Since Cassian’s resurrection, the Veil had thinned. She could feel it.
Magic didn’t resist the way it used to. It bled into the world too easily. Like the balance between realms was unravelingstitch by stitch. Something on the other side was already clawing through.
The sacrifice had bought time. A breath and a beat.
But it hadn’t been enough.
Malrik had been clear when they parted ways hours ago, his eyes colder than she’d ever seen them. She had barely heard him then as Cassian took his first breath, but now it was all she could hear.
“You bought time, not safety,”he’d said, standing beneath the twin moons, wings stretched and weary.“The blade must be reforged. Or the Hollow consumes us all.”
Now they were here. At the end of breath. The edge of hope.
The final descent opened into a chamber so massive it swallowed her footsteps whole. No torches lit its walls. It glowed from within—amber light bleeding through cracks in the volcanic rock, veins pulsing like a dying heart.
In the center, an altar. Raised. Cracked. Bleeding steam. Atop it rested the shard.
Not held or buried.Embedded.Half-swallowed by petrified flame.
It pulsed—not bright, butdeep,like it was breathing with the stone beneath it.
Seraphine stepped forward first.
Cassian didn’t move. His eyes were wide. His shoulders tense.
“Cass?” she asked, careful.
He didn’t answer. Just stared at the shard, like it was something he’d seen in a dream that refused to fade.
“You’ve seen this before,” she said quietly.
He exhaled, shaky. “Not in memory,” he murmured. “In death.”
A chill traced her spine.
The air around the shard began to vibrate. Softly at first. Then louder. Like itknewshe was coming.
Symbols circled the altar. Glyphs she recognized from old Drakar tombs—twisted, corrupted versions. Unreadable except by instinct. Fire-blooded language. The kind only passed by blood.
The kind only she could understand.
They meant sacrifice. They meantfinal.
She stepped closer, ignoring the way the floor burned beneath her boots.
Cassian still didn’t move.
Her hand reached for the shard and the moment her fingers closed around it— The world split.
Not in sight. Not in sound. Insoul.
Memory wasn’t supposed to befelt.Not likefire.
Seraphine dropped to her knees as the shard seared into her palm, magic crawling into her bloodstream like molten glass. Her eyes burned. Her chest heaved. Suddenly, shewasn’tSeraphine anymore.
She was Her. The First Queen of Drakar.
Fire incarnate.