Chapter 24 – Draven's POV
The suite was too quiet.
Quiet in the way cemeteries are quiet—calm on the surface, but with a pulse of something dead humming beneath.
Damian had left in a storm, his temper scorching every shadow he passed. Devon followed with silence sharp enough to cut. Even Dexter, loud and grinning as always, had slipped away. But I knew that look in his eyes—
he was calculating, same as me.
And Scarlet?
Locked in the room at the end of the hall, sleeping like she hadn't just bent the rules of the world and walked away breathing.
I stood by the window, still as stone, arms behind my back. From here, I could see the spires of Crescent Hollow slicing the horizon, sharp and black against the pale morning sun. The academy wasn't just a school. It was a fortress—built not to keep students in, but to keep something out.
Or maybe in.
I'd always known. Even before the scroll.
Especially after the scroll.
---
Flashback — Six years ago
The library smelled like dust and secrets, the kind that sank into your skin. I was thirteen, restless, carved from ambition and questions no one wanted me to ask.
I'd grown up hearing whispers—of chains in the earth, of shadows older than time. They said Crescent Hollow was safe because we were strong. I wanted to know why strength was needed in the first place.
That hunger took me beneath the archives, down where the air turned cold and the walls breathed stories no tongue dared to speak.
That's where I found it.
A scroll locked in obsidian and blood. My blood broke it open. Not coincidence. Design.
The writing wasn't in Common. It hissed across the parchment in Valyrian, sharp and alive, like language with teeth.
I read. Because I was a fool—or maybe because I was already doomed.
"When blood runs redder than dawn,
And four fangs bow to the storm,
The skies shall burn,
The earth shall quake,
And chains older than gods shall break."
My pulse was a drum.
I kept reading.
"She shall rise in crimson,
With eyes of fractured suns,
And breath that calls the beasts from chains.
The scaled kings shall kneel,
And their roar shall be her war cry.
In her shadow, four shall kneel—
Fang, flame, ice, and sight.
Not kings. Keys."
I remember staring at that line, cold all over, even as my blood ran hot.
Not kings. Keys.
Us.
And it wasn't done.
"Beware her crown of ash,
For it is forged from worlds undone.
The Scarlet Queen shall not be crowned.
She shall conquer."
I stopped breathing.
Not because I didn't believe it.
Because I did.
I sealed the scroll that night. Buried it under wards no one could break. And I swore never to speak of it again.
Because if that prophecy was true, the world wasn't prepared.
And neither was I.
---
Back to present
But now—
She's here.
Scarlet Stormborne. Blind, burning, breaking rules with every breath. Wrapped in crimson like a warning written in silk. Eyes fractured like the sun through broken glass.
And dragons?
Dragons aren't dead myths. They're buried truths. Shackled under Crescent Hollow, under the seal she almost cracked in the throne room.
If she finds one scale, one fragment, the chains could splinter.
And if they splinter—
the beasts come back.
Not as slaves.
As soldiers.
Hers.
The prophecy wasn't a bedtime story. It was a blueprint for war.
And she's the match pressed to the powder.
My fingers curled behind my back, nails biting into my palm. Every instinct screamed to kill her now. Snap the thread before it unravels the world.
But instinct doesn't win wars. Strategy does.
If she's the fulcrum, killing her might trigger the collapse faster.
So I'll do what I always do.
Control the storm.
Even if it kills me.
A floorboard creaked behind me. Reflex sharpened my spine.
"I thought you'd left," I said, voice flat.
Dexter leaned against the doorway, all casual grin and restless energy, but his eyes were too bright. "You talk to windows now, Ice King?"
"Privacy isn't your strength," I replied.
"Neither is lying," he shot back, tilting his head. "You've been quiet since story time. That's not like you."
"Maybe I don't have anything to say."
"Or maybe," Dexter drawled, pushing off the frame, "you've got secrets sharp enough to bleed on."
I turned then, just enough for him to see my eyes. Cold. Empty. "Leave it, Vaughn."
His smile didn't falter, but the humor in it cracked. For a moment, the seer looked like what he really was—a man who'd seen too much and hated all of it.
Then he pivoted, hands in pockets, voice light again. "I guess we are skipping school today "
The door clicked shut.
I looked back out the window, toward the horizon where dawn burned like a wound, and whispered the words that had been carved into my bones for years:
"The Scarlet Queen shall not be crowned. She shall conquer."
And gods help us all when she does.