Arc 1 - Chapter 2: The Pact Sealed
The Dragon Bride Pact
The fire didn't vanish—it sank into her.
Elira stood still as the last embers of the ritual curled into her skin, branding her not with pain, but with power. The sigil over her heart cooled to a faint glow, visible only when the light struck it wrong. A mark no mortal could remove. A promise no dragon could ignore.
She was bound to Vaerenth. Not just by oath—but by fire.
When she stepped away from the altar, the silence was deafening. Even the dragons watching from the high balconies did not stir. They knew what had happened.
A true pact had awakened.
Vaerenth approached her slowly. "You felt it," he said. It wasn't a question.
She nodded once. Her voice had not yet returned, but her thoughts were loud. Loud enough that the bond between them echoed with it.
He looked at her differently now. No longer like a reluctant groom bound by duty. More like a guardian. Or a weapon-maker, inspecting the edge of something newly forged.
The priestess dismissed the gathering. The nobles left murmuring. Only Elira noticed the other presence in the hall—a shadow that hadn't bowed, hadn't spoken, hadn't left.
Someone else had felt the pact seal.
And they had not approved.
That night, Elira was taken to her new chamber in the Skyspire.
And in the silence between moonrise and dawn, her mark pulsed again. Something stirred in the depths of the mountain. The same voice from the fire, softer now, whispered through her bones:
You are no bride
You are the beginning.