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NORA

A sh drifts in the still air like forgotten snowfall.

The ground where the Wraithborn Warlord fell is scorched black, a circular wound in the earth where magic bled raw and ancient. Rhaegar hasn’t left my side since it ended—since I spoke words that didn’t come from memory, but instinct. As if something deep within me had waited centuries to rise and answer.

Now that it has, I can’t stop shaking.

The tremors in my hands aren’t from fear anymore.

They’re from certainty.

I stand slowly, ignoring the ache in my limbs. My magic pulses low beneath my skin—sore but steady. The runes etched on the bones of the ruin walls still flicker faintly, as if remembering. As if watching. And when I look at my arm, I see it.

The mark.

Wraithborn sigils glow dimly on the inside of my left wrist, like ink lit by firelight. Not burning. Not branding.

Claiming.

I trace it with my fingers, and for once, I don’t flinch.

“Nora.” Rhaegar’s voice is quiet, rough with fatigue and something unspoken.

He stands a few steps away, his body still battle-worn, chest streaked with dried blood and half-healed cracks that glow faintly with the magic I poured into him. His wings twitch behind him like the remnants of a half-forgotten storm. He’s always carried ruin in his bones—but today, I saw how close it came to breaking him.

“I’m fine,” I say, even though I’m not sure I believe it.

“No, you’re not.” He takes a cautious step closer. “You almost—” His jaw tightens. “That wasn’t just power back there, Nora. That was Medea. She’s trying to wear you down. The more you use that kind of magic?—”

“I know,” I cut in softly. “I felt it. But I didn’t let her win.”

“You barely held her off,” he growls. “The next time, you might not.”

Silence stretches between us, brittle and sharp.

Then I speak, letting the words come slowly, steadily—like laying stones in a foundation.

“I’m not her. Not anymore. Not again. I choose who I am.”

He looks at me, and I see the war in his eyes—the one between faith and fear.

“She’ll keep trying,” he says. “You know that.”

“Yes.” I lift my chin. “But I’m not running from who I am anymore.”

A long pause.

And then his shoulders sag, just slightly. The tension doesn’t leave him, not fully, but his gaze softens. “Then we need to leave this place. Now. The longer we stay, the harder it’ll be to stop her. We need distance.”

I shake my head. “No.”

He stills. “Nora?—”

“I know where we have to go next.” I turn from him and walk toward the archway that leads deeper into the ruin, where the map showed the next path. “The place where the pact was forged. Where this all began. I need to see it.”

He follows, but his footsteps are hesitant. “You’re talking about the Purna sanctum.”

“Not anymore,” I murmur. “Not since the war. The stronghold belongs to the dark elves now—the ones who’ve hunted me since the moment I breathed.”

“That’s suicide.”

“No,” I say. “It’s full circle.”

I stop and look back at him. “To end this, I have to face where it began. Where Medea made the pact. Where I made it.”

“You don’t know what they’ll do if they find you.”

“I do.” My voice is low. Certain. “They’ll try to kill me. Again.”

“Then why?—”

“Because I need the truth, Rhaegar,” I say, turning fully to him. “All of it. I need to know what she did, what I did, what they want from me—and why they couldn’t kill me before. If I’m going to defeat her, I need to understand what made her.”

He doesn’t argue.

He only watches me with that quiet, storm-filled expression I’ve come to understand means he’s already planning ten different ways to keep me alive .

Even if he disagrees.

Even if it breaks him.

“We leave at first light,” he says finally.

I nod once, and something fragile flickers between us. Not safety. Not peace.

But something like trust.

As we move through the narrow passage that leads out of the ruined heart of the Wraithborn sanctum, I glance one last time at the mark on my wrist. The glow is dim now, fading like a candle burning low—but it’s still there.

A reminder.

Of what I was and what I could become.

Of what I choose not to be.

I close my fist over it. I am Nora.

And I will decide how this ends.