Page 27 of The Shattered Rite
They were forged.
Chapter 7: Marked for More
“The bond is not salvation. It is surrender.”—Inscription found at the Shrine of the Bound
When she woke, the silence felt wrong.
It wasn't a quiet peace, it was a stillness that spoke of a draconian aftermath.
Her heartbeat pulsed in her ears. Slow. Heavy. Her body ached—not from wounds, but from something deeper. Change.
She sat up stiffly, her breath tight as she touched her throat.
Her fingers traced strange patterns along her skin. Lines of smooth, raised symbols curled over her collarbone, spiraled her wrists, and looped down her ribs. The marks weren’t scars. They shifted faintly beneath her fingertips, alive. Her skin caught the low light, runes glimmering black and gold, scales rippling faintly at her sides like the breath of something sleeping.
“I… don’t recognize myself.”
No,Vaeronth answered, his voice rich as iron and old as ruin.Because you are no longer the girl who entered the dark.
Her throat caught.
“I don’t know if that’s reassuring.”
It is truth.
She smiled faintly, brittle and fragile. “You know that that's not comforting, right?”
I have waited for three hundred years. Comfort might take some building up to.
That silenced her.
The hush stretched long. The weight of his words settled against her skin, heavier than the runes.
“You’ve been… waiting? That long?” She pause. "For me?"
His presence pulsed. Not warmth, not pride. Something deeper. Endurance.
I waited for you before your mother’s mother took her first breath.
Vaeronth’s voice filled the cavern like smoke. Not cruel. Not cold. Just… absolute.
“Great,” Eliryn muttered, pressing a trembling hand to the wall as her knees wobbled. “No pressure, then.”
His scales shifted in the dark—too large, too real for her mind to process clearly. Her blurred sight caught only fragments: molten veins of gold, ridges like black iron, wings that seemed to shudder the air itself. Her brain tried to fill in the blanks, but the image her mind painted was too vast.
“I can’t even see you properly,” she admitted, voice catching. “After all that waiting, you get stuck with the blind girl.”
There was a pause.
And then Vaeronth’s voice rumbled low and quiet.
Your eyes are not your weakness.
“At least you're not pretending I don't have any weaknesses. But, I thought dragons chose their riders.” She swallowed. “Wasn’t that the whole… legend?”
Once, we chose.
A pause thick with something heavier.
