Cerys reached up and removed her mask.Beneath was no face, only polished bone, slick and clean, with glowing stones shifting in her eye sockets.Lyra recoiled. Too late.The scream tore free before she could stop it.
"The power dragons held... it couldn't be wasted. Without it, we wouldn't even know what magic is. We survive only because scraps of that strength still cling to the bones they left behind."
The weight of it settled in her gut, too old, too certain to be just a tale.
She remembered fragments, stories whispered in corners, songs muttered by old scavengers, names like Vaelrix passed off as cautionary tales. She'd never paid them much attention. That stuff was for children. For fools. Not for the desperate, the hungry, the real. But now, here, buried beneath the world, she wasn't so sure.
Lyra forced her voice through cracked lips.
"Why... me...?"
There was no skin on High Priest face. No lips, no flesh. Just bone polished to a sickening sheen. Her jaw was intact, the teeth still sharp. But it was the eyes that broke Lyra, the sockets weren't empty. Two stones glowed there, shifting faintly as Cerys looked at her.
Lyra recoiled, but the straps held her down.
Cerys paused.
She had seen that look before—revulsion. Disgust. Even now, it registered. Slowly, she reached inside her coat and drew out a thin blade. The metal caught the weak firelight and reflected her skull in its surface.
She looked at it for a long moment.
"I used to be beautiful," she said, quietly. "Before I gave it all to stop them. Before I burned it away fighting things this world barely remembers."
She lowered the blade, not for Lyra's sake, but as if the memory itself had cooled something in her.
"Vanity is for the living."
Cerys looked at her through those cold-burning stones, and for the first time, Lyra understood what had been speaking to her all this time: not a woman. Not anymore.
"You survived this long," Cerys said. "But survival doesn't mean you're special. You're not. That's not your curse. Your problem is that you're still awake, still feeling all of it. Most don't." Her gaze lingered. "That'll change soon enough."
She waved a hand at the hanging dead, then shifted her grip on the blade she'd drawn earlier. Her hand moved back toward Lyra, slow and deliberate.
She pressed the flat edge to Lyra's chest, not cutting, just resting it there. Then she dragged it upward, a smooth, gliding stroke, cold metal tracing her skin.
Not cruel. Not rushed. Curious.
Almost... envious.
Her voice, when it came, was softer than before.
"You still feel things. That skin. That fear. I remember what that was like."
She paused, looking down at the pale shimmer of Lyra's flesh.
"Don't worry. That part won't last."
"…did not."
Scriv chuckled dryly as he tightened a strap, the sound like leaves scraping bone.
Lyra stared up at the sagging ceiling. Damp veins of stone crawled overhead.
Not a savior.
Her eyes burned. Hot tears slipped free, one after another, soaking into the cold stone beneath her head. Her breath caught, then broke, sobs shaking loose from her throat.
"Please," she whispered. "I don't want to die. I want to live. I have to find my sister. Please... don't take that from me."
The words cracked apart as she said them. She didn't care. She wasn't brave. Not now
She sobbed until she couldn't breathe, until the only thing left was the ache and the silence that followed it.
The straps cut deep, leather biting into raw skin. Her limbs refused to answer but her mind stayed clear. Not through strength. Through the spells whispered over her keeping her awake, aware, helpless.
Cerys, still watching her, lifted her free hand again. She shaped a new seal with sharp, practiced motions. The air around the altar grew heavier, the magic gathering thick as mud.
"It will hurt," Cerys said, almost gently. "But don't worry. If you don't survive, I'll still put you to use."
She lowered her hand, the blade flashing in the dim light.
"You'll rise," she said, voice quiet, almost amused. "No fear. No pain. You won't remember anything. Just a clean, obedient frame."
The loosened brazier mount above the altar.
The missing glyph, scuffed near her left hand.
The hesitation in Scriv's movements when the chants grew complicated. His fingers twitched, his voice faltered. "Another one... too many of them already," he muttered, eyes darting to the skeletal assistants who didn't respond. "Too much stress. Too much dust. Mistress builds her army, but she never said it'd be this much work. I didn't sign up for this..."
