Page 10 of The Shattered Rite (The Sightless Prophecy Trilogy #1)

They moved as one. Vaeronth led her from the edge of the ancient pool, its surface still burning faintly with the afterglow of their bond—ripples catching the light like liquid fire before melting back into shadow.

The air grew colder as they left it behind, each step echoing in a silence so deep it felt alive.

The stone beneath her boots was damp and smooth, worn down by centuries of tides she could not hear.

High above, unseen in the dark, something shifted in the cavern roof—a sound like the groan of a sleeping god turning in its dreams.

They passed through narrow fissures and chambers vast enough to swallow cities, the walls glistening with mineral veins that pulsed faintly in the dark. Her blurred vision caught flashes of movement in them—light that seemed to breathe, as if the rock itself remembered the birth of magic.

Deeper still they went, until even her own breathing sounded foreign. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped in a slow, patient rhythm. Her fingers brushed the stone as she walked, and the runes along her skin answered with a faint pulse, as if the Undermire knew her now.

Then—light. Faint at first, a pale shimmer far ahead.

It was not sunlight. It was the ghost of sunlight, fractured and cold, seeping through cracks in the world above. It painted the jagged walls silver, and for a moment she thought she saw shapes moving in it—winged, crowned, robed in flame—but the images were gone when she blinked.

Vaeronth moved unerringly toward it.

“You know the way back,” she murmured.

I have always known, he said, voice echoing low through the stone. The Undermire keeps its paths for those it remembers.

They wound upward through a tunnel that spiraled like the inside of a shell. The air grew warmer, sharper. A breath of wind ghosted over her cheek—wind, real wind, touched by the scent of pine and rain.

At last, the stone path opened into the shattered ruin where the trial had begun.

The air here felt older, heavier—like the space itself had been waiting for her return.

Moss clung to the broken pillars in thick green shrouds, and silver lichen crawled over the stone in patterns like half-forgotten constellations.

It looked as though centuries had passed, though it had been only a single day.

Vaeronth halted at the base of the final stair, his shadow stretching up the steps like the memory of a storm.

Beyond this, I cannot go.

“I know.”

Her throat burned. “You’re too vast for the world above.”

My form would crush the castle.

Her fingers curled around the pendant, feeling the low, steady pulse within—not heat, but the measured rhythm of something vast and watchful.

“Will it hurt?”

I do not believe so, Vaeronth said, his voice shifting to something quieter, heavier. But you will feel me settle.

She rolled her shoulders back, trying to anchor herself against the echoing dark. “Comforting. Nothing like walking into the unknown with instructions that vague.”

You will live. Probably.

Her mouth twitched. “Love that you slipped a ‘probably’ in there.”

I am not in the habit of offering false assurances.

“Ancient and dramatic. What a combination.”

I prefer the term timeless.

A small laugh escaped her despite the knot in her chest. “Of course you do.”

And then the light began.

It did not burst so much as unmake the darkness.

Vaeronth’s form unraveled deliberately, like a tapestry coming loose thread by thread.

Strands of molten gold unwound from his scales, drifting upward in slow arcs.

They curled through the air like smoke and spun around her in long ribbons of light, catching in her hair, tracing her skin in lines warm as breath.

The storm of embers didn’t burn. It enfolded her, weightless and patient, carrying with it the scent of ancient skies and scorched stone. She felt him thinning, not vanishing, but folding himself into something smaller—into her.

When the last threads streamed into the pendant, it pulsed once—warm, steady—as if it had borrowed the rhythm of his heart.

And for the space of a single breath, she saw.

Not with her failing eyes, but with his.

A sky the color of hammered iron. Riders wreathed in golden armor astride dragons vast as cities.

Wings cutting through storms of ash. Battlefields lit by rivers of flame.

A black citadel shattering into nothing beneath a roar that could tear the heavens apart.

And far beyond it all, a single name—unknown to her—etched into the horizon in letters made of living fire.

Then it was gone.

She stumbled, her knees threatening to fold. Her voice cracked before she could stop it. “What… what was that?”

Memories, Vaeronth murmured in her mind. Not all are mine. Some belong to the bond all dragons share. And now, they belong to you.

She blinked, breathless. “Oh, well, thanks. Just what I wanted. More trauma.”

He rumbled laughter deep in her thoughts, a sound like mountains grinding under molten stone.

I am with you, Eliryn. Always.

Her throat tightened. “That… is not making this less weird.”

Would you prefer I leave?

Her lips twitched. “Nah. It’s much too late. All these new tattoos I’ve got wouldn’t make sense without you.”

Correct.

Somehow, that made the silence that followed feel less like absence and more like anchor.

Together, they climbed.

Each step up the long, spiraling corridor was heavier than the last, the air growing sharper, brighter, more alive .

The stone thrummed faintly underfoot, as if remembering the touch of dragon talons from ages past. Her muscles burned, but her legs remembered their strength.

Her mind hummed with the weight of him inside it—both comforting and strange, like carrying a sword that had not yet learned how to be balanced.

You will find your stride, Vaeronth assured.

“I’m struggling just climbing stairs out of this haunted crypt. You might be overestimating me.”

