Page 4 of The Shattered Rite (The Sightless Prophecy Trilogy #1)

“To mourn is to tether the living to the dead, weaving bonds that neither time nor death can sever.” —Spoken legend of the Flamebound

A noise at the door finally came, much later than it should have.

Eliryn ran, already knowing.

She flung the door open—and the world tipped sideways.

Her mother collapsed into her arms, dead weight and the stink of blood flooding the air.

Crimson streaked down her face and arms in thick, uneven rivulets, dark as spilled ink.

The battered silver armor—etched with curling, half-forgotten sigils—slid from her shoulders and hit the floor with a sound that was almost human.

“I got it,” her mother rasped, breath hitching in jagged bursts. “They said… we should be grateful. Grateful to give you… a chance at greatness.”

“No. No, no, no.” Eliryn eased her down onto the floorboards, her hands moving on instinct, healer’s training overriding the panic clawing at her ribs.

Fingers swept along limbs, pressing for breaks, for heat.

Her brow was split, shallow. The left arm hung wrong—fractured. But that wasn’t what froze her blood.

It was the sound in her chest.

A wet, rattling inhale. A bubbling exhale.

Lungs filling with blood.

She dragged her closer to the hearth, desperate for light, for warmth that might anchor her to the living. “Stay with me, Ma. Tell me what happened. Did they—?”

Her mother’s mouth twitched into something that might’ve been a smile if it hadn’t been smeared with blood. “Didn’t like that I haggled too well. Thought a cursed healer should pay in more than coin.”

Eliryn’s hands shook so badly she could barely grind the goldenroot and frostblossom between her fingers. “I can fix this. I can slow the bleeding, bind your chest, draw the fluid—”

“Shh,” her mother whispered, her voice fraying like old cloth. “You know it’s past saving.”

“Stop.” The word came out sharper than she meant. “Just let me try.”

Her mother’s eyes softened, shining with something that wasn’t just pain. Peace. Resignation. “This was always the way it would go.”

Eliryn’s throat closed. “You saw it. Before the nightmares came.”

Her mother didn’t deny it. “You think I didn’t try to change it? That I didn’t beg the vision to shift?”

Eliryn’s laugh came out cracked and empty. “Then beg harder. There’s still time.”

“Some truths,” her mother murmured, “stay fixed.”

“I didn’t want to believe it,” Eliryn whispered. “Not until the Flame chose me. And then I knew. I felt it in my bones, in my blood. I just didn’t want it to be real because… because if it was—”

Her voice splintered.

Her mother cupped her cheek with blood-slick fingers. “Then I would die. Yes. I know, my firefly. I’ve known for years.”

The world narrowed to heat and her mother’s pulse under her palm—slowing, slipping. Eliryn tried to speak but nothing came.

“You have her spirit,” her mother said, voice paper-thin. “Your grandmother’s. Stubborn as stormlight. Gentle as smoke.”

“I don’t want her spirit,” Eliryn choked. “I want you.”

“There’s more waiting for you,” her mother breathed. “He waits for you. The bond. You’ll know it when it comes. You’ll feel it like a second heartbeat.”

“He—?” Eliryn’s brow furrowed, but her mother’s eyes were already drifting, glassing over, seeing something beyond the rafters and firelight.

“Trust the bond when it comes,” she murmured. “And never mistake kindness… for love.”

Her chest stilled. Her fingers slipped from Eliryn’s cheek.

Silence.

Eliryn pressed her ear to her mother’s ribs, straining for even the faintest whisper of breath.

Nothing.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her. “No, no, no—”

The hearth spat a spark. Somewhere outside, the wind rattled the shutters. But in here, the world had gone still.

And Eliryn knew—whatever came next, she would never be the same.

The world didn’t end with her mother’s last breath. But it did pause—like the moment between thunder and its echo, stretched so thin it hummed in her bones.

Eliryn knelt in that hush for what felt like hours, her forehead pressed to her mother’s shoulder, her palms sticky with blood cooling too fast. The armor lay beside them, dim and waiting, a silent witness to the final chapter of a woman who should have worn it in her prime.

Not a warrior in the eyes of the village. But in her daughter’s eyes?

A legend.

When at last Eliryn rose, the pendant at her throat burned with quiet heat, the warmth of a presence that had not left with her mother’s breath. Not comfort. But… awareness . As if something now stirred fully awake, no longer dormant.

She almost tore it off. Almost. But instead, she clenched her fist around it until her palm stung.

She moved through the house in silence, each step guided by memory and the press of grief. She cleaned her mother’s wounds with gentle hands, as she had done for countless others.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, over and over. She wasn't sure what she was apologizing for.

Eliryn dressed her in a linen shift, simple but clean. She chose the cloak her grandmother once wore—the one her mother kept folded at the back of the trunk, always too sacred for use, too heavy with stories.

She braided her mother’s graying hair with careful fingers, weaving in the sacred threads:

Gold, for strength handed down.

Red, for sacrifice given freely.

