I froze. “She’s… alive?”
“I cannot confirm that,” she said gently. “Sometimes, it takes many of your years to pass between realms. We know she lived when you were born, because you exist.”
Tears stung behind my eyes. “Then how are you speaking to me now?”
Her smile was faint. “That was my gift in life. To walk the dreams of others. To speak truths in sleep.”
“And Veralin… stole that power when he killed you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But I clung to a sliver. One thread. I can only come to you this once.”
My breath caught. “To warn me?”
She stepped forward, placing her hand lightly over my heart. “Yes.”
“Warn me about what?”
Her voice was a wind, rising with power that made the dream tremble.
“To destroy the throne…” she said, her eyes burning into mine, “you must break the crown.”
And then?—
She vanished.
Then, I stood alone on the Ascension Grounds, the morning sky just beginning to stain with light, the stone beneath my boots still cool with the last breath of night. The wind stirred gently,carrying the scent of ash, morning dew, and something older—expectation.
Kaelith’s massive form broke through the clouds, her wings stretching wide as she descended with slow, deliberate grace. Her violet scales shimmered in the rising light, but there was a weight to her landing—a silence deeper than usual. She touched down with barely a sound, and her golden eyes found mine immediately.
“I just had the strangest dream,” I said, stepping toward her. “It was about my grandmother. She?—”
But Kaelith didn’t respond.
She didn’t growl. Didn’t snort. Didn’t speak with her usual sharp-edged commentary.
Instead, her head tilted slightly, and a deep hum vibrated through the surrounding air. A presence.
She spoke. But it wasn’t her voice.
It was hers. My grandmother’s. The voice from my dream.
Time flows like a broken river… and you stand where it narrows.
My heart seized. “Kaelith?” I whispered.
Her body began to shimmer.
Her tail, once sleek and deadly, split again—not just in two this time, but three, each tip jagged and glowing, like living blades.
Then her head rippled.
A second muzzle emerged alongside the first—seamless, spectral, as if woven from the same magic that echoed in her bones. It did not roar. It spoke. A mirror, a shadow, a doppel.
Kaelith had become something more—something ancient.
The voice that flowed from her was soft and terrible, like memory made flesh.
The final fae war draws near.
