Chapter 134
Jiselle
The dream started with silence.
Not the kind that comes at the end of a long battle, not the soft hush of breath and earth and magic that I had learned to read. This silence was heavier, Stagnant. Like time had held its breath and forgotten how to exhale.
I was walking, though I didn’t remember standing. Stone crumbled beneath my bare feet–worn, cracked slabs overgrown with ash–dusted mass, I looked down and saw a dress. Pale. Threaded with old symbols that shimmered faintly in the dark like faded constellations. It wasn’t mine. The fabric clung like it had known another body once, someone taller. Older.
Someone who had walked this place before.
The sky overhead was cloudless and red, not burning but bruised. The air carried the smell of ruin–of something ancient that had collapsed under its own weight and hadn’t yet been mourned. I knew this place, but not from memory. From instinct.
The ruins rose up around me in uneven lines, archways swallowed by vines, walls split and sagging inward, everything bent beneath centuries of silence. And as I passed beneath one of the broken arches, I heard my own voice whisper a name.
“Serina.”
It didn’t come from thought. It came from somewhere deeper.
The word tasted familiar. Like blood.
I didn’t know where I was going, but my feet moved without permission, my body obeying something that lived beneath logic. I stepped into a courtyard overrun with roots and broken columns. In the center stood a basin–dry, cracked, etched with glyphs I didn’t recognize and somehow understood.
And standing beside it was a child.
She couldn’t have been more than seven, maybe eight. Barefoot, hair long and dark, skin glowing faintly in the red light like she carried a secret just
beneath the surface. She didn’t flinch when I approached. She didn’t seem afraid.
She just looked at me.
There, on her collarbone, a small sigil burned violet–delicate and sharp like mine, but newer. Raw. Still forming.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the air shifted before I could make a sound.
A shadow passed overhead. Fast. Wrong. The sky peeled open in a long, soundless scream, and the girl’s eyes widened–not in fear. In knowing.
She reached for my hand.
I crouched without thinking, taking her fingers in mine. They were cold. Not with death. With something worse.
Purpose.
She opened her mouth. “They’ll find us.”
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew.
“The ones who see fire as a threat. The ones who wanted me gone.”
“You’re just a child,” I whispered.
Her eyes glowed faintly violet. “So were you.”
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Chapter 134
And then we were running.
The dream shifted violently–landscape bleeding into itself like melting wax. One moment we were in the courtyard. The nost, down a fight of wome stairs beneath the ruins, torchlight flickering along walls painted in symbols older than our language. The girt led me, and I followed, heart plundere knowing this was not my past and yet… feeling it like it was carved in my bones
We reached a chamber hidden beneath the world. A circle of columns, altar at the center, the floor covered in glowing runes that pulsed with the same
rhythm as the child’s mark.
She turned to me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This was always meant to be you.”
“What do you mean?” My voice cracked. “I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
The air screamed again.
A figure descended from the stairwell–cloaked in shadow, face veiled, arms outstretched. The symbols on the walls burned brighter, and the altar began
to tremble.
The child took one last breath, then climbed onto the altar without hesitation.
“No–wait, don’t!” I surged forward.
But I couldn’t move.
My legs locked. My body froze.
The dream wasn’t letting me save her.
This wasn’t a memory I could change.
The figure raised a blade–twisted, runed, forged of stone and flame.
The child didn’t scream when it fell.
She glowed.
Blinding violet light burst from her chest, spreading through the runes across the chamber like wildfire. The stone cracked beneath her. The walls splintered. The figure vanished.
And then-
Stillness.
When the light faded, the girl’s body was gone.
Just ash.
And I was left alone in the chamber, shaking, weeping, trying to hold onto something that didn’t belong to me.
But the pain did.
That was mine.
I collapsed to my knees beside the altar.
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Chapter 1331
No answer.
I waited, toned in, reaching across the tether for anything an image, a flicker, a whisper.
Nothing
And then
The scream.
It didn’t build. It didn’t rise from silence like pain trying to find a voice.
It detonated.
It shattered across the bond like a pane of glass imploding under pressure–sudden, violent, and wrong.
Not Jiselle.
Not her voice.
High. Piercing. Unnatural. A sound that didn’t belong in this world–or in any other. It clawed its way through the tether and scraped down my spine, a shriek so primal it bypassed logic and landed somewhere in my gut, turning my insides to ice.
It wasn’t rage.
It wasn’t grief.
It was terror.
But not hers.
It had come through her.
Like something had used her body as a conduit, her mouth as an exit wound. My hand flew to my chest instinctively, palm pressed flat over the bond scar that pulsed once–then sparked, the magic biting like a live wire.
I staggered back, breath caught in my throat.
Behind me, even the forest fell silent.
No wind. No birds. No rustle of leaves.
Just the heavy echo of that scream still vibrating in my bones.
Bastain had gone still.
His eyes–wide, alert–locked on mine across the dim space.
“You heard it too,” I said, my voice low, steady only by habit.
He nodded slowly, no trace of the scholar left in his expression now.
His voice was grim.
“It’s starting.”
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Chapter 134
Chapter 134
Jiselle
The dream started with silence.
Not the kind that comes at the end of a long battle, not the soft hush of breath and earth and magic that I had learned to read. This silence was heavier. Stagnant. Like time had held its breath and forgotten how to exhale.
