Three days after the confrontation at Caer Thalion, the wind changed again this time bearing not smoke or ash, but sulfur, salt… and scale.
From the southern coasts came whispers:
The Wyrm Queen had awakened.
She who spoke in riddles and ruin.
She whose brood once ruled the skies before men learned to build walls.
She who remembered every name ever carved in flame.
And she had summoned Seraphira.
The Cavern of Coils lay beneath the cliffs of Avel'Shaar, veiled in mist and spell.
Only those marked by flame or blood could enter it and return unchanged.
Seraphira went alone.
Elena protested.
Theryn warned her.
Even Vaerik, ever calm, simply said, "Not all things in that place can be unmade."
But Seraphira had learned this much:
Truth lived where danger walked.
So she descended the path of bones and coral, blade at her hip, flame on her wrist, into the belly of prophecy itself.
The cavern pulsed like a living heart.
Its walls shimmered with gold-veined scale. Echoes moved in unnatural rhythms. The deeper she walked, the older the air became heavy with memory, thick with forgotten magic.
At last, she reached a chamber vast and round, domed by stone like the inside of a world-sized egg.
And from the center of it rose the Wyrm Queen.
Her body was endless, coiled upon itself. Eyes like molten bronze. Wings tucked, but present folded against walls that still bore burn marks from her birth.
Seraphira stood tall as the queen leaned low.
Her voice was deep. Feminine. Cruel and kind in equal measure.
So the cursed one lives.
Seraphira's voice was steady. I am not cursed. Not anymore.
The Wyrm Queen hissed softly, a sound like ancient laughter.
They told you that to keep you small. But the fire within you was always too big for their world.
She circled slowly. And now you come to hear what was hidden.
"The prophecy, flameborn."
Seraphira's mark pulsed.
I don't believe in prophecy, she said.
Then believe in patterns, the Wyrm Queen replied. Because they do not care if you believe.
The Queen's eyes glowed brighter.
And her voice echoed through every bone in the chamber:
"When the last daughter of ash bears the flame unbroken....
When the crowned devil waits beneath a broken gate...
When the kingdoms shatter not by war, but by truth...
Then shall rise the one born of both flame and shadow."
The cavern shook.
"She shall wear no crown made by men.
She shall rule no throne that rests on gold.
But the world shall kneel…"
"Because she will remember what they chose to forget."
Seraphira's mouth was dry.
That's me, isn't it?
The Wyrm Queen's coils shifted.
You already know it is. As Seraphira turned to leave, the Queen spoke one last time:
"Be wary, flameborn."
"There is another prophecy."
Seraphira froze.
The Wyrm Queen's eyes narrowed.
"One in which the fire consumes everything."
"And the one who unites… becomes the one who ends."
🌑 In the Underworld…
Kaelreth sat before a tapestry of fate, its threads burning slowly, endlessly.
Malkor stood behind him.
She went to the wyrm, he said.
Kaelreth nodded once. Then she knows.
And if she chooses the second prophecy?
Kaelreth looked toward the north, toward the Hollow. Toward her.
"Then even I will have to stop her."