Page 66 of The Book of Legends
It doesn't quit. My lungs seize, my eyes burn, and the planet becomes light and fire and horror.
Then a fresh roar pierces through the tumult. The air splits as something enormous falls from the heavens, wings open and scales shining like obsidian seared by lightning.
Malachi.
He falls between the flames and me, his dragon form coiling around me in a broad, shielding circle. His body is a fortification of presence, not of weapons. He drops his huge head next to mine and looks at me through molten golden eyes.
Breathe, I can sense him say. Not expressed in words but rather in the bones of my skull, in the fire that at last starts to retreat.
My legs weaken, but as the final embers die, his wing drapes softly between me and the flames to protect me.
I whisper, voice breaking, not meant to. "I meant not to?—”
The ground trembles once again.
Kainen, appearing in a flash of darkness and gold, shows up with a tremendous blast of magic. His coat breaks in the breeze, eyes wild as they rest on me—crouched, shivering, shielded by a dragon.
"What happened?" His voice is harsh with anxiety. He moves forward. "Selene—are you injured?"
Malachi raises his head and groans gently.
"She's safe," he says, the words formed by magic vibrating in the air. "You're late."
Kainen flinches, shame playing over his features.
"As soon as I sensed you calling, I arrived."
Malachi says, "You weren't fast enough," then raises his wing to let me breathe completely.
I stagger straight forward. Kainen comes to assist me, but I step aside before he can touch me.
"There was so much fire," I reply, just above a whisper.
Kainen remarks, "You called the fire." And it responded.
"No," I murmur. "That's impossible."
His eyes deepen as he studies me. "Then how?" Kainen looks back at me, then once at Malachi. "Selene, you are not alone in this."
I shake my head, uncertain. “Aren’t I?”
The sky above Nythia is black and brooding, like an open wound that refuses to heal—clouds churn with shadowed fury, streaked through with veins of crimson bleeding across the horizon. Here, time bends. One sunrise can last hours. Or disappear entirely. Ash clings to my skin like snow, swirling through the air as if the land itself refuses to let me forget its ruin.
I make my way across the deserted courtyard, the silence heavy and unnatural. Twisted, burned vines coil around the blackened stone, desperate things that cling like relics of a resurrection that never came.
Above, perched like a phantom atop the tallest spire, Malachi watches. His wings, vast and still, cast a shadow that stretches over the courtyard. He sees me. They all do.
You don’t leave a place like this.
You survive it. Or you surrender.
There’s been no word from Kainen.
My heart hammers in my chest, my lips tremble with unspoken thoughts, and my body aches with the weight of everyemotion we’ve buried between silences. I thought when he left me in the courtyard, the storm would pass.
But the silence only thickens. It coils tighter. It chokes.
I pass the shattered fountain—long since dry—but the vines that wind up its jagged spine pulse with veins of glowing crimson. They feed from something unseen, something buried. I once asked Nieve about them. She only offered evasions—gentle, never cruel. Like she knows what I’m becoming. What he’s shaping me into.
