The Calm Before the Voidstorm
The Voidstorm was much worse than they had described, it felt like something that slowly began to close in around you the moment you stepped through the portal. The deeper Aerden and his platoon moved, the more the world seemed to unravel at the edges. This wasn’t the Void itself, but something shaped by it. A world caught in the middle of it all, where reality seemed to warp beneath its unyielding force. A lesson to be learned. The terrain was jagged, uneven, and not entirely natural in its formation. The sky churned endlessly above them in deep violets and blues, with fractured lights casting everything in a dim, unnatural glow that made distance and depth difficult to judge.
Aerden kept pace with the others, boots steady against the uneven ground despite the tightness in his chest he couldn’t quite shake. This wasn’t training. There were no controlled conditions here, no instructors watching from a distance, no room for error that wouldn’t carry real consequences. This was his first real mission with the Elite Forces, and not just any mission. This place, this operation…the Voidspire looming over them, there was too much at stake for anything less than their best. They had helped on the Isle of Quel’danas, and then in Zul’Aman for a while, but this one felt different.
“Thinking too far ahead again?” Keyalin moved quietly at his side, his voice cutting through the downward spiraling before it could fully take hold. Aerden glanced over at him, catching the observant look he had come to rely on over the past two years training together.
“Yeah,” Aerden admitted under his breath. “Working on it.”
Keyalin gave a small nod, saying nothing more. He didn’t need to, the reminder was enough for them both to keep those thoughts at bay.
The staging grounds came into view soon after, scattered with the silhouettes of other platoons already assembled. Even in this warped place, there was something comforting about that sight. They weren’t alone. Aerden’s gaze swept the area instinctively, and easily found Pollux. He had expected it, they both had. They had both already spoken about this mission before deployment, acknowledging the likelihood they would be here together. Still, seeing him standing among his own platoon in a place like this settled something in Aerden that he hadn’t realized was unsettled.
Pollux turned as Aerden approached with a slightly out of place smile. There was no surprise in his expression, just that same steady presence Aerden had come to know. The older man had been doing this for decades, the Voidstorm itself was just another battlefield to navigate for him. “Aerden.”
“Hey.” They clasped forearms in greeting, no need for anything more than that here.
“You made it in,” Pollux’s eyes were already assessing, taking in his son’s posture and the tension he held in his body.
“Yeah,” Aerden replied, exhaling faintly. “Guess this is it.”
Pollux studied him for a moment longer. “First mission.”
“First real one.” It wasn’t easy to say aloud, the gravity of it all just sat below the surface of his voice. Not fear exactly, but nerves sharpened by the knowledge of what this place was, and what waited ahead.
“You trust your team?” Pollux asked, glancing briefly past him.
Aerden didn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
“Then you’ll be fine.” There was no softness to the reassurance, but it helped all the same.
They didn’t linger for long. A brief nod passed between them before Aerden stepped back, returning to his platoon with a feeling in his chest that was a little steadier than before. Just knowing his father would be there with him was a small amount of weight lifted from his shoulders.
Nighttime in the Voidstorm wasn’t truly night, there was no change in the sky. It continued its slow, endless churn overhead, and the ground beneath them carried a faint, constant hum. It was subtle, but impossible to ignore once noticed.
Aerden sat on a low outcropping within their assigned area, elbows resting on his knees as he stared out into the weird horizon. His thoughts kept circling back around, at least not spiraling like before, but they were still persistent. Tomorrow. The Voidspire. Everything they had trained for led to this moment. Keyalin settled beside him, quiet as always, and for a while, neither of them spoke.
“It doesn’t feel real yet,” Aerden eventually cut through the silence.
Keyalin nodded slightly. “I know what you mean, but I guess it will. Tomorrow.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing just yet…”
Footsteps approached again, and Pollux joined them, lowering himself onto the stone with the poise of someone who had done this countless times before. His gaze lifted briefly to the fractured sky before settling back onto Aerden and Keyalin. “Tomorrow’s not at all like your training.”
Aerden huffed quietly. “I figured.”
Pollux’s eyes shifted to him. “You’re going to feel everything sharper and faster. Doubt included.”
Aerden swallowed faintly but nodded, and Keyalin raised an uneasy brow.
“The Void feeds on that,” Pollux continued. “It doesn’t create it, it amplifies what’s already there.” He taps a finger against his temple.
Keyalin spoke then, “So you ignore it?”
Pollux shook his head once. “No, you acknowledge it. Then you act anyway.”
Aerden exhaled slowly, tucking away that piece of advice for later use as his eyes drifted back out toward the distorted landscape. “There’s a lot riding on this.”
“Yes,” Pollux said, too quickly. No dismissal or attempt to soften it. Just the truth.
Aerden swallowed, “I don’t want to mess this up.”
“You might,” Pollux replied. Aerden and Keyalin both glanced at him, caught off guard. “Not in a way that matters. Usually. But you will make mistakes, everyone does. I certainly have. There is no one way to do things when it comes to war, it's unpredictable. The difference is whether you freeze or adapt.”
Aerden nodded slowly, repeating, “Adapt.”
Pollux’s expression softened slightly. “You’ve already proven you can.” For a moment, none of them spoke. The air hummed softly around them, and the sky shifted in ways that made it hard to focus on any one point for too long. “You’re ready,” Pollux spoke again at last. “You both are.” They had to be.
Aerden held his gaze, searching for doubt, and finding none. The nerves didn’t disappear, but they calmed into something more manageable. Something he could control instead of allowing to control him. “Yeah, I think we are.” Keyalin nodded in agreement with his friend’s comment, he wasn’t quite as certain.
The three of them sat there a while longer beneath a sky that didn’t belong to their world, on the edge of something none of them could fully predict. Tomorrow, they would step into the Voidspire. But tonight, Aerden let himself feel the weight of it, and trust that he could carry it forward.
@keyalinvendel @polluxhale