Scriv knelt before an iron chest, ancient locks crumbling away under his fingers. Inside, cradled like an idol, lay the Wyrmheart.
It pulsed.
Not like a heartbeat more like the breathing of a forge, slow and hungry. The air wavered around it, heat distorting the edges of the world.
Scriv lifted it with both skeletal hands, reverence souring into fear.
He began to chant, the words dragging at the stones around them.
Cerys joined him, her voice deeper, older. It felt less like sound and more like pressure building in Lyra's skull.
She made another seal, tighter this time, and the gathered magic thickened. It crawled over the altar like oil.
Then, without flourish, she raised the dagger.
Not above her head, just high enough to make it clear.
Her hand came down.
The blade sank just below Lyra's chest, sharp and slow. Not deep, but deep enough. A controlled wound. Her skin parted without resistance.
Cerys didn't speak. She didn't need to.
The pain said enough.
The runes flared to life.
First white. Then gold. Then deep, bloody crimson.
Pain crashed into Lyra.
Cerys placed one cold palm against her brow.
A necromantic whisper forced Lyra's battered heart to keep beating.
Blood poured into carved channels, vanishing into the greedy runes.
They hollowed her out, piece by piece, to make space for the stone.
Lyra's body broke open.
Her chest stretched, bone groaning, the ache deep and unnatural. Something inside her was being taken and not just flesh. She looked down, blinking through tears and haze, and saw movement. Her own organs shifted. Her body opened. Exposed.
Is this how I die? she thought.
Panic crawled higher. Her mind flailed, clinging to scraps of memory. Faces. Laughter around a fire. Her sister's voice, angry and afraid. The faces in the village—people who would never know what happened to her.
She didn't want to die. Not like this. Not here.
I'm not ready. I'm not done. I have to find her. I can't just...
A sob tore out of her throat, raw and wordless.
She couldn't look away. The body on the table was hers, and she was still inside it, watching everything come undone.
Her breath caught.
The Wyrmheart lowered toward her chest, blazing."
No.
The word surged through her, not in defiance of pain, but in defiance of surrender.
You will not take this from me.
Not her memories. Not her name. Not her sister. Not her people from the village.
"You don't get to erase me," she rasped. Her voice cracked, but it carried. "I'm not yours."
The brazier flames flinched. The runes pulsed off-beat.
The Wyrmheart, still cradled in Scriv's hands, gave a low, metallic thrum.
It was faint. But something in the stone stirred.
Not power. Not command.
Recognition.
The runes stuttered.
The circle, so meticulously drawn, spasmed under the surge of wrongness.
Scriv jerked back, bones clattering.
"That's... wrong," he rasped.
Cerys froze. Her voice, for the first time, faltered.
The Wyrmheart pulsed again...
...and cracked.
The chamber trembled. Hooks clanged. Air cracked like split bone.
And Lyra's soul tore open.
Visions crashed into her:
A sky torn apart by fire.
Seresthos, a city suspended in the clouds, consumed by falling stars.
A dragon bound in chains, roaring as Cerys drove a spear of starlight into its heart.
She felt its agony.
Its rage.
And it felt her.
Her grief. Her fury. Her desperate, stubborn love.
They weren't words so much as truth, raw and ancient. Not memories. Not prophecy. Something older, deeper, sinking past her mind and into the root of her being.
A dragon's honor binds him to his kin. A dragon's bond does not break. A dragon's vow rises above despair. A dragon's wrath answers injustice. A dragon's soul flies beyond death.
By storm and stone, I swear it.
Each line carved itself into her as if by claw and flame. They did not echo. They engraved.
The Wyrmheart didn't devour her.
It rebuilt her.
Flesh stitched itself with threads of fire and steel.
Silver bones rose where marrow had been carved away.
Her eyes flared gold, burning through the gloom.
Her chest, once hollowed, forged itself into something untamed.
No wings...
...but something older, something sacred, woke in her blood.
Cerys recoiled. Her heel slipped on stone, and she stumbled, one hand catching the wall. The firelight exposed her skull, raw and open. The glow in her eyes faltered. She didn't move. Just stared, hollow and still.
Her voice broke.
"No," she whispered.