THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

The dream began in the dark.

It was not an empty darkness, but an oppressive, tangible one. The air smelled of rusted metal and the dust of accumulated years. Asimil felt the cold of a metal door against his back and the hard floor beneath his knees. He was in a cramped space, so narrow he could barely move. A school locker.

From outside, came the laughter. Muffled, distorted by the metal, but unmistakably cruel. Someone banged on the door. The sound rumbled inside the small space, vibrating in his skull like thunder.

— Hey, weirdo! How do you like your new home? — The voice was a faceless echo, but the humiliation was sharp as a knife. Panic swept over him, a wave of claustrophobia that closed his throat. He felt small, powerless. 

Then, in the darkness in front of him, a figure materialized. It was himself, but different. He was calm, his features serene and his eyes, glowing with a faint green light, looked at him without judgment.

— Is this what you fear? — The other Asimil asked, his voice not a sound, but a thought that bloomed directly in his mind. — Being weak. Being trapped. —

Asimil, in the dream, could only nod, trembling.

— Forgetting is easy — continued the figure. — It allows you to run away from this feeling. But it leaves you empty. Remembering hurts... but it might give you purpose. The question is not whether you want to forget who you are. The question is... what do you really want to be? —

The figure vanished, and Asimil awoke with a start, his heart pounding hard against his ribs. The question of his other self hovered in the silence of his clan room.

After the incident in the Trenches, a strange peace had settled over Clan Harmonia. The failure of the event became the talk of the town for a few days and then, like all things, it became an anecdote, a war story that the old-timers told the newcomers. Only Sacres, in private, continued to frown, convinced that they had witnessed the prelude to something much darker.

For Asimil, life became a new normal. The team, forged in chaos, now moved as a single entity on the most mundane missions. They patrolled trade routes and collected rare herbs in the nearby forests. They were inglorious tasks, but they forced them to spend time together, to get to know each other's rhythms and mannerisms.

Ikel was no longer the bully who invited himself onto the team. He was now a big brother, loud and exasperating, but fiercely protective. During one mission, when a mutant boar unexpectedly charged Asimil, Ikel stepped in without thinking, taking the blow and responding with a fiery hook that sent the beast flying. 

— Are you all right, little one? — she asked, ruffling his hair. Asimil, for the first time, didn't feel like the weak one. but like someone worth protecting.

The relationship with Noelia was a much more complex terrain. The open hostility had disappeared, replaced by a tension laden with silences. She was still distant, but now deliberately sought him out to team up, always with the same excuse.
— Your uncanny luck in finding rare objects saves us time. It's all about efficiency —

During one such collecting mission, they stopped to rest by the Lake of Silver Reflections, whose still waters reflected the violet sky of the Altverse. Ikel and Sacres had wandered off with the excuse of searching for a rare frog specimen.

They sat on the shore, a meter away from each other. The silence stretched on, broken only by the soft murmur of the water. Asimil wanted to ask him about Gray, about his brother. He wanted to understand the root of her pain, but he felt it would be like touching an open wound. Not now, she thought. It would be forcing something still too fragile.

It was she who broke the silence, without taking her eyes off the water.

— You've improved. — he said, his voice almost neutral. — You're not a complete mess anymore. —

Asimil turned to look at her, surprised. Coming from Noelia, those words were the equivalent of a poem. An inexplicable warmth spread through his chest, one that had nothing to do with his green flames. He could only smile slightly.

— I have good teammates. — Noelia didn't answer, but he saw the corners of her lips curl up slightly. 

She, for her part, was fighting an internal battle. I should apologize. For how I treated him. For abandoning him in the pit. The words rose in her throat, but they crashed against the wall of pride and arrogance she had built up over the years to protect herself. They stayed there, trapped. Unable to show vulnerability, he opted for silence.

In the distance, hidden behind a group of rocks, Ikel and Sacres watched them.

— I'll bet you 500 coins that Asimil is the first to confess — whispered Ikel, with a shark's smile.

Sacres didn't even turn around. His gray eyes fixed on the couple by the lake. — Don't be silly. It's her. She has more to lose and therefore more to gain. Double or nothing. —

Ikel let out a chuckle. — It's a deal. —

By the lake, Asimil and Noelia stood up to continue the mission. For an instant, as they stood up, their hands almost brushed. Both withdrew it as if they had touched an ember, an awkward gesture that charged the air with a silent electricity. The bond, though neither dared admit it, was forming, strand by strand, in the calm that precedes the inevitable storm.