The light from the altar was gone.
Dust hung in the still air, scorched and faintly glowing where shattered glyphs pulsed. Lyra stirred, ribs aching, skin slick with dried blood. Her mouth tasted of ash. Her heart pounded unevenly. Her legs were numb. Her hands trembled, not from courage, but fear and exhaustion.
The fire in her chest still burned.
It didn't roar. It didn't blaze. It pulsed... small, steady, unwilling to die. But it wasn't only hers. Something else breathed with it, ancient and watchful, curled like a promise behind her ribs. Not a gift. A pact. It had saved her, once. She wasn't sure it would do so again without a cost. She wasn't dead. Not fully. But whatever she had been before the ritual—before the blade, the screams, the Wyrmheart was gone.
She rolled onto her side, fingers slipping on the stone. Her skin felt strange—tight at the joints, harder near her shoulders. Her limbs ached like they'd been borrowed. Her breathing came shallow, too aware of every rib. Her chest felt heavy, not from wounds, but from something colder. A wrongness she couldn't name yet.
Across the chamber, Mistress stood motionless.
Cerys's face was exposed now, half her jaw stripped bare, bone gleaming through torn skin. The mask was gone. Her hands were folded before her. Her robes were in tatters. The air stank of burnt silk and sour magic.
"You're wrong," she said, her voice flat and cold. "Not broken- misfit. You weren't supposed to... change it."
Lyra's voice rasped. "You didn't make me," she said, but her voice wavered, not with defiance, but with the weight of not knowing what she was now.
"I gave you the Wyrmheart," Cerys said. "You were meant to carry it for me to control..."
Lyra pushed up, wincing. She remembered the altar, how it had seared her, how it had promised to hollow her out. And now? Now her hands trembled not from pain, but from the weight of surviving something meant to unmake her. The runes underfoot flickered—but didn't catch. The ritual was broken.
"You tried to... bind me," she said.
"Child... You weren't supposed to resist."
Cerys raised a hand. Her voice darkened, ancient syllables curling through the air. The glyphs sparked again.
"But now you will kneel before High Priest!"
The pressure slammed into Lyra. Her knees buckled. Pain rang in her skull. She braced against the stone as her back arched involuntarily, a spasm ripping through her core. Blood dripped from one nostril, hot and thin. But the fire inside her resisted not hot, but solid. It refused.
The glyphs cracked, splintering like dry bark under heat—slowly, deliberately, without mercy.
Cerys stepped back.
"You refuse," she said. "Even Vaelrix submitted in the end..."
"I'm not Vaelrix," Lyra said.
A sharp clatter echoed behind them.
"Oh, for rot's sake," muttered Scriv.
He limped into view, broom dragging behind him. His bones were damaged, one leg wrapped in chain. His jaw hung askew.
"This place was quiet. Now look at it."
Neither woman responded.
Scriv pointed at Lyra. "You had to land here," he muttered, voice dry. "Right in the sealwork, right in the center glyph like you aimed for it. No caution. No containment. Just bang, everything's scrambled." He shoved her toward the light, not gently.
Cerys turned to him.
"Leave."
"I will. Right after someone tells me who's sweeping the altar shards and cleaning the glyph rot."
Cerys moved two fingers.
A pulse of magic struck Scriv. His bones snapped apart. His remains scattered, his ribs clattered across the floor, and his skull bounced once before coming to rest, silent and still.
She didn't flinch. Didn't mourn. Just clenched her jaw and kept moving.
But even as his remains scattered, the spell faltered, the ritual backlash swelled, unchecked. The pulse that destroyed Scriv rebounded faintly across the broken glyphs. One of the stone pylons supporting the chamber ceiling cracked audibly.
A groan rumbled from deep below. Another tremor followed.
The silence fractured.
Cracks raced across the floor. An unlit brazier tumbled and shattered. Dust poured from the ceiling.
Cerys's head turned toward the sound. Her fingers curled again, this time sharp and deliberate. Another spell began to form at her fingertips—but before she could release it, the ceiling groaned and the floor beneath her feet buckled. She flung a binding sigil at Lyra, violet and jagged.
But before it could reach her, golden flame flared from Lyra's chest, curved like a shield. It struck the magic mid-air and shattered it. The backlash drove Cerys stumbling a step backward.
The fire wasn't Lyra's.
It was older. Protective.
Then a voice... Deep, slow, and coiled with embers, bloomed inside her skull.
"I have burned for ages," it said. "You bear me now. But if you overreach, I will bear you."
She staggered. The fire pulsed once gentle, then gone.
"This is a pact," the voice added. "For life. If you call too much, your skin will not remain yours. Scales will claim it. Rage will follow. And you will forget what name you began with."
Her mouth went dry.
She clenched her jaw. The voice had warned her, yes. Claimed her. But she wasn't here to be claimed.
"I don't care," she thought, fiercely, desperately, with the weight of years pressing down behind her eyes. "I'm not important. I never was. But I need her back. My siste... I need her back."
The words clenched around her ribs. Her throat burned. "I... can't... let... them... die... thinking... I gave up."
Her chest heaved, and for a heartbeat, she thought she might break apart from wanting.
The fire said nothing in return. But it didn't withdraw either.
The pact held.
The fire did not speak again.