Not now," she interrupts, but her voice has lost its earlier edge. Now she just sounds tired. "You were right about one thing. We have much to discuss, but not here."
I nod, accepting her need for space and time. The wound between us requires patience to heal.
“Lurok!" Varok calls from where he coils amid the carnage, Leira at his side. "Gather a squad and secure the perimeter. Make sure they truly retreat. Find Traven and have him collect all the weapons and armor from the humans."
"What of the wounded humans?"
"Drag them across the border," Varok sneers. "Let their own kind deal with them."
I bow my head in acknowledgment, my tail already turning me toward the boundary between our territories. Duty calls, but as I move away from Serin, I feel the loss of connection like a physical ache, our merged elements separating back into individual currents.
I assemble six warriors with a flick of my wrist, dispatching pairs to sweep north and south along the border while Traven's squad gathers abandoned arc launchers, canons, and glass orbs from the battlefield. We drag moaning human casualties across the invisible line that divides our lands, leaving them in neat rows for their retreating comrades to collect. When the perimeter is finally secured, I find myself standing at the farthest reach of naga territory, where jagged black stone gives way to the gray wasteland of the Ashlands.
There, sprawled broken and twisted against the rocks, lies Halvane. The Harbinger's body is bent at impossible angles, blood pooling beneath him in a dark mirror that reflects nothing. His armor, once polished to gleaming perfection, now lies cracked and scorched, his flesh visible through the gaps.Beside him, his crimson banner has fallen, the proud fabric now twisted beneath his broken form like a funeral shroud.
I hover above him, feeling nothing but a cold, hollow certainty. This is the end that was always coming for him. The human who brought death to naga for generations has died on our land, beneath the shadow of the Serpentspine Mountain he sought to bring down on our heads. There is a symmetry to it that even I, in my exhaustion, can appreciate.
He stares upward with unseeing eyes, his face frozen in that final moment of disbelief. Did he understand, in his last breath, what he faced? Did he recognize the prophecy made manifest in our combined elemental fury? Or did he die still believing naga were nothing but vermin to be exterminated?
I will never know, and in truth, it does not matter. What matters is that for the first time in my life, I understand what Eira tried to tell me. The prophecy was never about destruction but about union. Not the end of what we are, but the beginning of what we might become together.
As I turn my back on the Harbinger's corpse and slither toward the obsidian gate where Serin waits with the others, I feel a weight lifting from my scales. The wind still answers my call, but now it carries something new, not just power, but possibility. And for the first time since I heard the Threadborn Prophecy as a hatchling, I face that possibility not with dread, but with hope.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SERIN
The Flame room has become a battlefield of its own. Wounded bodies. Moans of pain. They fill the chamber. I shift the weight of my basket as I step over a pool of something dark and viscous. The glass vials of tinctures clink against each other. Ahead, Leira moves with surprising grace between the makeshift cots. I follow in her wake, weaving through injured naga sprawled across the sacred floor. Their serpentine lower halves twist in pain; their scales are dulled by injury and exhaustion.
“More bandages to the west alcove,” Eira calls out, her pearl-grey tendrils floating around her face as she bends over a young Talon whose chest bears the telltale yellow burn of sunblight. “Quickly, Serin.”
I change direction, the woven basket heavy against my hip. The sacred Flame burns at the center of the room, its blue and gold tongues stretching higher than I’ve ever seen them reach, as if straining toward the vaulted ceiling.
Each wounded naga who passes near it seems to draw the flames taller, brighter. The ancient magic responds to their pain with fierce, protective energy. Even the stone walls pulse with the Flame’s heightened power, carrying warm healing to everycorner. Groans mingle with the urgent slither of healers moving between patients.
“Here.” I set my basket beside a healer whose hands are already stained dark with blood. She doesn’t acknowledge me, just reaches for the clean cloths with single-minded focus.
Across the room, Zara works alongside Eira, her small hands surprisingly steady as she applies a thick paste to a wounded warrior’s scales. Her eyes seem to absorb every bit of pain around her without flinching. The contrast between her childlike form and her unflinching purpose makes my chest ache.
“Water, we need more water,” someone calls, and I’m moving again, filling empty vessels from the large stone basin near the entrance.
Leira appears beside me, her face drawn with exhaustion. “The north chamber is stabilized,” she murmurs, dipping her hands into the water. Blood and something darker streams from her fingers. “But we’re running low on the burn salve.”
“I can mix more,” I offer, watching her face. There’s something different about her, a pallor beneath her skin that wasn’t there before. “Are you?—“
“I’m fine.” She cuts me off, but without her usual sharpness. “Just tired. We all are.”
We work side by side for what feels like hours, moving from one injured naga to the next. The smell of blood, herbs, and sweat becomes so constant that I stop noticing it. Time blurs until my back aches and my fingers grow clumsy with fatigue.
Finally, there’s a lull; a precious moment when no one is calling for bandages or tinctures. I slump against a wall, watching as Leira distributes the last of the clean cloths. She pauses near the center of the room, and I see her hand drift to her abdomen, resting there with a brief, unconscious gesture before dropping away.
When she returns to me, I catch her elbow. “You need to rest,” I say, low enough that only she can hear.
She shakes her head. “There’s too much to?—“
“Leira.” I tighten my grip. “Something’s wrong. I can see it.”
For a moment, she holds my gaze, stubborn as ever. Then something in her expression shifts, softens. She glances around to ensure no one is watching, then pulls me aside.
