To unearth what’s awakened and call it divine,he had said to me.
A plea to see the Viper as extraordinary. Even if it carried burden.
The weight had quickly become familiar, almost comforting. As if I could truly feel the flicker of its heart pressed into my pulse.
One night, a new compulsion had risen. Not one to hunt, only to bite.
Myself.
So, I had.
Blood had slid down my chin, beading against the bracelet as the curse whispered in a language I barely understood. My voice, yet not mine.
Eeva.Live.
The stone bracelet uncoiled, midnight scales thickening as it slithered up my arm, heavier,alive.
In that moment it had become an extension of the curse, not a lock on the Viper, but a hand on my throat. Keeping me from becoming it.
It found its home, twisting around my throat, fading between flesh and shadow, indistinguishable from the ink I kept glamoured around my shoulder and collarbone.
I had laughed at that moment.
The only part I couldn’t remember was if it was me laughing, or the Viper.
“I’m not picking up any heat signatures.” I scanned the tree line. The form remained, sitting wrong in my chest.
Cold dug in deeper; my heart clenched around it, the beat no longer steady but serpentine, in the voice that never quite belonged to me.
Follow, go, go, go.
Callum ignited a sphere of flame, hurling it overhead to light where my snake crept along the realm.
Rook and Ford emerged breathless from the trees just then, catching the glow. Without shifting my focus from the shadows, I motioned them closer with a flick of my arm.
Ford dragged a hand through sweat-matted hair, squinting. “What the hel are we staring at? Air? Existential dread?”
Callum didn’t flinch, his stare still pinned to the dark. “To your right.”
Rook’s deep brown eyes darted as he limped toward us, his uneven stride a relic of birth rather than battle. He moved with practiced ease, turning the flaw into something almost deliberate.
His nature magic rose, roots breaking through the ground at our feet. He bent low, hair like soil spilling forward as he inhaled. The breath ended in a cough, choking on the thick air as the forest floor shivered.
The flame in Callum’s palm swelled into a cobalt orb, its glow pressing against the haze. Beneath it, my snake recoiled, tongue darting as it slithered back up my wrist and into stone.
Rook’s voice wavered, though his magic did not. “This feels...” He shook his head, rejecting the words before they could settle. “Wrong. Like heat that freezes, but a cold that burns.”
I craned my head, eyes slicing the tree line where slivers of color fluttered, barely there, like power hiding behind the space between realms.
I blinked, the movement coming sluggish and heavy, and the thick taste of it subsided.
The presence. The dread. It all vanished.
My eyes swept the trees again, the rocks, the yawning dark between them. “It’s gone.”
Ford stiffened, rubbing the back of his neck like he could knead the unease from his skin. “Define gone...” His hazel eyes glinted, narrowed. “Gone as in... vanished into the ether? Or gone as in it went to fetch a midnight snack and plans to come back for dessert?”
The joke was weak. Forced.
