who never once turned away from me, even now as wild energy crackled in the air between us. I saw the moment he made his decision—the determination in his eyes, the set of his jaw that meant no power on earth could move him.

  "It's okay," he said, though nothing was okay, would never be okay again. "I'm right here. I won't leave you."

  Something shifted in the broken altar stone. A pulse of energy, different from the storm but somehow feeding it, rippled outward. I felt it pass through me like a wave, amplifying the chaos already building. The air between us was charged with impossible light.

  "Lior, run!" I screamed, but it was too late.

  Lightning struck—not from me, but from somewhere else, somewhere beyond—yet connected to the storm raging inside me. It arced toward us both, and Lior stepped forward, arms spread wide as if he could somehow protect me from a force of nature.

  The bolt hit him square in the chest, throwing him backwards through the air like he weighed nothing at all. He landed broken among the shattered remains of the altar stone, those bright eyes staring upward but seeing nothing.

  Just like that, the storm died.

  Inside me. Around me. Everything went suddenly, horribly still.

  I crawled to him through mud churned by unnatural rain, my hands shaking as I touched his face. No response. No warmth left in that smile that had always been my anchor. The golden hair that had caught the sunlight now lay dull and wet against his forehead.

  "Lior," I whispered, the word falling into a silence deeper than any I'd ever known. "Lior, please."

  People emerged from doorways and from behind overturned carts, their faces pale with shock and fear. I felt their eyes on me—wary, uncertain. They'd seen something, but not everything. They didn't understand what had happened.

  And neither did I.

  But somehow, in my heart, I knew the truth. The storm that had always lived inside me, the tingling I'd felt before rain, the way clouds seemed to follow my moods—it had all led to this moment. And Lior had paid the price.

  My mother appeared through the crowd, her practical brown hair coming loose from its pins, her eyes wide with horror as she took in the scene. When she reached for me, I flinched away, terrified of what might happen if she touched me.

  "I'm sorry," I said, the words meaningless against such devastation. "I'm so sorry."

  The storm had passed, but nothing inside me had settled. Something fundamental had changed—or revealed itself—and I had no words for the weight of it. In Lior's vacant eyes, I saw my reflection—a girl whose existence had somehow shattered everything, whose life would never be the same.

  The harvest lanterns had all gone out. In the darkness, I could almost pretend none of it had happened. Almost.

  But the broken altar stone told the truth. The mud on my hands told the truth. The hollow space beside me, where Lior should have been standing, told the truth.

  The storm had come. Lior was gone. And somehow, I knew it was all because of me.