Page 34 of The Shattered Rite
She stepped forward, steady now. Her shredded clothes, her bare skin streaked in blood—none of it mattered.
What mattered were the marks that curled up her arms, coiled across her collarbone, symbols alive with faint light even in the shadows.
She moved like a queen.
She walked like she believed it.
And in her mind, Vaeronth whispered softly, almost like a benediction:
You have been graced with more dragonmarks than the old riders of legend. You should stand proud.
The pendant at her chest burned gold, casting restless light over the bare skin of her collarbone. The tattoos—no, not tattoos, not really—flickered faintly. Living scripture, curling beneath her skin like someone had branded fire into her bones and dared her to survive it.
Dragon-scale patterns shimmered when she turned her head, crawling up her throat like flame-shaped vines. They didn’t feel like a gift.
They felt like a warning.
She just wasn’t sure if the warning was meant for others… or herself.
Every step she took echoed like something older than fear. Older than pain. Older than her.
The hall fell silent. Heads turned. One figure gasped. Another crossed himself like she was a nightmare clawing free of a hellscape. A third just stared, wide-eyed, lips moving silently around a single word:
“Impossible.”
Eliryn met their gazes, steady and unblinking.
She was no longer the half-blind girl tripping over moss in the dark.
She was bound.
Flame-marked.
Changed.
And she was going to do her damnedest to act like it.
Behind her, a voice cut the quiet. Calm. Sharp.
“They say the dragonbond changes you.” A pause. The scrape of boots against stone.
She turned.
A broad-shouldered man, eyes narrowed with suspicion or maybe fear, met her gaze like it was a duel. His voice was likea steel blade drawn slow. “They say the bond makes you less. Hollow. So what are you now?”
Eliryn stopped.
She turned.
And smiled. Slow. Lethal.
“I was reborn in the fire of a dragon,” she said softly, voice like silk drawn over a blade. “So whatever you’re trying to be right now? A threat, a judge, a man worth fearing?”
She stepped toward him.
“You’re just a bug underfoot.”
He flinched. Only slightly. But she saw it.
