Page 108 of The Shattered Rite
She blinked again, hoping it would pass. That the fog would recede.
But this time… it didn’t.
Half of what she could see—the left side—simply slipped away.
Almost all at once. It happened mid-blink.
One breath, and the room in front of her was murky.
The next breath the murk was halved.
Eliryn reeled, catching herself on the wall. She turned her head, trying to force her other eye to compensate, to anchor the disappearing edges. But it was like watching night swallow color.
Her left side saw only color-smudged light now. No detail. No shape.
She gasped, a sharp inhale she didn’t mean to make.
Easy,Vaeronth rumbled, low and deep in her chest.It is not death. It is a door.
“A door that closes,” she whispered.
Only so another may open.
She stayed there for a long time, breathing shallow and slow, memorizing the shapes of the room while she could still make them out with half a world’s worth of clarity.
The others had started getting antsy, stretching or pacing, but she sank down onto one of the stone benches near the wall and folded her hands in her lap. The left side of her vision had dissolved into a haze of color and warped light. Even the floor seemed to slope slightly, unbalanced by the clarity she’d lost.
She didn’t call attention to it. Not yet.
Across the chamber, she could hear muffled voices; two of the chosen muttering to each other, the rhythm of nervous energy passing between them like a thread being wound and unwound. Whitvale was sharpening his blades against the stone wall’s edge. Stormthresh paced near the far door, muttering prayers under her breath.
Garic hadn’t strayed far. He stood a few paces away, arms crossed, eyes occasionally flicking toward her. He didn’t speak.
Eliryn closed her eyes entirely.
Vaeronth,she reached again, more steady this time.This is only going to keep getting worse.
Yes,he said without delay.And yet you will not break.
Not yet.She muttered.
Not ever.
A pause passed between them. She opened her eyes and studied what she could. The blur had stopped spreading, at least for now. But her left eye registered only vague, abstract movement. If she turned her head too fast, her stomach lurched.
“I feel crooked,” she muttered under her breath.
You are changing,the dragon acknowledged.But that doesn’t mean it's bad.
“No one else would see it any other way.”
No one else is bonded to dragon and bound by prophecy.
Eliryn exhaled slowly, letting the warmth of Vaeronth’s presence expand within her. He didn’t fill the space with words this time, only with stillness. A kind of protective quiet, like being wrapped in wings beneath a dark sky.
Her hand moved absently to her chest, fingers brushing the pendant there. The warmth of it grounded her. The magic pulsed beneath her skin, quiet but alive.
Around her, time moved strangely, thick and slow, like honey poured over stone.