Green, for truths no tongue can tell.

She bound the braid with a worn strip of leather, torn from the very satchel her grandmother once carried into war. Three generations of hands had touched that leather. Three generations of women who bore fire in their blood and stayed silent through their grief.

She placed ember nests with care—one near the window, one beneath the hearth, and one at the door. Each one a promise: this home would not be left for strangers to tear apart.

The rites for the honored dead required more than mourning.

They required remembrance .

They required fire .

She built a pyre from stormwood logs her mother had saved for a midwinter feast.

Stormwood logs. Her mother's "no point hoarding good fire" stacked neatly for a feast that would never happen. Eliryn thought it fitting. If death had to come, let it come cloaked in warmth and old laughter.

She made the pyre on the small altar they had inside their cabin, set with wild herbs— lavender, juniper, dragonspine root —and laid the family crest etched in soft wood atop her mother’s chest.

And when all was ready, she stood beside the pyre and tilted her head back.

Then she sang.

Her throat caught halfway through, but she forced the sound out anyway. The song wasn't meant to sound pretty. It was meant to hurt. It was a song for the fallen—the warriors and dreamers who died with purpose in their mouths and fire in their lungs. Her people’s song. Her mother’s.

It tore through her like a storm, untamed and unbound, casting echoes that rang like warnings across the silence.

When the final note broke apart in her chest, from somewhere far beyond the trees, beyond the veil between what was and what would be—

Something breathed her name.

Eliryn opened her eyes.

The pendant at her neck pulsed once. Then twice.

It was almost time.

The world was still gray—not the blind kind of gray that clouded her eyes now, but the kind that came just before the sun crested the world. The kind that promised nothing, but left room for everything.

She moved through the house like a ghost, touching every surface. The basin by the door. The crack in the windowsill. The hearth where the last of the embers slept in silence. She didn’t need to see clearly in the dim light to know they were there.

She washed quickly, in silence. Her hands stung in the cold water. She didn't notice at first; grief numbed more than just her fingers. She took her hair roughly in hand and braided it tightly. A warrior’s braid. Her mother’s braid.

The armor came next.

Piece by piece, she dressed. Bracers. Greaves. Chestplate. The sigil over her heart—a dragon’s eye shadowed by a starburst—was nearly worn smooth. Her mother had fought for this. Bled for this. Died so Eliryn could wear it not in shame, but in truth .

The pendant she did not remove.

She tucked it under the armor, against her skin.

It beat now in rhythm with her heart.

When she reached the door, her hand paused on the carving in the frame. The old family words, carved long before Eliryn was born:

By Blood and Bond, We Prevail.

She bowed her head to it. Then opened the door.

The wind met her, cold and impersonal. Behind her, the house was full of ghosts and ash. Ahead of her, the road.

Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind: “Your eyes may fail you. But your soul will always know the way.”

With a deep breath, she stepped into the light with clouded eyes and steady feet.

Her vision made it harder to grasp. Shadows blended. Colors warped. Still, the center of her gaze held some clarity—fleeting, like water slipping through her fingers.

The steady fog that once hovered at the corners of her sight had begun to encroach. Faces blurred. Landmarks softened. Even voices sometimes felt sharper than what her eyes could give her.

But she had learned to move through uncertainty.

She lifted her chin and steadied her breath.

Then came the hoofbeats.

Not rushed. Not loud. Just steady—four beats pressing into the earth like a summons.

Three riders appeared at the edge of the village, cloaked in ash-colored wool, their armor dulled with wear. Their sigils were visible even in the distance: a crown cracked clean through, encircled by tongues of fire.

Guards for the Trials of Sovereignty.

She turned on her heel, with a speed born of certainty, and rushed back into the house one final time.

She lit the first ember nest beneath the window. The second near the hearth. The third at the threshold.

The fire caught fast.

As the smoke thickened and the beams began to groan, Eliryn stepped outside, closing the door behind her with quiet finality. The blooming heat pulsed against her back, swelling with each breath.

It felt wrong, leaving her mother behind.

But Eliryn couldn't afford to be sentimental. Not anymore. That part of her burned too.

She stepped down from the doorway and stood tall, her hands clenched tight behind her back. Every muscle was a taut string. Every breath, measured.

She had no intention of breaking—no matter how they looked at her. Weak. Quiet. The healer’s daughter. The one too frail to carry the weight of her family’s lost legacy.

The villagers gathered, but not for her. They lined the dirt path like ghosts, speaking in hushed voices. No farewells. No blessings. No offerings.

Their silence said enough.

Eliryn kept her chin high anyway. Let them think what they wanted.

Her throat tightened with unease, but she swallowed it down.

She turned toward the waiting riders. They hadn’t moved. Still as stone, as though they had always been there.

She took a breath.

One step.

Then another.

Ashes curled into the morning air. Behind her, the roof collapsed with a hiss of sparks.

Each step took her farther from the only home she’d ever known.

Closer to the ancient purpose that had waited lifetimes to claim her.