Page 192 of Daughter of the Serpent

How long had she pictured it in her dreams?

It seemed surreal, and as she stood at the edge of it all now, she couldn’t help but shrink. As she watched the ships bobbed in the dark water like carved beasts ready for battle, she didn’t know how to feel. The moment was too vast, too overwhelming to name. For years, she had watched those very ships leave and return from distant shores, her heart aching as they slipped to and from the harbor. She had stood on this same soil with envy curling around her ribs, her heart raw with aching.

They had told her the sea would never have her. That it was not her domain. She was born for duty, they said - meant for soil and stone, for duty and silence. They had written her fate for her, etched it in unyielding lines: obedient, unseen, contained. A servant of the temple, never the sky. Never the sea.

They had called her wicked. Called her wrong. Called her unworthy.

But today, she would walk the path they said she never could.

Today, the impossible would be made real.

The pull in her chest that had haunted her since childhood would no longer be a nameless yearning - but a demand. A reckoning. It howled even now in her ribs, alive and electric.

This moment wasn’t just hers. It was the answer to every stolen dream, every silenced hope. And no one - not Rederick, not the temple, not even the gods themselves - could take it from her now.

And yet… standing at the precipice, she stood silent.

The sea wind lashed her face, and still, her boots stayed rooted in the damp earth.

She could feel resistance coiling in her gut like a serpent, tightening with every breath. Her limbs betrayed her, heavy and weighted, as if the apparitions of her past clung to her ankles, begging her not to go. Her heart, now trembled under the weight of doubt. Fear surged - sharp, cold, and relentless. It slithered, whispering voices of doubt curling along the recesses of her mind, spinning theirtales of woe. Speaking her thoughts and twisting them with faded memories she had rather forgotten.

She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t a warrior. She wouldn’t survive.

Even though she had trained for this. Fought for it. Bled for it. But nothing had prepared her for the terror of standing on the threshold. Nothing had warned her that her triumph might feel like grief. She had imagined this moment tasting like sunlight - like joy. Freedom. But it tasted like ash in her mouth. Like loss. Like the quiet echo of all she had sacrificed.

What if she had been wrong all along?

What if she had mistaken longing for destiny?

What if this whole time, she had been chasing a mirage, painting herself in stories she had no right to claim?

What if her dreams had been a lie?

Her chest clenched. The breath she drew in felt jagged, like it might split her open. Her past crowded her thoughts - flashes of scornful eyes, harsh words, nights alone with her shame. Her body remembered too much. The rejection. The abandonment. The pain of being unwanted, unseen. And now it quivered, alone, afraid.

Could she really leave everything behind? Could she carry it across the sea without it poisoning everything she found on the other side?

She didn’t know.

Not anymore. Not without Axel beside her.

Everything she thought she understood - about herself, about him - had fractured.

She had believed him. Believed his words when they spoke of truth, of her strength. When he looked at her like she was already whole. Like she was enough.

She had let herself trust. Let herself hope.

But now?

Now, every word he’d spoken felt hollow.

Had any of it been real?

Had he ever truly cared - whether she lived, or died?

Or had she only ever been a means to his end?

And if it had all been a lie…