Page 15 of The Shattered Rite (The Sightless Prophecy Trilogy #1)

"To name something is to honor it. To remember it is to resist forgetting who we are." —The Book of Binding, Vol. II

She woke slowly.

Water held her like a pair of steady hands.

It hadn’t cooled; if anything, it was warmer now—thick and attentive, clinging to her skin as if it were listening for her breath.

When she shifted, the surface gathered itself and rose with her, as though the bath had learned the shape of her body while she slept and refused to forget.

Light pooled green-gold along the carved stone rim, moving like sunlight at the bottom of a deep lake.

Steam feathered the air and carried a faint scent that shouldn’t have existed down here—crushed red rose and rain on hot stone.

The room’s magic, remembering what she had loved and what she had lost, making a ritual of it.

She pushed damp hair from her face and sat up with a low sound. Her muscles answered late. Not pain, exactly—more the slow, dragging heaviness of a body that had been taken apart and put back together by hands that didn’t ask permission. Fair. She wasn’t convinced it belonged to her, either.

Runes lay muted beneath the water, silvered and soft, then brightened when the air kissed them. Droplets beaded along her forearms and slid in deliberate paths, sketching thin, temporary sigils before falling away. The pendant at her throat warmed, a quiet, steady thrum against her sternum.

Sound was strange—the world muffled and close, her heartbeat too loud in her ears, the small lap of water against stone measuring out the room’s patience.

When she flexed her fingers, the markings moved with her: not ink, not scars.

Living script that stretched and settled as if it had joints of its own.

She tested her breath. In. Out. The tub answered with a soft ripple that steadied, like it was syncing to her pulse.

“Okay,” she murmured to no one and the room at once. “We’re still here.”

From somewhere warm and vast inside her: I am, too.

“Good,” she said, closing her eyes for one last heartbeat. “Because I’m going to need a minute.”

Her skin pulsed faintly in the lavender light, the tattoos alive beneath the surface. She didn’t like calling them tattoos. Tattoos were choices. These… weren’t.

Her fingers brushed the marks at her collarbone. They were still warm. Still breathing.

At least the scent of tea still lingered in the air—sweet, spiced, grounding.

“Small mercies,” she muttered, standing carefully.

The floor softened under her bare feet. Of course it did. This whole room responded to her now; she wasn’t sure if that made her cared for or smothered.

She found the robe waiting by the hearth. Rich indigo, lined with silk.

Too soft.

Too fine.

She hesitated. Then pulled it on anyway, the fabric sliding over her skin like a promise she hadn’t made.

Vaeronth stirred at the edge of her mind.

You dislike comfort.

“I distrust it.”

You shouldn't.

She ignored him.

The light in the room had shifted to soft lavender, like even the walls understood she couldn’t handle daylight yet. She appreciated that, though she’d never admit it aloud.

At the hearth, a small table waited. Ceramic jars. Glass vials. She didn’t need to open them to know what they were.

Healing balms.

She sat, automatically uncorking the nearest jar. The scent hit her first: mint, pine, jasmine. She dipped two fingers in without thinking and pressed the balm gently to the skin just above her wrist.

Her body remembered what her mind couldn’t yet process.

Pressure. Slow circles. Even breath.

A healer’s instinct. Still hers, apparently.

The marks pulsed faintly beneath her skin, humming under her fingers. She worked methodically: over her shoulders, along her collarbones, down the lattice of lines etched into her arms. Like armor waiting beneath the surface.

They are your first shell, Vaeronth murmured, warm and steady in her thoughts. You are no longer just flesh.

She didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what to say to that.

Instead, she traced the largest sigil over her ribs, feeling the pulse there. Not pain. Not anymore. Just… something else.

“I’m losing what’s left of my sight.”

It wasn’t a question.

Sight is only one way of knowing, came Vaeronth’s reply.

“I suppose I won't develop the same gift that my mother had…”

A long pause. He let her sit with her bitterness.

What rises in you is not her gift. It will be your own.

“I don't want any more changes.”

No answer.

She pressed both hands to her face and breathed slowly, willing herself to stop shaking.

“Will the changes… change who I am?”

Another pause, as if the great ancient dragon was searching for the right words.

Power does not leave a soul untouched, Vaeronth said softly. But you are not alone in carrying it.

She let that be enough for now. Let it smooth the ragged edge of her thoughts, though she wasn’t sure she’d earned even a breath of peace.

The pulse beneath her skin slowed, syncing to her breathing.

