Submission (#474) Approved

Nadira's Core Memory, the Festival of Storms
(The character Zephiron doesn't exist yet, but maybe someday they will. But they are who I imagine as Nadira's mentor figure)

The storm never slept in Layer 5. It rolled and roared across the jagged sky with a hunger that made even the most seasoned Tatsukoi pause before taking wing. Towering columns of obsidian speared up from the cliffside amphitheater, slicing into the clouds like the broken teeth of a long-dead god. Lightning danced between them, crackling arcs of pale gold and venomous blue that seared the air and made the very stones tremble.
To most, it was chaos.
To Nadira, it was home.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be this close. But the scent of ozone, the echo of roaring wind, and the distant cheers of the crowd had drawn her like a magnet. Her tail—slick, bright, bubbling with bioluminescent flecks—kept brushing against her legs in warning, forming shaky shapes like arrows and anxious eyes. But Nadira, maybe eight or nine at the time, was already crawling under the security barrier.
“I just wanna see,” she whispered. Her tail pulsed with heat and flared upward, reshaping into a flapping ribbon like a stop sign. She swatted it aside with a grin. “C’mon, they’re not gonna miss one tiny fan.”
The amphitheater loomed around her like a canyon carved into the sky. Jagged rocks, soaked in mist, overlooked a chasm of open air where stormriders danced. The Olympians—gods among Tatsukoi—soared through the chaos in choreographed displays of elemental prowess. One hurled discs of superheated plasma that vaporized rain midair; another spun through the wind, harnessing vortexes like ribbons on their wings.
Nadira stood, soaked to the bone but utterly entranced. Her claws dug into the slick stone ledge as her eyes followed every daring move, every glowing strike of bioluminescence through the tempest.
She knew them by name. She had memorized their flight patterns. She knew who had broken records, who had braved the worst downdraft in fifty cycles, who had saved lives during the Collapse of the Fifth Vault. She dreamed of her name announced among theirs, a hush falling before the crack of thunder applauded her rise.
She didn’t want to watch the storm.
She wanted to conquer it.
Behind her, the crowd roared as a particularly close lightning bolt shattered a platform—then rebuilt itself midair, the contestant laughing as they vaulted off it.
Nadira’s smile stretched wide, water trailing off her fangs.
“Next year,” she whispered to no one. “They’re gonna chant my name.”
Her tail curled into a tight coil behind her, forming a nervous spiral.
But Nadira was already scanning the cliff edges. Already wondering just how high she could climb before someone noticed.
The upper cliffside was off-limits.
That’s what made it perfect.
Nadira’s claws gripped the soaked stone as she scrambled upward, muscles burning but spirit blazing brighter than ever. Wind howled past her ears and pulled at her wing joints, not yet strong enough for true flight but twitching with every heartbeat. Her tail grumbled, forming the shape of a snarling maw with crossed fangs as it dragged behind her.
She smirked over her shoulder.
“Bite me, conscience.”
Above her, the storm thickened into a living wall of electric pressure. The Olympus contestants danced in and out of it, skimming too close to death, leaving vapor trails in dazzling spirals. From her vantage point now, the crowd below was a blur, distant and irrelevant. It was just her and the storm.
She reached the ledge—a narrow platform nestled between two jagged spikes of volcanic glass. It wasn’t made for standing. That didn’t stop her.
A gust nearly swept her off the edge as she pulled herself up, standing tall despite her trembling knees. Her bioluminescent accents glowed defiantly in the rain, casting ripples across her body in time with the thunder.
Then she saw it—him.
Zephiron. The youngest reigning champion of the Festival. His wings shimmered with kinetic sigils and lightning lace as he sliced through the gale. He dove, twisted, launched upward into a flip maneuver, and then—
He spotted her.
For a heartbeat, their eyes locked. His mask didn’t hide the flicker of confusion... then recognition. Then horror.
Nadira grinned and waved, completely oblivious to how violently the wind was bucking at her footing. “Hi!! You’re amazing!!”
Zephiron didn’t wave back.
Instead, he veered straight toward her.
That’s when the lightning struck.
A bolt—untamed, white-hot—lanced from the sky and hit the stone beside her with a sound like a scream. The ledge exploded into shards. Nadira's balance broke.
The world turned sideways.
And she fell.
The wind stole her scream. Her arms flailed for anything, everything—nothing caught. Her tail, in a panic, morphed into a crude glider shape, stretching wide, flapping madly—but they weren’t ready for this.
The storm swallowed her.
And in that chaos, a second figure dove after her like a meteor—Sigils flaring. Wings shrieking against gravity.
