Page 79 of The Shattered Rite
She slowed.
“More illusions?” she whispered.
Likely.Vaeronth’s tone was guarded now.But not the same as before. These will be shaped by you.
Her brows drew tight. “By me?”
The trial already knows you can best beasts. Now it wants to see what you’ll do when facing your own fears.
“Oh, good,” she muttered. “Because those other monsters weren’t nearly personal enough.”
The corridor ahead shimmered; light folding in on itself, mist curling like fingers around her ankles.
And from the shadows stepped two women.
One was cloaked in the shape of a memory barely old enough to bruise. Her mother, on her final day, bandaged and pale from the wounds she’d never recovered from, jaw clenched tight even in death. Her clothes were bloodstained, scorched at the edges—the same ones she’d worn when she’d slipped away into the dark to steal armor for Eliryn, only to come home broken.
Eliryn’s stomach hollowed.
And beside her… was a stranger she somehow knew.
Straight-backed. Tattooed in sharp geometric spirals down her arms and neck. Eyes like chipped obsidian. Not old, but not young either—aged by time, tempered by war. There was no warmth in her face, only strength. Her skin bore the faint shimmer of a rider once bonded, a power from within radiating around her.
Her grandmother.
Eliryn’s breath stilled. She had never seen her in life. Only in faded sketches. Only in stories so painful her mother struggled to speak them aloud. But now she stood in the flesh—or something close to it—wearing the face of a warrior who had once soared alongside dragons before falling with them into history.
Eliryn’s sword lowered slightly. Her heart shuddered.
“Vaeronth…” she breathed, her voice barely audible.
Illusions,Vaeronth whispered in her mind, quieter than before.But not of the maze’s making alone. These came from you.
Her pulse faltered.
“I didn’t summon them.”
Not consciously.
Her vision fluttered, ghosted and weeping. One moment the women blurred to smudges, the next, she could see the curl of ash at her mother’s sleeve, the shimmer of her grandmother’s tattoos. It felt like waking and dreaming in the same breath. Too sharp. Too real.
“Make it stop,” she whispered.
I cannot,Vaeronth said gently.You carry them.
Her mother stepped forward.
“You shouldn’t have gone,” her mother rasped, voice rough and worn. “I died for you. And you… burned it all.”
Eliryn flinched. Her throat closed. “I gave you rites. I honored you the only way I could.”
“You lit the match,” her mother whispered, eyes full of ache. “And left me in ash.”
She shook her head, weakly. “I couldn’t leave the house standing. They would’ve torn it apart. Desecrated it.”
“You left nothing,” her mother said. “Not even yourself.”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “That’s not true.”