Your sarcasm is becoming tiresome.

She smiled faintly. “Then I’m doing it right.”

At last, the great stone doors loomed ahead, carved with runes that no longer looked like mystery to her. Her fingers brushed them.

When they opened, silence crashed down like a blow.

The Hall of Holding stretched ahead: a cathedral of dust and defeat.

Survivors crouched in exhaustion, their faces hollow-eyed. Some bore burns. Others bled from wounds too deep for quick healing. One girl was sobbing quietly into her hands.

But it was the empty spaces that stole Eliryn’s breath.

Not everyone had survived the night.

She stepped forward, steady now. Her shredded clothes, her bare skin streaked in blood—none of it mattered.

What mattered were the marks that curled up her arms, coiled across her collarbone, symbols alive with faint light even in the shadows.

She moved like a queen.

She walked like she believed it.

And in her mind, Vaeronth whispered softly, almost like a benediction:

You have been graced with more dragonmarks than the old riders of legend. You should stand proud.

The pendant at her chest burned gold, casting restless light over the bare skin of her collarbone. The tattoos—no, not tattoos, not really—flickered faintly. Living scripture, curling beneath her skin like someone had branded fire into her bones and dared her to survive it.

Dragon-scale patterns shimmered when she turned her head, crawling up her throat like flame-shaped vines. They didn’t feel like a gift.

They felt like a warning.

She just wasn’t sure if the warning was meant for others… or herself.

Every step she took echoed like something older than fear. Older than pain. Older than her.

The hall fell silent. Heads turned. One figure gasped. Another crossed himself like she was a nightmare clawing free of a hellscape. A third just stared, wide-eyed, lips moving silently around a single word:

“Impossible.”

Eliryn met their gazes, steady and unblinking.

She was no longer the half-blind girl tripping over moss in the dark.

She was bound.

Flame-marked.

Changed.

And she was going to do her damnedest to act like it.

Behind her, a voice cut the quiet. Calm. Sharp.

“They say the dragonbond changes you.” A pause. The scrape of boots against stone.

She turned.

A broad-shouldered man, eyes narrowed with suspicion or maybe fear, met her gaze like it was a duel. His voice was like a steel blade drawn slow. “They say the bond makes you less. Hollow. So what are you now?”

Eliryn stopped.

She turned.

And smiled. Slow. Lethal.

“I was reborn in the fire of a dragon,” she said softly, voice like silk drawn over a blade. “So whatever you’re trying to be right now? A threat, a judge, a man worth fearing?”

She stepped toward him.

“You’re just a bug underfoot.”

He flinched. Only slightly. But she saw it.

And then, dismissively, she turned her back to him.

Vaeronth’s voice curled into her mind, satisfied. You speak like a Queen.

“I speak like I’m hoping no one notices I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Convincing, nonetheless.

She drifted toward one of the stone benches, letting herself move like she belonged here, like nothing could touch her—not the blood drying on her skin, not the molten script crawling along her arms. She settled down carefully, ignoring the way her ribs still ached.

Then… she noticed the others.

Slumped figures scattered across the hall.

Not warriors anymore. Survivors. One clutched at a ragged stump of a leg, makeshift tourniquet soaked through.

Another’s face was pale as snow, blood seeping from between cracked fingers pressed to his ribs.

A girl in the corner whimpered softly as she tried to bind a wound on her arm without help.

Her gut clenched.

She should move. Help. Do something. Her healer’s instincts screamed for it.

Her fingers twitched against her knees.

Vaeronth’s voice cut through, low and firm: No.

She stiffened. “They’re dying.”

You are not a healer anymore, Eliryn.

“Yes, I am.”

No. You are not.

She swallowed hard. “But I could—”

You are a dragonrider.

She closed her eyes, her throat tight. The words felt like a stone laid on her chest.

His voice was an ember that refused to go out. You walk among them, and they see what you are becoming. They see the bond.

She hesitated. Then, quietly, in her mind: My mother would have given anything to see this.

Heck, Eliryn thought, she might have even seen it in one of her visions.

There was a pause. Then: Tell me of her.

Eliryn blinked. The burn in her throat had nothing to do with fire. She nearly said no. But then the words clawed up anyway. She was…

She swallowed.

She was small, but unshakable. Not a soldier, but not ungifted—she had visions that always came true. She told me all the old stories, everything she’d learned: dragons, bonds, the First Flame. Everyone laughed. She didn’t care. She used to say… Eliryn’s eyes watered.

“The world might forget, but the gods never do.”

Wise words, Vaeronth said gently.

She died before I could prove her right.

The words fractured in her chest. I carry her blood, she thought. And now her ghost.

No, he replied, voice curling warmly through her thoughts. She knew. In her bones, she knew. The fire in you was never hidden from her.

She exhaled shakily and lifted her chin.

Above her, she felt unseen eyes—watching, measuring—though when she looked up, nothing was there. All around her was pressure from unknown sources, pressure she wouldn’t give in to.

She no longer wanted their approval—no longer needed it.

Not now.

The fire in her veins rose like a tide, and she let it.

Let them watch the prophecy take shape.