The plains stretched endlessly, a grassy desert swept by a furious storm. Lightning streaked across the sky, briefly illuminating two figures standing still in the vast darkness. The scent of rain and soaked earth filled the air, amplifying the intensity of the moment.

  Eryth, the Storm Hunter, tightened his grip on his staff. The weapon hid its true nature in perfect balance and a dark alloy that absorbed the light.

  His breath, short and steady, formed ephemeral clouds as his piercing gaze remained fixed on his adversary: Azhar, a towering figure cloaked in a heavy mantle. A black pendant hung from his neck, faintly pulsing with each rumble of thunder.

  Unmoved by the onslaught of the elements, he seemed in fragile equilibrium, as if cradled by the wind.

  His breathing, slow but measured, mirrored the rhythm of the storm raging around them.

  Azhar had felt the pursuit. As soon as his power was unmasked, he knew a Hunter would come for him. He hadn’t fled for long, only enough to reach these desolate lands where the storm could rise, and the lightning could become his ally.

  Yet at this moment, facing his opponent, a bitter thought crossed his mind:

  What if, this time, it wasn’t enough?

  Azhar’s voice boomed, as if born from the thunder itself. "Look at me, Hunter!" he roared, as lightning struck behind him, illuminating his rain-beaten mantle. "I am... the Storm! You think you can?! Possess this power?! It does not bend. It has no master, no limit. It is instinct, it is brute force. Believing you can tame it would be your greatest mistake."

  Eryth did not respond. He wasn’t here to talk. His only reply was to ready himself, holding his staff in an unconventional way, as if it concealed a secret he refused to reveal. A bead of sweat slid down his temple, mixing with the pouring rain.

  That’s when Azhar charged. He moved with improbable speed, making his massive frame seem unreal, almost weightless in the wind. Then his fist struck with incredible brutality, tearing through the air like an avalanche, accompanied by a gale so powerful it could have uprooted a tree.

  Eryth narrowly avoided the blow, but the remaining gust hit him like a wall, throwing him violently into the mud. His staff slid out of reach, but he extended his hand and retrieved it with a swift motion.

  He rose halfway, one knee sunken in the mud, his fingers clenched tightly around the staff. Despite his trembling, his movement was steady as he planted the weapon in the ground. The Hunter awaited his moment.

  Azhar, now confident in his superiority, stood still for a moment. He lifted his gaze. The storm answered.

  A colossal bolt of lightning tore through the clouds, illuminating the plains in a stark, searing light. With a deafening roar, the lightning descended upon Eryth with unparalleled fury.

  But Eryth had anticipated this moment. His staff, already aligned with millimetric precision, captured the lightning, absorbing its power. In a sharp crack that eclipsed the thunder itself, the weapon released the energy in a brutal outburst, like a rupture in the world.

  Azhar was struck head-on. The discharge tore through his body from end to end with the unleashed fury of nature. The lightning engulfed the pendant around his neck, which shattered under the impact.

  Reeling, breathless, he collapsed, his body betraying a void he only now understood.

  The Calm

  The storm eased with a final sigh. The wind died, the lightning faded, and only the rain remained—softer, almost benevolent. It fell like a balm offered by the downpour, soaking the ravaged earth. It seemed as though the same force, after unleashing its fury, was now trying to soothe suffering souls.

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  Eryth approached his fallen adversary. Kneeling in the drenched grass, Azhar remained still, his gaze lost, drained of the energy that had sustained him. He was nothing more than the shadow of a once wild grandeur, now extinguished.

  Between them, the broken medallion lay, fragile, barely visible among the vegetation and mud, harmless. Eryth picked it up with the tips of his fingers, as if still fearing it might burn him.

  Eryth examined it more closely. A crack snaked across the surface of the fractured object, from which oozed a green liquid, pulsing with an eerie vitality. Its golden highlights, like luminous filaments, shimmered under their own glow, resembling emerald mercury, fluid and unreal. This unsettling hue evoked nature’s silent warnings: the vibrant skin of a poisonous caterpillar, the brilliant colors of a toxic frog. A silent danger—fascinating and forbidden—imbued with an unfathomable power.

  Never before had he witnessed such strangeness. With a hesitant motion, he wiped the substance with the tip of his fingers. It seemed almost alive, as if the very essence of the object were escaping through its wound.

  A shiver of horror coursed through him as he made contact with the substance. A dull, overwhelming fear seized him, as if a vision of apocalypse had been inflicted upon him by the wound in the object itself. Around them, the trees lining the edges of the plain lay scorched, some still burning; a torrent of mud cascaded below, carrying branches and shattered trunks, torn and scattered like broken toys.

  His blood pounded in his temples. For a moment, he closed his eyes, struggling not to be overcome.

  In the distance, the furious growls of the storm still echoed through the night, like the guttural cries of a wounded beast retreating into the shadows.

  At the heart of this barren and desolate expanse, it was as though the storm had been granted free reign: a place where its fury could rise unchecked. Azhar had not chosen these desolate lands without reason. Here, the tempest had found the room to unleash its full power without turning against its bearer.

  He opened his eyes again to what he held in his hand: the medallion, broken but his. He had defeated the storm in single combat.

  Another shiver coursed through him, carrying an incredible sense of power. A strange heat surged in his veins, new, exhilarating, unmatched—the kind he had always sought. He had won. He now possessed the power of the heavens, a fragment of the storm, a terrible inheritance. How long before he mastered it… or it consumed him?

  Yet, a doubt grew within him, insidious and darker: did the lightning truly obey, or was it merely passing to a new hand?

  The rain had softened to a murmur, gentle and almost unreal, like a soothing shadow over the chaos. Eryth raised his head toward Azhar and cast him one last glance—an unreadable gaze, devoid of mercy or anger. He hesitated for a moment, as if frozen, and the night held its breath.

  The Remnants of Power

  On the ground, Azhar felt a cruel clarity wash over him. He had failed. In his desperate attempt to protect his power, he had lost it. It was not a force one could wield twice. Tears, almost trembling, slid down his cheeks as fleeting images of his recently lost power passed before his mind’s eye. It felt as though he had stepped out of History itself.

  He knew the lightning Eryth had sent back at him could have struck down an entire herd. That power had risked destroying its own cradle—the pendant—to save its bearer. Now, that energy was in other hands, wounded as well, though no one could yet know the extent of its scars.

  Stripped of his talisman, Azhar was nothing more than a man. He could now clearly see the blind arrogance that had led him to believe lightning could serve a master. He watched Eryth walk away, almost gliding through the rain, without animosity.

  In the depths of his silence, Azhar felt a mix of regret and relief: regret for having lost, but relief at finally being freed from a power that had consumed him.

  He even felt a sense of gratitude toward Eryth, who, surprisingly, had spared him.

  Perhaps the victor understood the value of Azhar’s experience—his deep connection with the storm.

  Perhaps he even hoped that one day their paths would cross again, to once more test this mysterious bond between man and nature.

  Not far away, hidden in the shadows of a ridge, a watchful gaze had followed every moment of the confrontation. In this exposed and barren plain, it took a rare skill to remain unseen. The future Hunter had etched into memory every move of the victor, every nuance of the storm finally tamed.

  His time would come. The wind would carry his name.

  Another chapter of the hunt was taking shape, as inevitable as a storm gathering its clouds.