Rynna’s body jerked backward as the power flared beneath her skin, pressure building. Then—scales—ruptured through her flesh in a wet, gushing sound, gleaming like hammered gold as they swelled across her arms and legs. Sobbing on the scream, her bones broke next in deep, splintering breaks. Her arms lengthened, and fingers split, then reshaped into talons, white and gleaming, etching grooves into the ground as her legs bent into new angles, growing, expanding.
Becoming.
The pain was blinding, blasting down her spine, stretching it longer as vertebrae ground one over the next, until the bone popped free, coiling behind her. A tail. Heavy, sinuous, and flexing with strength she didn’t understand. Yet still, the fire climbed. Wings sliced through her back in a scream of torn flesh and reformed muscle. The membranes stretched wide, leathery and vast, as sparks danced along their edges.
Her vision narrowed, and colors fractured into detail with every pulse of energy as her pupils thinned to vertical slits. Baring her teeth, flame poured through the gaps of her grin in molten liquid.
Rynna the human was gone. And in her place, something older stood. Something far more dangerous. Unbound.
Rising with a flap of her wings, she roared. And it broke through the air like a hurricane given voice—deep, and full of destruction’s promise. The Wraith reeled back as if struck, its shriveled limbs spasming, before dropping Fang Unit from its grasp like severed marionettes.
“Impossible!” Shadows condensed around it, shuddering as it tried to fold into the wall itself. “There are no more Wise Ones! You’re all dead!”
Rynna hovered above it, wings outstretched, her body a furnace of raw power.
“You’ve hidden long enough.” Her voice rang out with the relentlessness oftruth. “Your time is over.”
Yet, even as the words left her mouth, the pain struck. Deep. Centered. A wrenching sensation that lanced straight through her dual hearts. And what was left of her soul shuddered, splitting clean down the center all over again without the Weaving’s protection.
But this time, it didn’t drive her to madness. This time, she held, gripping the fire, leaning into the ache. It would cost her, but she would last long enough to finish this.
“Lies!” the Wraith howled.
Then it launched itself across the cavern in a distortion of limbs and teeth, flailing over stone in jagged rage. It didn’t matter, though. Rynna had already moved. Wings folding in tight, she turned midair as her tail swept through a trail of smoke, letting the Wraith’s slash pass by her, close enough to feel the rush of air against her scales.
Pivoting, heat built in her throat as every muscle coiled with purpose. She could feel it now, the sheer magnitude of her power, and how easily she could unmake the world.
The flame within her pounded, ravenous. It had been so long. Every movement fed it. Every breath stoked it. She was winning. She was unstoppable. And she wassecondsfrom losing control.
It had to end. Now.
Whipping her head around, she locked jaws around the Wraith’s head or whatever passed for it with a sickening crunch. The creature writhed and squirmed around her, but she didn’t break, clamping down with all her strength.
Then she finally let go. Gushing up from the deepest part of her, the place where grief and fury lived as one, the fire rushed through her, then scorched its way up her throat as it poured into the Wraith.
And the Wraith screamed. But the fire caught fast, racing through the creature’s form in golden veins, lighting it from the inside out. The cavern shook as shadows peeled away like dead skin, and the creature convulsed, each jolt more desperate than the last.
The flames didn’t care, though. They burned. Not just its body, but its presence. Its wrongness. Her power tore through every inch of it until there was nothing left, leaving only dust and ash falling between her teeth, dissolving around her in a splotchy cloud.
The enemy was vanquished.
A roar exploded from her, triumphant and absolute, and more fire followed, arcing high and wild in a column of heat. Rock split, and earth crumbled as her power seared straight through the cavern’s ceiling.
Sunlight followed, pouring down through the gash she had carved into the world, blinding in its brilliance, chasing away the darkness. And for a single, timeless moment, the fire inside her quieted.
“Control it!” The Phoenix circled around her. “You must pull it in!”
Why?The thought rose.Why should I ever go back to that sad, pitiful existence, living one life to the next, never even knowing who or what I am?
The hunger thundered, ravenous and wild, desperate to consume everything in its path. Anything to quench the agony gnawing at her insides, the urge to let it loose, to burn until nothing remained. What was one more world destroyed in the grand scheme of things?
But…hadn’t there been something? Some reason…
Do what he would do. A familiar voice rang through the growing confusion.
Rynna gnashed her teeth, tailing whipping, as she fought to remember.
A grin, always a little too sharp. The way he wore his human form, because she liked the feel of his hands that way. The softness in his voice when they were alone. But somehow different, this time. Fenrith. Then Kaelith and Fenn. Each flash sparked into being, bright and brief, then vanished before she could grasp it.
