“You promised to tell me all about the world aboveground,” Zara reminds me excitedly. “I would hear about the sun.”
"The sun..." I begin, closing my eyes briefly to summon the sensation. "It's warmth that seeps into your bones. Sometimes gentle, like being wrapped in a heated blanket. Other times it's fierce. It can burn your skin if you stay too long." I touch her pearlescent arm. "Your scales would shimmer beautifully in it."
Zara's face lights up, the glow beneath her scales intensifying with her joy, as if trying to create her own inner sunlight. "It sounds wonderful. I would love to visit your world one day.”
A shadow passes over her violet eyes. There one moment, gone the next, like a premonition darkening her features before she can mask it.
I steer the conversation away from whatever troubled future she might have glimpsed. "You can meet my little sister, Serin," I say quickly. Bad news can wait till later. "Can we explore more of the garden?”
"Of course!" Zara answers before Zaethir can object, already sliding forward on her pearly coils. "I'll show you the singing flowers."
We wander deeper into the garden, following winding paths that curve between glowing pools. Zaethir maintains his distance, moving like a shadow at the periphery of my awareness. I feel his eyes on me constantly, tracking every movement with the focus of a predator, but I refuse to let his vigilance dampen my joyous outing with my young friend.
Zara leads me to a cluster of tall, reed-like plants that terminate in bell-shaped blossoms of palest blue. As we approach, they begin to emit a soft, harmonic hum that rises and falls in gentle waves.
"They are responding to our breath," Zara explains, inhaling deeply to demonstrate how the pitch changes. "The Temple Guardians use them in meditation. If you match your breathing to their song, it is said to bring clarity."
I try it, drawing air slowly into my lungs, and the flowers' melody shifts subtly, weaving around my breath pattern in a way that feels intensely personal, almost intimate. The sound wraps around me like an embrace, soothing tensions I hadn't realized I was carrying.
Chapter Seventeen
VAROK
The war chamber swallows sound, its vast circular expanse designed to contain both strategic discussions and the occasional explosive temper of naga commanders. Carved from the densest obsidian, the walls are veined with luminous light, casting an ethereal glow across ancient battle maps and tactical displays etched into the stone itself. At the center stands a massive table, its surface alive with glowing representations of Vessan-Kar and the territories above.
Sareth and Traven await me, their scaled forms motionless except for the faint flick of a tail tip, a telltale sign of tension. Their eyes track my entrance, assessing my mood, my readiness. I slither to the head of the table, assuming my position without ceremony, arms folded as I study the pulsing light that marks the eastern border of the Ashlands and the Serpentspine Mountains.
Even as I prepare to immerse myself in reports of borders and threats, I remain acutely aware of her presence in the palace. Even now, as she explores the garden with Zara, her presence acts as a constant point of reference around which my thoughts orbit like moons bound by gravity's inexorable pull.
"Report," I command, my voice pitched low but carrying in the chamber's perfect acoustics.
Sareth straightens, weathered scales gleaming under the map's light. "The OathCoil reports only routine matters. Nothing significant since our last meeting." He traces a claw along the eastern border and taps. "Malikor and Jarik have established a surveillance post at the mountain base; a makeshift hollow they have carved from a collapsed cavern. From there, they track General Thorne's Shadow Division as it moves through the old trench networks. Thorne's forces have not advanced, but they are maintaining position uncomfortably close to our territory."
I narrow my gaze at the pulsing red marker on the map. General Thorne and his Shadow Division, elite fighters with specialized training in naga extermination, have positioned themselves at the edge of our territory. Close enough to threaten yet carefully remaining just beyond the treaty's boundary line. A calculated provocation, perhaps, or preparation for something more sinister.
"How many fighters?" I ask.
"Two hundred males, heavy artillery support," Sareth answers. "More than a border patrol, but less than an invasion force."
"For now," Traven adds, his calm voice edged with caution. "Supplies continue to arrive daily. They build their strength gradually, perhaps hoping we will not notice the increment."
I nod, processing this information against what I know of human military tactics. General Thorne is too shrewd for random posturing; every move he makes serves a purpose. The question is whether that purpose comes from the human Council of Elders or from his own ambitions.
"And Lurok?" I ask, my attention shifting to the former Second Fang who vanished after the bombing.
"Still no sign," Traven answers, shifting his weight, his heavy bronze coils rearranging with deliberate precision. "But the guards stationed near the collapsed tunnels on the north side found this in a crevice along the wall as if dropped in haste.”
Traven reaches into a small satchel slung across his chest and pulls out the item wrapped in cloth. When he unwraps it and sets it on the table between us, the light from the war map catches on metal that is smooth, reflective, and foreign.
I lean forward, eyes sharpening. "That is not naga made."
The object that lies before us is a small cylindrical device, forged from a silver alloy. Its shape is compact, functional, almost crude, with a narrow ridge along one side and a recessed slot at the base. Human craftsmanship, without question, but its purpose...
Traven studies it closely. "It looks like a trigger," he says, "for a mechanism...like a bomb, perhaps."
"A detonator," Sareth nods grimly. "Humans use these to set off their incendiary explosive devices from a distance."
The weight of memory settles like stone in my gut. I have seen these before, in the final years of the Sundering, these small, innocuous objects that preceded devastation. Human soldiers would plant their explosives, retreat to safe distances, and activate them with devices just like this. The destruction they wrought is etched into naga memory, entire cavern systems collapsed, homes destroyed, young crushed beneath tons of rock.
