In the days of the King of Storms, many traveled many miles to reach the Hand of Vod, Titan of the Past. There were those who wished to live in the past, to walk in memories. There were others, still, wracked by guilt, convinced they could shed their mistakes at the Titan’s corpse.
The Traveler With The Onyx Sword came, on a day the storm raged particularly strongly, Kest’s screams echoing across torn skies. A man, storm-clad, sat on the knuckle of the butchered god.
Neither spoke for many moments, before the Storm-Lord spoke.
“It is strange to see you here, Butcher.”
The traveler furrowed their brow, looking at the body below them.
“I have come to look to Vod for wisdom,” they replied. “My regrets drag me down, like pig-lead. My mistakes. Every word unspoken, every half-truth. I am drowning in my past.”
“The past is not an ocean,” the storm-king responded, shaking his head. “The past is frozen, trapped in place like amber. Mistakes, regrets, they are only reflections of you. Echoes of your present. You are not dragged down by your past, you fear your future.”
The Traveler thought long on this, onyx sword drifting from hand to hand, the weight of their past like ice gathering around them.
“…They must be fixed. My mistakes,” they said weakly.
“Then do it,’ the golden hair lion of a man growled back. “You, who strides twice for every step, who makes a mockery of the chain of events. You can walk in the fourth way. Stride into your past. Fix it.”
The Traveler grimaced, knuckles white as they looked at the blade in their hand. The Storm King scoffed at this.
“You fear it. The river is frozen. If you change things, you move forward in an unknown place. A new future. There is no fixing the mistakes of the past. There is only a new path forwards, unknown, just as terrifying as the one you fear now.”
The Traveler stood, the air crackling around as she looked at the body of Vod. The frozen Titan, a monument. Already dead, before any butcher with a seven-folded blade in hand. A mausoleum to a Before that never was.
“Past, future. Everything is unknown. Shattered. Unwound,” the traveler said weakly, clutching their cloak. “If there’s no point…if it’s all frozen. If only forward exists, what way should I move in?”
The Storm King just laughed, raising his arms.
“The way you want to go!” he said, the laughter like a rumble of thunder. “Damn the consequences. Damn your doubts! Maybe you fail. You’ve done it before. And if you don’t try, the future you want won’t ever exist. Past, present…why don’t you think about your future?”
The Traveler let out a breath, eyes flickering to the horizon, the edge of the storm. The words of the Butcher of Gods hung heavy in their brow, the flickering Crown of Kings burning blue.
“Master the Storm, Destroyer of Stagnation.”
The Traveler raised the onyx blade, metal right hand gleaming in the lightning strikes.
“Strike the Horizon.”
And with that, she was gone.
-Accounts of the The Unyielding Chain, last of the Storm Heralds.
Strike The Horizon 