Page 6 of The Shattered Rite
Eliryn hadn’t believed her—not fully. But the moment the Flame carved her name in gold, something inside her had stirred. A gravity she couldn’t shake.
She remembered the look in her mother’s eyes that morning, a quiet sorrow resting just behind the pride.
And now, in the flickering hush of this house, with the fire gutted low and dawn pressing at the windows, all that knowing sat like a stone in her throat.
She’d thought grief came after. Apparently, it liked arriving early.
She felt it now—slow and raw—gnawing at the edges of her resolve. She kept listening for the door, for footsteps, for her mother’s voice calling out in the dark.
But the only sound was the wind.
And in it, somewhere far off, she thought she heard a whisper.
Not words. Never words.
Just the sense that something was watching. Something vast. Ancient. Waiting.
Eliryn closed her fingers tighter around the pendant.
And she waited, too.
Chapter 2: By Blood and Bond
“To mourn is to tether the living to the dead, weaving bonds that neither time nor death can sever.”—Spoken legend of the Flamebound
A noise at the door finally came, much later than it should have.
Eliryn ran, already knowing.
She flung the door open—and the world tipped sideways.
Her mother collapsed into her arms, dead weight and the stink of blood flooding the air. Crimson streaked down her face and arms in thick, uneven rivulets, dark as spilled ink. The battered silver armor—etched with curling, half-forgotten sigils—slid from her shoulders and hit the floor with a sound that was almost human.
“I got it,” her mother rasped, breath hitching in jagged bursts. “They said… we should be grateful. Grateful to give you… a chance at greatness.”
“No. No, no, no.” Eliryn eased her down onto the floorboards, her hands moving on instinct, healer’s training overriding the panic clawing at her ribs. Fingers swept along limbs, pressing for breaks, for heat. Her brow was split, shallow. The left arm hung wrong—fractured. But that wasn’t what froze her blood.
It was the sound in her chest.
A wet, rattling inhale. A bubbling exhale.
Lungs filling with blood.
She dragged her closer to the hearth, desperate for light, for warmth that might anchor her to the living. “Stay with me, Ma. Tell me what happened. Did they—?”
Her mother’s mouth twitched into something that might’ve been a smile if it hadn’t been smeared with blood. “Didn’t like that I haggled too well. Thought a cursed healer should pay in more than coin.”
Eliryn’s hands shook so badly she could barely grind the goldenroot and frostblossom between her fingers. “I can fix this. I can slow the bleeding, bind your chest, draw the fluid—”
“Shh,” her mother whispered, her voice fraying like old cloth. “You know it’s past saving.”
“Stop.” The word came out sharper than she meant. “Just let me try.”
Her mother’s eyes softened, shining with something that wasn’t just pain. Peace. Resignation. “This was always the way it would go.”
Eliryn’s throat closed. “You saw it. Before the nightmares came.”
Her mother didn’t deny it. “You think I didn’t try to change it? That I didn’t beg the vision to shift?”
