Vaela crumpled, unconscious, her skin ash-pale.
Seraphine turned slowly.
Her father was still on his knees, blood trailing from his mouth, one arm limp at his side.
But it wasn’t pain on his face.
It was fear.
It was as if he didn’t recognize her. Like the daughter he’d raised to carry on his name had become something else entirely.
“You’ve doomed us,” he rasped.
Seraphine’s heart cracked, but her voice didn’t waver. “No. You did. When you decided your legacy was more important than your people. When you chose fear over faith. Control over courage.”
“You don’t understand,” he croaked. “What I’ve sacrificed?—”
She shook her head, stepping away. “No. You sacrificed everyone else. And called it duty.”
Whitefire pulsed one final time, then vanished. The silence it left behind was almost louder.
Seraphine stumbled, breath catching.
Her father didn’t rise.
She didn’t check if he would. Instead, she turned back to the beacon. Lifted her hand.
Let the raw power inside her—Drakar-born, fire-forged, defiant and pure—spark against the old runes carved into stone.
The call ignited.
A flare split the sky—silver and white, fierce as vengeance, hot as promise. It burned like a beacon, brighter than any dawn, casting long shadows over the broken stone and fractured past behind her.
A summons.
Not to parley.
To war.
Seraphine didn’t look at her father. Didn’t offer him mercy. Just the truth, sharp as any blade.
“If I were you,” she said, her voice a whip crack over the ruin, “I’d start digging a grave for your lies. Because I’m about to bring the truth down on this kingdom like fire from the gods.”
She didn’t know if her threat was enough to make him retreat, but if he tested her, her father would find out soon that it was a promise. And Seraphine could not be controlled. Not anymore.
The wind ripped at her cloak, tangled through her hair, but she stood steady—anchored in fury, in memory, in fire.
She was flame, legacy, and she was done asking.
Blood slicked her palms. Whitefire smoldered behind her eyes. And she didn’t glance back.
Not at the man who’d used her name like armor for his ambition.
Not at the cousin who’d bartered their blood for shadowed promises.
There was nothing for her in the ashes of their legacy.
Only one path remained.
