Zephyr Vale had always listened.
To storms.
To silence.
To the spaces between words.
But now, the wind spoke.
The First Whisper
It came at dawn.
A low hum, threaded through the trees.
Not language.
Not song.
A vibration stitched with symbols.
Zephyr froze.
The glyphs hovered in the air, invisible to others, but clear to him.
"Six."
The Hidden Tower
He turned to Nova.
"My glyph is fractured," she said. "But yours… it's hearing."
Zephyr nodded. "The wind carries a tower."
Lyra frowned. "There are only five."
The stitched child stepped forward.
Their fire pulsed.
"There were never five."
Cassian whispered, "Then where is the sixth?"
The Map of Air
Zephyr closed his eyes.
The wind wrapped around him, forming a spiral.
Not of stone.
Not of thread.
Of air.
He saw it — a tower that did not stand.
A tower that drifted.
A tower stitched into the sky itself.
Nova gasped. "It's not built. It's breathed."
The Prophecy
The wind whispered again.
Zephyr translated.
"The sixth tower is not silence. It is echo."
"It does not forget. It repeats."
"And when it speaks, the loop will break."
Cassian gripped the coin.
Lyra's mark burned.
Juno raised her blade.
The stitched child wept.
The Choice
Zephyr opened his eyes.
"The sixth tower is coming."
The wind pulsed.
The city trembled.
The sky cracked.
And for the first time, the towers themselves turned — not toward Cassian, not toward Aurex, but toward Zephyr Vale.
Because he was the listener.
And the sixth tower had chosen him.