Page 8 of The Shattered Rite (The Sightless Prophecy Trilogy #1)

“When a soul answers the call of Flame, even the void trembles.” —Unknown

The obsidian pool shimmered in the dark like starlight caught beneath glass.

Eliryn’s heart pounded—not from fear, not exactly, but from the deep, nauseating certainty that something was about to change. Something final. Something big.

She really hated “final.”

The air thickened. She felt it shift, like the whole cavern was holding its breath.

From somewhere deep beneath the stone, something ancient stirred.

Bound by blood and bound by soul. In silence I burned, awaiting your call.

Her throat closed. She didn’t think the voice was inside her mind so much as around it, like the air itself had decided to speak.

She stepped back. Probably the least heroic move she could’ve made, but reasonable.

Then the surface of the pool cracked open—like glass spiderwebbing—and from that impossible shimmer, something rose.

Wings folded like waiting blades. Scales of black and bronze glimmered as if the earth itself had melted and re-formed him. His horns curved like a crown. His eyes—

Oh gods. His eyes.

Twin suns—molten and endless—locked onto her.

Her lungs forgot their purpose. The air between them was a living thing, thick and trembling, as if even the wind feared to move in his presence.

And Eliryn, practical to the last, nearly whimpered.

“Okay,” she rasped, heart hammering so hard it shook her vision. “That’s… that’s a dragon.”

He stepped forward, each movement rippling through the earth like distant thunder. The ground trembled beneath her boots; dust shivered in the air.

When you call, I rise.

The voice didn’t pass through her ears—it struck straight into her bones, rattling the air from her chest.

“I didn’t know I was calling,” she whispered.

You have been calling since the day you first drew breath.

Her throat worked, but nothing useful came out. “…Cool,” she managed. “That’s not alarming at all.”

Heat rolled over her in a slow, suffocating wave. His breath was warm and metallic, edged with the sharp tang of scorched rain and stone cracked by lightning.

I am Vaeronth… the Endbringer.

The name landed like a warhammer against the silence—final, unyielding, carved in the language of endings.

It didn’t just settle in her ears—it pressed into her bones, etched itself into the space between her heartbeats.

She laughed. Not because it was funny, but because if she didn’t, she was going to start crying, and once she started, she wasn’t sure she’d stop.

“I’m not ready,” she whispered, half to herself. “I’m really not.”

You are. His voice rumbled like a storm clawing its way over mountains. While I have been waiting, you were becoming.

“Gods, that’s intense,” she said, her laugh breaking into something breathless.

Behind Vaeronth, the pool flared with sudden light, igniting from within until it glowed like a second sun.

Golden fire rippled across its surface, not burning, but alive—patterns spiraling outward in runes older than the first kings.

The light caught his wings as they spread, vast enough to blot out the pool entirely, and the shadows they cast rippled and bent as though they too were alive.

Shapes formed in them—dragons, battles, crowns, storms—prophecy given form.

Speak the words.

Her stomach dropped. “I… I don’t know them.”

You do.

And gods help her, she did.

They rose from somewhere hollowed out inside her—a space she hadn’t known was waiting. The syllables were not hers, yet they belonged to her. They tasted of copper and rain, of smoke from a long-dead fire.

Her lips parted, and the first word escaped like a thread pulled from the world itself.

“I offer not just breath,” her voice cracked, “but all that I am…”

The vow came in fragments and floods, each syllable dragging up memories she had never lived, pain she had never felt, triumphs she had never claimed. Images burst behind her eyes: a sky full of wings, a world blazing with magic, the roar of dragons as they wheeled above armies.

Her voice trembled. Her body shook. Tears she refused to name burned down her cheeks as the weight of each word branded itself into her very marrow.

At the final line, her voice broke entirely, shattering like glass struck by lightning:

“My soul is yours… as yours is mine.”

Silence fell, but it was not still. The air was thick, humming with the raw current of something ancient recognizing itself.

Then Vaeronth roared.

It was not a sound.

It was an event.

Not a voice, but a verdict.

The ground split in hairline cracks at her feet. The water in the pool surged upward, caught in an invisible spiral toward the sky. Her bones vibrated with the force of it; her heart stuttered, then raced to keep up.

And in that sound—in that impossible, all-consuming roar—she felt the bond settle.

Not chains, but roots, threading through every part of her, anchoring her to him, and him to her.

