Inside the storm, Selene could no longer tell where her thoughts ended and the serpent’s began.It wasn’t a voice anymore — it was a thousand whispers, slithering through the corridors of her mind, speaking in the rhythm of her own heartbeat.Each pulse echoed with something ancient and cruel.We gave you power. You gave us pain.The words crawled through her like venom.Around her, the storm’s roar had dimmed to a muffled hum. The battlefield, the ruins, even Adrian’s voice — all of it had faded to shadow.Now she stood in a boundless space of obsidian light, weightless and alone — or rather, not alone.Before her coiled the serpent — vast, luminous, and terrifyingly beautiful.Its scales shimmered with galaxies. Its eyes were twin suns — and yet, when it spoke, the sound came from her own mouth.“You were never meant to be human,” it said, its tone tender, almost pitiful. “Do you remember what it was to be whole?”Selene’s fists clenched. “I remember the choice.”The serpent’s laugh

By the second dawn, the council had turned from mourning to murmurs.The great hall of Veyne had been patched with black banners to hide the sky’s wounds, but nothing could hide the scent of division brewing beneath it. The air was thick with candle smoke and quiet accusations.Selene sat upon the broken throne — not out of pride, but because the lords insisted she must appear as queen. The weight of that word hung heavier than the crown. She could feel the serpent’s pulse beneath her skin, faint and slow, like a second heart. Every hour it slept, the scar burned a little colder.Adrian stood at her right, Kael at her left. Beyond them, voices rose and fell like surf against rock.“The realm is shattered!” cried Lord Renn. “Trade routes gone, temples burned. Without the Queen’s power, how do we rebuild?”“The same way we destroyed ourselves,” spat another lord. “By grasping at things we cannot hold?”The old mage, bent with age but eyes still bright, struck his staff upon the

The Vale of EchoesThe snow grew quieter the deeper they went.Not softer — quieter.It was as if the world itself held its breath, watching them pass. Each step Selene took left no sound, no trace, as though the earth refused to acknowledge their presence.Ahead, the mist thickened into walls of shifting silver. It wasn’t natural fog — it moved with purpose, folding and unfolding in patterns like thought, whispering in tongues too ancient to belong to the mortal world.Eryk stopped beside her. “We’re close,” he said quietly.Selene could feel it too. The air had changed; it was heavy, luminous, full of invisible currents tugging at her heart.“The Vale,” she murmured. “It’s… alive.”Eryk’s mouth tightened. “Alive isn’t the word I’d use.”The WhispersThey entered a single file. The mist swallowed them whole.Almost immediately, voices began to hum around them — thousands of them, soft and fractured, like fragments of wind through broken glass.At first, Selene thought they were ech

The Flame Beneath the SnowThe mountain rose like a cathedral of ice and bone.Selene stood at its base, gazing upward as the mist from the Vale began to thin into clear, bitter air. The sky above was a deep silver, streaked with crimson clouds that bled light into the snow.Eryk followed silently, his cloak whipping in the wind. The path ahead twisted sharply, vanishing into the blinding white.“Do you feel that?” he asked.Selene closed her eyes. The air around her hummed — a deep, low resonance that seemed to pulse with her heartbeat.“Yes,” she said softly. “It’s… calling.”Eryk’s jaw tightened. “That’s not the mountain. It’s him.”The TremorThey climbed for hours, the path narrowing until it was barely wide enough for two feet side by side. Beneath them, the Vale shimmered faintly, still veiled in silver fog.As they reached a ridge, the ground trembled. A deep sound — not thunder, not quake — rolled through the stone.Selene steadied herself against the cliff. “What was that?

The Heart Beneath the FlameThe mountain breathed.Selene could feel it in the stone beneath her boots — a slow, rhythmic pulse, like the heartbeat of a creature too vast to comprehend. The tunnels had once been cold and silent, but now the walls glimmered faintly, veins of molten light crawling through the rock like fire caught in glass.Every step deeper made the air hum. Every breath carried the taste of iron and heat.Eryk walked ahead, his torch unnecessary; the mountain lit itself. His silhouette was carved in flickering amber, the light catching the edge of his silver hair.“Don’t lag behind,” he said, voice taut with a restraint she hadn’t heard before. “The path isn’t stable anymore.”Selene managed a small, humorless smile. “Neither am I.”Her voice came out quieter than she intended. Her hand brushed her chest — where the scar still glowed faintly, resonating with the hum of the stone.The power that had once burned her now felt almost… familiar. Like a pulse she couldn’t