The pyre had long since collapsed into a bed of glowing embers. Smoke curled into the dawn like black ribbons, twisting into the pale light of morning.
Ash blanketed the earth like snow, and in its center, she stood — naked, unburnt, and reborn.
The Shakareen held her son.
Sulien. Alive.
The baby wailed in her arms, slick with soot and sweat, tiny fists flailing. His breath came strong. His lungs filled with the air of this world — and he screamed as if torn into it anew.
She wept with him.
Tears streaked her ash-smeared cheeks, carving tracks down her face. Her silver hair, wild and tangled, flowed behind her like a banner caught in the wind. She clutched the child tightly, gasping through disbelief, her arms trembling.
"My son… my sweet boy…"A whisper. A prayer. A confession.
Around her feet, the two dragons shifted.
One was black as obsidian, streaked with ember-like red beneath his wing membranes. The other shimmered in pale silver, his scales glinting in the dawn like burnished moonlight. They hissed softly, wings twitching, smoke curling from their nostrils.
The black one, bold and curious, crept forward. He sniffed Sulien, letting out a low chirring sound before nudging the baby's cheek with a hot snout.
The child wailed louder.
The woman stiffened—but the dragon only coiled closer, letting the baby feel his warmth. The silver one circled her ankles, watchful, protective.
She looked down at them, chest heaving.
Dragons — real, alive, and hers.
No longer myths. No longer buried in song. They had returned — not for kings, nor priests, but for her. For a woman cast in flames and left for ash.
The legends had spoken of such creatures — of fire-born beasts that once bowed only to the blood of Vyrmyr, of riders who soared above empires. But those stories had died with the old world.
Until now.
She closed her eyes and held her son to her chest. His heartbeat thudded against hers, strong and real. His skin was warm, slick, but… wrong. Not fully human. She dared a glance.
Scales gleamed along his shoulders. Horn-like studs from his head A soft tail, barely thicker than a rope, curled beneath his legs.
Despite it all, he was beautiful. Despite everything, he was hers.
elsewhere, deep within the child's fragile shell… a soul stirred.
Black. Endless. Weightless.
There was no sky. No air. No body. Only warmth. And floating inside it — a thought.
A soul stirred in the dark.
"Where… where am I?" the voice was female — confused, dry, echoing from nowhere.
"Why is it so hot…? Why does everything feel so—tight?"
She could not move.
No limbs responded. No voice answered. Only the faint sound of crying—a woman's sobbing nearby, distant yet heartbreakingly close.
"Who's crying?"
Suddenly—
Light.
A flash behind closed lids, like staring into the sun from beneath water.
She blinked.
But they were not hers.
Violet eyes, veined faintly with blue. Pupils thin and slit like a serpent's. Something moved — a blur of silver hair. A woman. Crying. Holding her.
Her?
No.Him.
Inside the infant's tiny body, the woman screamed — but the only sound that escaped was a newborn's wail.
She tried to move, to speak, to flee, but her limbs were soft and unresponsive. A body too small. A voice too raw. Her mind reeled.
"What the hell is this…? This isn't a dream. I'm… I'm inside of something. Someone..."
Stone. Ash. A woman with silver hair weeping above her. Two creatures at her feet — not possible.
The world around her was madness. Old tents. Savage people. Armor. Leather. Blood. Fire. Dragons.
Dragons.
One of them — black-scaled, red-eyed — chirped near his face. It nuzzled close, curious, with unsettling familiarity.
"NOPE."
She tried to recoil, to scream, to run, but her body refused.
All she could muster was a sobbing wail, a baby's thin cry. Her lungs strained, her voice cracked, but the noise was not hers — not truly.
The woman clutched him tighter.
"Shhh… shhh, my son, my brave little Sulien…" But Sulien — if he even remained — was gone.
The name echoed inside her like a curse.
Sulien.
A name not hers. A fate not chosen. And yet… it was all she had now. A woman reborn in the body of an infant, crying beneath a sky that wasn't hers.
And in his place, a woman from another world cried beneath a newborn's skin, helpless and terrified, reborn into a tale already in motion.
And thus, the fire had chosen not just life — but a stranger's soul to walk its path.
The soft crunch of boots on ash was nearly drowned by the baby's cries and the whispering wind. But when Ser Kael stepped through the haze, armor scorched and torn, She turned.
His eyes drank her in.
She stood before him, wrapped in smoke and moonlight, skin unmarred, silver hair cascading down her back in tangled waves. In her arms, the babe still cried, tiny and furious, his fists flailing like he fought to stay alive.
"Elarya…" he whispered — the first time her name had been spoken aloud in months.
A name buried in duty. In titles. In prophecy.
Not Shakareen.
Elarya Vyrmyr.
She blinked at him, startled — not by the name, but by the softness in his voice.
