Page 51

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SERA

S ilence.

The kind that doesn’t belong in this world.

No breath. No heartbeat. No pain.

I am dead.

There is no light. No darkness. No peace. No torment. Just—nothing.

A vast, empty void where I am unmade.

I feel the blood that left me. The pulse that stopped. The warmth that drained from my flesh.

I remember the sound of the blade cutting me open.

Veylan’s blade.

His hands, the last thing I felt before I slipped away.

I should hate him.

I should want to rip him apart.

But the pain I expect does not come.

Instead, something else stirs.

A hum, soft at first, like fingers skimming the edges of my mind. It slithers beneath my skin, an echo that is not mine.

A whisper that is ancient.

A voice that isn’t mine but is becoming me.

“You are not finished. This is only the beginning.”

I open my mouth to scream—to demand answers—to rage against the cruel, twisted fate that has led me here.

But I do not have a mouth.

I am nothing. I am everything.

The magic moves.

It coils around me, through me, inside me. It is mine.

No, I am it.

A new pulse surges through my chest. It is not my heart. It is something older.

“Rise. The sirens shall come back to Protheka, and you’re the first.”

The void fractures.

The world returns.

The battlefield is eerily still.

The bodies remain where they fell, blood seeping into the earth, the sky above thick with the lingering scent of death and fire.

Hazeran is gone. Sealed.

The war is won.

But the price was too high. Veylan stands at the center of it, his expression carved from stone, but his hands—his hands tremble.

I am in them. Still. Lifeless. Cold.

The blood on his fingers is mine.

The brothers stand in a loose circle, staring down at what they have done. At me.

None of them speak.

None of them move. There is nothing left to say.

I was the sacrifice. They made sure of that.

Veylan does not look at them. He does not acknowledge them. His focus is only on me.

My skin is pale, my lips parted, my body unnaturally still.

No breath. No sound. No pulse beneath his fingertips.

I am gone.

And yet there’s a whisper. A hum in the wind.

The ground trembles and the air thickens.

My body pulses with something unnatural.

My fingers twitch, the first sign of me coming back.

My lips part and I breathe, finally tasting oxygen in my lungs after what feels like forever.

The gasp that tears from my throat is raw, desperate, as if I have spent eternity drowning. My back arches, air ripping into my lungs like fire.

My vision is blurred, my senses fragmented. The world is too much.

I hear someone curse.

I hear someone else step back.

Then Veylan’s voice.

Hoarse. Broken.

"Sera—"

I exhale shakily, my body burning with something new.

Something that was not there before.

I feel them.

The brothers. Their shock. Their horror. Their fear.

And then I feel him. Veylan.

His grip is too tight, his breathing uneven, his chest heaving against mine.

I blink, slow, heavy, dragging myself back to reality.

The magic still hums beneath my skin, a living thing, restless and wrong.

Something inside me is different.

It did not just take my life.

It gave me something back.

I shift in Veylan’s arms, my fingers digging into the fabric of his bloodstained armor.

He flinches.

The monster flinches.

My lips part, but no words come.

I do not know who I am anymore.

I died.

And yet I am here.

The silence is deafening.

No one speaks.

No one moves.

Veylan’s fingers tighten on me, as if he is trying to ground himself.

I look up. Into his eyes.

The monster who betrayed me.

The monster who killed me.

The monster who chose me.

He does not speak. His jaw clenches, his expression torn between relief and something else.

Something darker and he sees it.

He sees what I have become.

I am no longer his.