Page 24 of The Shattered Rite
At the final line, her voice broke entirely, shattering like glass struck by lightning:
“My soul is yours… as yours is mine.”
Silence fell, but it was not still. The air was thick, humming with the raw current of something ancient recognizing itself.
Then Vaeronth roared.
It was not a sound.
It was an event.
Not a voice, but a verdict.
The ground split in hairline cracks at her feet. The water in the pool surged upward, caught in an invisible spiral toward the sky. Her bones vibrated with the force of it; her heart stuttered, then raced to keep up.
And in that sound—in that impossible, all-consuming roar—she felt the bond settle.
Not chains, but roots, threading through every part of her, anchoring her to him, and him to her.
There was no going back.
The cavern shook. The mountain shook. Her bones shook.
Magic broke over her like a tidal wave, crashing into her with incredible force.
Her last fully formed thought before the world drowned was half-terrified, half-horrified, and wholly herself:
Oh, gods. What have I done?
Magic ruptured the air.
It wasn’t wind. It wasn’t sound.
It was pressure—crushing and total. The light didn’t fade. It collapsed.
The cave folded in on itself, reality bending like molten glass. Shadows burned. It was as if the stars had been dragged down to watch.
And then it hit her.
It didn’t seize her skin first. It gripped her bones.
The scream tore from Eliryn’s throat before she knew she was screaming. She tried to move, to think, to flee—but her body betrayed her. Liquid fire surged through her veins, gold and iron threading up her arms, down her spine, curling through her lungs like molten wire. She wasn’t just burning.
She was being rewritten.
“Stop,” she gasped, voice breaking as she fell to her knees. “Stop—oh gods—”
No one listened.
Because this wasn’t punishment.
This was her destiny.
Tendons snapped and rewove. Muscles tore and reknit. Symbols she could not name burned themselves into her marrow. Her skin seared from the inside out, covered not in ash, but in light.
“Vaeronth—Vaeronth!” she screamed. “Make it stop!”
I cannot,he said softly.This is yours.
