The wind had no voice in Ashmere.
It crawled through the canyons in silence, slipping over broken stone and through rusted temple bells that no longer rang. The people believed the wind was cursed—an echo of the forgotten gods who once soared above the clouds and ruled the skies. Now, the sky belonged to no one, and the wind had been bound to stillness by ancient rites.
But tonight, the wind whispered.
And Xiu Xinyi heard it call her name.
She stood barefoot on the edge of the shrine roof, her arms wrapped tight around herself. The desert below was drowned in moonlight, soft and silver. The wind tugged at her braids. She closed her eyes.
> "You've been here before," it seemed to say.
Xinyi shivered. That voice again. Not a sound, not truly, but a pressure in her chest—like memory trying to claw its way up from beneath her ribs.
> Wings. A sky full of wings. Hers.
A battlefield in the clouds. Screams swallowed by wind.
A name she should know, burned from her mind like ash on the breeze.
She took a shaky breath and reached back, pressing her fingers against the strange marks between her shoulders. She'd had them as long as she could remember: two scars, curved and symmetrical—like folded wings.
No one knew where they'd come from.
The monks said she was found at the temple gates during a windstorm seventeen years ago. "A cursed child," they whispered when they thought she couldn't hear. "Touched by the wind. Marked by the gods. Dangerous."
> "Forget the sky," the priestess always warned. "It has nothing left for you."
But the sky hadn't forgotten her. And neither had the wind.
A low hum echoed in the air behind her. Not a bell. Not a voice. A presence. Xinyi spun around.
Nothing.
Then—movement. A ripple across the stone courtyard below. Dust lifting in a spiral, like a tiny whirlwind dancing across the ground.
She stared as it grew larger, faster, until it rose up—not a storm, but a shape. Vague. Human. Formed of air and glimmering threads of silver. Eyes like cloudlight. No mouth. No face.
The wind shivered through her again. This time it spoke clearly.
> "You remember. Even if you do not want to."
"You fell once. And the world broke beneath you."
"Now rise, Wingborn."
And with that, the wind exploded.
A shockwave slammed into her chest and she fell backwards, off the edge of the roof.
---
💥 End of Chapter One Teaser:
> Her scream was lost to the sky.
But the wind caught her.
Just before she hit the ground, her wings opened—not made of feathers, but of pure, glowing air—and she remembered how to fly.
---