Page 75 of The Wind Dancer
And then a new voice came out of the darkness. It was deep and it sounded like a thousand whispers in one. The same way the wind spoke to me.
“The Sanctuary’s control has been intercepted. Descendant, all shall be well. I am here.”
Then the floor under me opened and I fell into the abyss of glowing nightmares.
And the voice followed:
“We will continue the configuration stage.”
Space inverted, and I saw five elements weaving into a single system right in front of me. They spun, connected to each other, forming a perfect mechanism, and towering above them a symbol that had long been forgotten in the Empire pulsed brightly. The wind.
“Welcome back, descendant.”
The Sanctuary’s voice sounded familiar now. Even the dragon statues felt like old comrades instead of guardians.
“Who are you? What happened?”
I heard something like a chuckle.
“Me? I am one of those who first raised the temples. One whom mortals once named a dragon.”
“None of this makes sense! What’s going on here?” I was practically screaming.
“You still fail to see? Even though your thoughts now flow several times faster? How far the descendants have fallen...”There was weariness and regret in the voice.“I have little time before the Sanctuary’s defenses recover and cast me out.”It let out something like a sigh, then continued:
“I shall forge you into a weapon we once created to stand against our eternal enemies. I shall make you a dragonblood. And now, the awakening of your bloodline shall begin. I would tell you it doesn’t hurt. But that would be a lie...”
CHAPTER 21
The world shattered.
First came pain. The kind of pain that I had never felt before.
It burned the very core of my existence. I felt like I was being remade, the old me being erased.
“Genetic synchronization has begun.”
The Sanctuary’s voice sounded like the crackle right before thunder, but amidst this crackling, I heard sincere concern. I wanted to scream, but my body arched instead, and I felt something inside of me change.
My lungs burst into flames like dry summer grass. The wind rushed into my chest, filling it to capacity until it hurt to breathe. I was suffocating. No... I wasn’t suffocating, I stopped needing to breathe.
An unsettling sound followed. It was as if my bones were ringing. Something inside me was reforging them with the mystic hammers of ancient blacksmiths. I could hear my ribscracking, and I could feel my spine stretching, my vertebrae separating.
A second later, everything snapped back into place, but it all felt different. Stronger, easier to move, more flexible.
The wind whirled around me and my skin separated from me. I tore it off allowing the howling storm around me to blow it away. Its howls and wails were filled with regret that it had brought me pain. But pain was life. Every change was born through pain, and I needed to be born again. New skin began to spring up like the strange deadly flowers from the southern swamps. It seemed to be made of something that both resembled metal and silk. It was slick, and incredibly durable.
My eyes opened, and a whole new world spread out before me. It was woven from air currents and silver lines left behind by movement, forming patterns within the chaos. I could see the shapes of sounds, the lingering trails of scent, the breath of reality itself.
“The first stage of the genetic key activation has been completed.”
My veins filled with a storm. My blood became wind, rushing with every heartbeat. If I wanted to, I could unravel, dissolve into the air currents, and become elusive. I felt like laughing despite the terrible pain. But the wind was right — if I felt pain, that meant I was still alive.
I laughed wholeheartedly and the wind laughed with me. I could feel it inside me, and it could feel me. I didn’t know where my body ended and the storm began, we were no longer separate. I was the storm, Iwasthe wind.
“The second stage of the genetic key activation has been completed. Activating the LEGACY.”
I jumped into the air and took off. I had WINGS!