There was no going back.

The cavern shook. The mountain shook. Her bones shook.

Magic broke over her like a tidal wave, crashing into her with incredible force.

Her last fully formed thought before the world drowned was half-terrified, half-horrified, and wholly herself:

Oh, gods. What have I done?

Magic ruptured the air.

It wasn’t wind. It wasn’t sound.

It was pressure—crushing and total. The light didn’t fade. It collapsed.

The cave folded in on itself, reality bending like molten glass. Shadows burned. It was as if the stars had been dragged down to watch.

And then it hit her.

It didn’t seize her skin first. It gripped her bones.

The scream tore from Eliryn’s throat before she knew she was screaming. She tried to move, to think, to flee—but her body betrayed her. Liquid fire surged through her veins, gold and iron threading up her arms, down her spine, curling through her lungs like molten wire. She wasn’t just burning.

She was being rewritten.

“Stop,” she gasped, voice breaking as she fell to her knees. “Stop—oh gods—”

No one listened.

Because this wasn’t punishment.

This was her destiny.

Tendons snapped and rewove. Muscles tore and reknit. Symbols she could not name burned themselves into her marrow. Her skin seared from the inside out, covered not in ash, but in light.

“Vaeronth—Vaeronth!” she screamed. “Make it stop!”

I cannot, he said softly. This is yours.

She convulsed, fingers clawing at blood-slick stone, her breath stuttering like something broken.

“I’m dying,” she rasped.

No. You are becoming.

Her body betrayed her last. Her vision split with silver, her skull cracked open by a pain not even nerves were built to carry.

She heard herself beg, though she didn’t know who to.

“Please. Please, no more.”

Then everything went silent.

The pain wasn’t gone. It simply… ceased to matter.

She tasted it on her tongue—not blood. Not ash.

Starlight.

She collapsed to the stone, trembling, hollow, her heart barely beating.

Her next breath was like dragging air into a body that wasn’t hers anymore.

Symbols burned beneath her skin.

Not ink. Not scars.

Living script.

She turned her hands numbly, watching lines of molten silver coil around her fingers—talon-shaped runes flexing as she moved. Spirals of sacred geometry looped her ribs and throat. Her collarbones glimmered beneath skin stretched too thin, veins lit from within.

Her voice came raw. Quiet.

“What… what did you do to me?”

Vaeronth’s shadow loomed, vast and certain.

I did nothing.

“You’re joking.”

The runes along her forearms pulsed—answering her anger.

You called. I answered.

“I didn’t call for this.”

You did.

Her knees buckled.

Her ruined armor cracked, splintered, then fell away in glittering fragments. She looked down as the plates disintegrated at her feet like a serpent shedding its skin.

And beneath it…

A second skin. Scaled sigils. Glimmering script. A body no longer entirely human.

She pressed her palm to her own arm, then drew it back like she’d touched flame.

“I’m a monster.”

You are mine.

His voice wasn’t comforting.

It was absolute.

Vaeronth lowered his head. She could barely think when she reached out and rested her shaking hand against the bridge of his snout. His scales burned like stone left too long in the sun. But she didn’t flinch.

“I should hate you for this.”

You will not.

“Bold assumption.”

I know you.

And somehow… he did.

His warmth pressed around her, wings folding, foreclaws cradling her like she was something precious and breakable.

Eliryn let herself collapse inside the cage of his limbs. She could hear his heartbeat now, deeper than thunder, older than the mountains.

“I didn’t ask for this,” she whispered.

No one does.

“I’m not strong enough.”

You are.

“Vaeronth…”

She hesitated.

Thought about what to say, changed her mind, and settled on:

“My name is Eliryn.”

Vaeronth paused.

And then, reverently, like naming a star:

I know, Eliryn. I have known you in the silence between heartbeats.

Her throat caught. Her eyes burned—not from pain this time, but from something deeper. Something older. Something terrifyingly close to hope.

“I’m not alone anymore,” she whispered.

No. Never again.

She closed her eyes. The stone floor wasn’t cold now. Not within the vault of his wings. Not with his breath steady beside her.

“You’re mine,” she murmured.

And you are mine, Vaeronth answered. Now and always. Until death, and beyond death’s reach.

At the depths of the Undermire, dragon and rider weren’t just reborn.

They were forged.