The fall felt eternal.
Nadira’s heartbeat became the rhythm of the sky—loud, erratic, aching in her throat. The wind clawed at her like it wanted to tear her apart and scatter her across the layers of the world. Her tail, ever-loyal and terrified, splintered into a tangled mess of flailing wings, arms, and pleading eyes.
“Nadira, NADIRA!” it wailed, speaking in a dozen shapes at once.
She barely heard it over the storm.
Then—impact.
But not the ground.
She crashed hard into a body—warm, solid, and already straining against the speed of their descent. Feathers, scales, and lightning sigils wrapped around her like a net. Zephiron had caught her.
“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!” he roared over the wind, his tone furious—yet not unkind. He looked more scared than angry. His grip was ironclad.
She blinked up at him, dazed. “...Getting a better view?”
“You almost died, little spark!”
They spun in a tight spiral, Zephiron banking into the current, wings outstretched to slow their fall. The storm fought him at every angle. Rain hit them like pellets. The air crackled.
A bolt struck nearby—too close.
Nadira’s tail snapped into an umbrella, then an octopus, then a very unhelpful balloon.
“Help me out here!” she snapped at it. “We are not dying today!”
The tail hissed but obeyed, snapping into a stabilizing kite wing that reduced their spin. Zephiron grunted as they coasted into a sudden updraft, pulling them toward the edge of a floating basalt arch.
They slammed down hard. Zephiron tumbled, shielding Nadira with his body. The stones cracked beneath them, but they didn’t fall through.
Silence. For a moment.
Then—Nadira wheezed.
And laughed.
Wild, breathless laughter. The kind that bubbled out of you when you’d just survived the impossible.
Zephiron sat up slowly. His frills flattened. “You’re insane.”
“Compliment accepted,” she said, wiping water from her eyes, tail wagging in exhausted, guilty glee.
He stared at her. “You’re not even an Olympian. Not yet. Why would you—why risk it like that?”
Her voice came out softer now, still laced with adrenaline:
“Because I want to earn it. Not just cheer from the shadows. I want to fight the storm, not just admire it.”
She glanced skyward, eyes burning.
“But… I think I still have a few storms left to train through.”
The rain had thinned into a whisper. Thunder now rumbled far in the distance, softened by the thick mist curling along the cracked basalt ridge. The sky above the Summit of Storms shimmered with bruised violets and molten gold, clouds backlit by lightning that no longer hungers to strike.
Nadira sat with her legs dangling off the edge of the floating stone. Her tail curled around her waist like a blanket, murmuring worried nonsense and then nuzzling against her like a puppy that had cried itself out.
Zephiron stood behind her, arms crossed, his silhouette tall and sharp against the glowing sky. He had removed his storm cloak and draped it around her shoulders earlier. She hadn’t noticed until the warmth sunk in.
Neither of them spoke for a long while.
“I’m sorry,” Nadira finally said.
The words felt foreign, awkward in her mouth. Like storm glass instead of flame.
“I didn’t mean to make you chase me. I just… I thought I could handle it. I thought if I proved something out there, I’d stop being just the weird storm-chaser with the cursed tail.”
Her voice cracked.
Zephiron sighed. He moved closer and sat beside her, not touching, but close enough to share the heat of presence.
“You’ve got fire, Nadira. You always have,” he said, more gently now. “But fire without control? It just burns. No one survives chasing lightning without knowing how to bend it.”
He reached up and tapped one claw against her forehead.
“You’ve got the spark. But you need the focus. You want to be an Olympian? You don’t prove that by surviving a fall. You prove it by learning how not to fall in the first place.”
She lowered her head, nodding slowly.
Then, softly: “Will you teach me?”
Zephiron smiled, for real this time. Not a smug grin, not a stormborn smirk—just something proud. Fatherly, almost.
“I already have been,” he said. “But now you’re ready to listen.”
Nadira leaned back, letting the wind toy with her hair and fins. Her tail flicked once, like a flag planted in new ground.
She still wanted to conquer the storm. Still wanted to rise higher than any Tatsukoi before her.
But now, for the first time… she understood that flying with others didn’t make her weaker.
It made her stronger.

This was a core memory for Nadira. A turning point carved deep into her spirit like lightning glass into stone. Not because she braved the storm, but because she finally listened to the silence after it. In that quiet moment. Wrapped in her mentor’s cloak, her fire no longer fighting but learning to burn true—Nadira took her first real step toward becoming the Olympian she was always meant to be.

Reward	Amount
Rainbow Shell	10
New Chapter	1
The Next Chapter - Design, MYO, and Item Raffles (Raffle Ticket)	1