Page 21 of The Shattered Rite

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She hit stone hard enough to lose her breath.

Behind her, the thing shrieked.

But didn’t follow.

She turned.

It crouched in the threshold.

Its spiral jaws quivered.

But it didn’t enter.

It couldn’t.

And then it retreated.

Vanished.

Eliryn’s mind spun. She couldn’t understand.

Couldn’t think.

Until the air shifted behind her.

Warm.

Heavy.

Ancient.

She turned and rose to her feet at once.

And saw him.

Golden eyes cracked open in the dark like molten suns.

The cavern pulsed—not with fire.

With breath.

A shape larger than nightmare stirred. Scales black as midnight glass, veins of molten light coiling beneath like magma.

And when he rose?

Stone shuddered.

The nightmare creatures had fled fromhim.

Eliryn, bruised and broken, took one step forward.

She didn’t choose to.

Her soul remembered him before her mind could.

A memory burned into her blood.

“Oh,” she whispered, voice raw. “There you are.”

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