Eventually, she opened her eyes. “The room changed again.”

Old magic, Vaeronth replied. It shapes itself to you. Your needs. Your fears.

“Explains the lavender.”

You needed softness.

She huffed something between a laugh and a sob. “I don’t even remember what softness feels like.”

As she grew, there had simply been… less.

They learned to fold their wants small. If she and her mother didn’t grow it, brew it, stitch it, or carve it, they went without.

Winters of thin broth stretched with water; summers of the same dress re-hemmed and turned inside out so the seams could pretend to be new.

Boots patched until the leather remembered every old stitch, like the ones she had kicked off her feet after the trial.

Eliryn remembered how they counted roots daily and saved the good salve for other people’s pain.

They traded tinctures for flour, poultices for lamp oil, and when there was nothing left to barter, they went to bed early and called it prudence.

Lavender had been a luxury you made by hand: tiny sachets sewn from scrap, bundles drying above the hearth to sweeten the smoke. Not perfumed oil. Not baths. Not this .

You do, Vaeronth said, gentler. You just stopped letting yourself ask for it.

She swallowed. “Asking made my mother look tired.”

Surviving taught you to be quiet with your wanting, he countered.

Her eyes burned. She stood abruptly, the robe trailing behind her.

The canopied bed waited at the far side of the room.

She glared at it.

“Don’t you dare be comfortable.”

The bed said nothing, smug in its silence.

Grumbling under her breath, Eliryn climbed into it anyway.

And, against her better judgment, let herself rest.

Sleep didn’t come easily.

The bed was too soft.

Everything smelled like lavender and warmth. It should’ve felt safe.

Instead, it felt… wrong.

She drifted, half-caught between memory and whatever the bond was becoming.

Fire filled her dreams.

Not destruction—language.

Symbols, coiling through the air like smoke, written in a tongue her mind knew but her waking self couldn’t grasp. Vaeronth stood in the center of it all: wings vast, casting no shadow. The sky above him burned red, as if the world had been lit from the inside out.

In his chest, a second sun flickered.

You must carry it now , he said, voice not a voice.

The realm's magic is fading.

But it cannot be extinguished.

You are its champion.

Then the world cracked.

Glass underfoot.

Sky splintering.

She fell through.

And woke gasping, tangled in silk.

Her chest heaved. Her skin burned cold.

No light.

No sound.

Only the lingering memory of fire.

Eliryn sat on the edge of the bed, head in her hands, heart racing.

“I can’t do this.”

Vaeronth brushed a wing against her mind in comfort.

It is your fate. Your destiny. Your responsibility.

She stood.

She needed… something. Air. Distance. Control.

The room didn’t stop her.

The door unlatched the moment her palm pressed to it. The stone didn’t care whether it was morning or midnight. It only cared about what she needed.

So she walked.

Barefoot.

The sconces burned low. Shadows stretched long and spindly down the corridors, twisting in ways shadows shouldn’t.

She followed them anyway.

Not because she wanted to.

Because it was easier than standing still.

Down she went.

Lower.

Stone underfoot shifted from polished to worn, from curated to forgotten. The air changed too—thicker, carrying the scent of char and salt, of woodsmoke and… bread.

Of course.

Of course she would gravitate towards the smell of bread.

She followed the scent like a thread, rounding corners and slipping past doorways half-closed. Her robe whispered at her ankles. She didn’t know if she looked like a lost noblewoman or a ghost.

Light spilled from a cracked door.

Voices.

Quiet. Careful.

Laughter, too—not the brittle kind.

She stepped inside.

And the world froze.

The kitchens weren’t grand. They weren’t meant to be.

They were real.

Stone walls. Fires banked low. Flour dusted over every surface. A pot of something thick and spiced simmered over coals.

And every pair of eyes snapped toward her the moment she entered.

Two guards near the back reached for their weapons.

She understood why.

She would’ve done the same.

Her hair hung in damp curls over her shoulders. Her robe shimmered faintly, too fine for anyone from the lower wings. The marks on her skin glowed softly, tracing her throat, her collarbones, her wrists.

And her eyes…

Gods.

Her eyes probably weren’t human anymore.

Palms open, peace offered. “Forgive me. The bread called, and I lack the will to refuse.”

A pause. “I used to be better at not frightening people.”

That earned a beat of stillness.

Then—slowly—an older woman resumed kneading dough.

“You’re one of them,” the woman said. Not a question.

“I am.”

“The Dragonrider?”

“I suppose.”

Another pause.