There were no cheers at the end.

  Only silence. Death in the wind.

  The sky over Eldrun burned violet that day, streaked with streaks of lightning and dark, rolling clouds. Magic no one could name had consumed the battlefield, turning steel, stone, grass, trees, animals, and men to nothing but scorched remnants. At the heart of the crater, surrounded by nothing but shattered earth and the press of a heavy, unnatural stillness, she lay alone.

  The Stormwraith.

  Her armor had been scorched in places, the polished metal blackened and warped, clinging to her frame like the remnants of a broken shell. What remained of her golden standard fluttered at her side in tattered and singed ribbons, little more than ash and memory.

  A strange sensation prickled at the base of her throat. Numb, raw. Unnervingly cold. She raised a hand slowly, her fingers brushing over skin that should have borne the seared imprint of her allegiance. But there was nothing. No ridges. No brand. Just smooth, unmarred flesh. Beneath her fingertips, she sensed a faint chill, like the outline of something that had once been burned into her skin, now gone.

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  The sigil that had bound her soul to the imperial throne—etched into every mage like a brand—was gone. With it, her power had vanished too. Her storm. Her will. A hollow absence gnawed at her, as if something vital had been ripped away, leaving an emptiness in its place, like the absence of a second heartbeat.

  She should have died. Everyone else had. Instead, she rose stiffly, her joints protesting, her body foreign and heavy, as if sculpted from stone. The air still buzzed with the sting of ozone, hissing over her skin like the remnants of a static charge. Beneath her, the ground was cracked and scorched, as though a colossal bolt of lightning had torn through the earth, leaving nothing but ruin in its wake.

  The sky above stretched wide and hollow, too vast and silent, emptied of meaning. Dim violet, electric blue, and ashen gray streaked the horizon, flashing erratically across the heavens, as if the storm had not yet been silenced. The colors swirled and merged in unnatural spirals, casting a sickly glow over the empty battlefield.

  It felt like the world itself was waiting for something to break.

  Her hands, once trembling from the force of her power, hung motionless at her sides. Too still. She didn’t know how to breathe without the rhythm of battle, nor how to stand without orders to guide her. An oppressive silence pressed in from all directions, suffocating, heavier than the roar of any battlefield.

  The wind stirred, but it wasn’t like the winds of war. It was cold and sharp, carrying the scent of the storm’s fury.

  For the first time in a decade, there was nothing left for her to annihilate.