Kael approached, slow and reverent, as though afraid she might vanish if he stepped too fast. "Gods," he breathed. "You're… you're alive."
She nodded, her lips trembling. "He lives, Ser Kael. I thought I lost him… but he came back to me."
Kael's gaze dropped to the child.
Then all of the sudden his whole body flinched from the sight of the child.
The baby in Elarya's arms — limbs twitching, tail curling slightly beneath him, the scales along his shoulders catching the morning light. Kael's expression shifted. Disbelief. Awe. A flicker of something near fear.
"Elarya…" he said again, this time more slowly, "What… what is he?"
She looked down at her child, brushing sweat-matted hair from his scaled brow.
"He's mine," she said softly. Fiercely. "That's all he needs to be."
Kael didn't reply at first. He couldn't.
He had heard fairytales of dragons. Slain men. Outlived kings. But this? A living infant reborn not just from fire, but changed by it?
This was beyond tales. Beyond prophecy.
This was something that should not be — and yet, here it was. Wailing. Breathing. Alive.
A moment passed before he finally nodded. Not in full understanding — but in acceptance.
Around them, the Kel'rhakars — the warriors, the widows, the elders — rose from the ash-streaked ground. One by one. No softness. Only hardened lives kneeling before something that defied their world.
From the Rhazkaan riders came no commands. No defiance. Only silence.
Then one whispered, almost reverently in harsh Vol'rhakar language "She rose from the flame…"
Another: "With the child in her arms…"
The dragons stirred, curling around her legs.
Kael took a half step closer. "What now?"
Elarya gazed past him, over the horizon.
"I don't know," she said. "But I think… something has begun."
And within the child's mind…
Everything was loud now. Too loud.
The woman trapped within the body of Sulien flinched internally at every voice, every whisper, every name echoing around her.
Elarya Vyrmyr… Elarya.
The silver-haired woman. The one who had wept over him. Who had called him her son. Elarya.
That name struck a strange chord — like a thread being tugged in the dark. Familiar, though she did not know why.
And the man? Kael. His armor glinted in the light, his face rough but kind. She felt something when he looked at Elarya — something deeper. A familiarity forged in paper. She watched Ser kael step forward now, brushing ash off Elarya's bare shoulder, gently checking for wounds.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, voice low.
Elarya shook her head, cradling the baby — her — tighter.
Kael's gaze dropped to the child in her arms. His breath hitched. The horns, the scales, the tail — he looked like something out of myth. A dragon-born infant.
And still… Kael knelt, head bowed low.
"This… this should be impossible," he muttered. "But gods help me… you did it, the boy is alive."
Elarya looked beyond in the horizon towards the rising sun, her voice steady despite the tremble in her arms.
"His name is Sulien. My son."
The Kel'Rhakars rose from their knees, the horde behind them still silent, still watching — unsure whether to fear or revere what they had just witnessed. No children stirred among them, no cries of infants. Only this one. Only him.
The dragons shifted again, curling tighter around Elarya's legs. The black one hissed at Kael when he got too close, but Elarya calmed it with a soft glance.
She held her son like he was the last living thing in the world. And in a way… he was.
And within his mind, the woman inside him screamed.
It was a book.
A fantasy novel. Old. Dusty. One she had started reading years ago and never finished.
But the moment she heard the name "Elarya Vyrmyr," it all crashed back into her skull like a tidal wave.
This world. These names. This story.
The last daughter of a fallen kingdom. A silver-haired exile who walked through fire. A queen not yet crowned. A woman chasing vengeance across a continent to reclaim the glory of her bloodline thought to be extinct.
Elarya — the queen of ashes of the east, and she is the last who carries the blood of Vyrmyr.
But it wasn't a happy tale.
In the story, the child had died. Stillborn. A bad omen. The dragons hatched, yes… but too late to save anything.
Elarya wandered the deserts with her beasts, gathering power, gathering followers. But she never reached the western kingdoms. She never avenged her slaughtered kin.
She was betrayed.
Murdered by those who once called her sister, ally, friend.
Accused of madness. Feared as a witch. Killed before her dream could be born.
That was the ending. That was what the world had written.
But now…
Now Sulien lived.
And the woman inside him — reborn in blood and ash and fire — knew it wasn't supposed to be this way.
He wasn't meant to survive. This wasn't the script.
She felt Elarya's arms around her now. Felt the heartbeat. The warmth. The soft hush of a mother whispering to her child.
And with it came a thought. Terrifying. Unshakeable.
"I've changed something."
The story had already begun — but the path was no longer the same.
Sulien lived.
And with him… hope.
A life that had never existed before now burned bright in the hands of a woman destined to die too soon.
Not this time. He thought.
"Not while I draw breath — no matter how small these lungs are."