I was walking, though I didn’t remember standing. Stone crumbled beneath my bare feet—worn, cracked slabs overgrown with ash–dusted moss. I looked down and saw a dress. Pale. Threaded with old symbols that shimmered faintly in the dark like faded constellations. It wasn’t mine. The fabric clung like it had known another body once, someone taller. Older.
Someone who had walked this place before.
The sky overhead was cloudless and red, not burning but bruised. The air carried the smell of ruin–of something ancient that had collapsed under its own weight and hadn’t yet been mourned. I knew this place, but not from memory. From instinct.
The ruins rose up around me in uneven lines, archways swallowed by vines, walls split and sagging inward, everything bent beneath centuries of silence. And as I passed beneath one of the broken arches, I heard my own voice whisper a name.
“Serina.”
It didn’t come from thought. It came from somewhere deeper.
The word tasted familiar. Like blood.
I didn’t know where I was going, but my feet moved without permission, my body obeying something that lived beneath logic. I stepped into a courtyard overrun with roots and broken columns. In the center stood a basin–dry, cracked, etched with glyphs I didn’t recognize and somehow understood.
And standing beside it was a child.
She couldn’t have been more than seven, maybe eight. Barefoot, hair long and dark, skin glowing faintly in the red light like she carried a secret just beneath the surface. She didn’t flinch when I approached. She didn’t seem afraid.
She just looked at me.
There, on her collarbone, a small sigil burned violet–delicate and sharp like mine, but newer. Raw. Still forming.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the air shifted before I could make a sound.
A shadow passed overhead. Fast. Wrong. The sky peeled open in a long, soundless scream, and the girl’s eyes widened–not in fear. In knowing.
She reached for my hand.
I crouched without thinking, taking her fingers in mine. They were cold. Not with death. With something worse.
Purpose.
She opened her mouth. “They’ll find us.”
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew.
“The ones who see fire as a threat. The ones who wanted me gone.”
“You’re just a child,” I whispered.
Her eyes glowed faintly violet. “So were you.”
1/4
Chapter 134
And then we were running.
The dream shifted violently landscape bleeding into itself like melting wax. One moment we were in the courtyard. The next down a fight of stone. stairs beneath the ruins, torchlight flickering along walls painted in symbols older than our language. The girl led me, and I followed, heart poundings knowing this was not my past and yet… feeling it like it was carved in my bones.
We reached a chamber hidden beneath the world. A circle of columns, altar at the center, the floor covered in glowing runes that pulsed with the same rhythm as the child’s mark.
She turned to me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This was always meant to be you.”
“What do you mean?” My voice cracked. “I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
The air screamed again.
A figure descended from the stairwell–cloaked in shadow, face veiled, arms outstretched. The symbols on the walls burned brighter, and the altar begán
to tremble.
The child took one last breath, then climbed onto the altar without hesitation.
“No–wait, don’t!” I surged forward.
But I couldn’t move.
My legs locked. My body froze.
The dream wasn’t letting me save her.
This wasn’t a memory I could change.
The figure raised a blade–twisted, runed, forged of stone and flame.
The child didn’t scream when it fell.
She glowed.
Blinding violet light burst from her chest, spreading through the runes across the chamber like wildfire. The stone cracked beneath her. The walls splintered. The figure vanished.
And then-
Stillness.
When the light faded, the girl’s body was gone.
Just ash.
And I was left alone in the chamber, shaking, weeping, trying to hold onto something that didn’t belong to me.
But the pain did.
That was mine.
I collapsed to my knees beside the altar.
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Chapter 134
* 24 May
And whispered her name again.
“Serina.”
My eyes flew open with a gasp.
Not the usual disoriented, breathless kind. This was deeper. Ripping. Like waking from a death I hadn’t known I was living.
I sat up.
The others weren’t in the tent. Morning hadn’t broken. The fire in the brazier still flickered low.
My hands shook as I reached for the nearest thing–a slate of stone propped beside the cot. I dragged my fingertip across the surface, magic humming beneath my skin, and began to carve.
One letter at a time.
I didn’t stop until the name was glowing.
The sigils pulsed beneath it.
Not flame.
Not healing.
Something in between.
I was still staring at it when Eva slipped into the tent, her face drawn with fatigue and curiosity.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked gently.
“I dreamed.”
She walked closer. Her eyes caught the glow.
And her breath caught too.
“Jiselle… where did you hear that name?”
My throat felt raw. “In a ruin I’ve never seen. I wore a dress that wasn’t mine. I held the hand of a child marked like me.”
Eva stared at me. “That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
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17:24 Sat, 24 May @O
Chapter 134
“No.” She crouched beside me. “That name–it’s in Bastain’s scrolls. Serina was…she was the last wolf born with veil–aligned flame. Before the rise of the Council. Before the Gate closed.”
My heart pounded. “She was real?”
“She was a myth,” Eva said softly. “A warning. They said she was too powerful. That she drew the attention of things we weren’t meant to wake”
“She didn’t survive.”
“No.”
I looked down at the stone. “But I remember dying with her.”
Eva didn’t speak.
Neither did I.
Because I wasn’t sure I could tell her the rest.
That I didn’t just watch Serina die.
I felt it.
The fire in her chest.
The blade in her ribs.
The weight of a fate too big for a child.
And somehow–I remembered the sound her soul made when it left her body.
A sound that still echoed behind my own ribs like it hadn’t finished falling.
AD
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