67. Chapter 67
T he narrow tunnel opened to a large cavern. Coiled around a mountain of obsidian and smoldering rock, the beast’s body stretched into shadow. Ren caught green scales gleaming, fractured by veins of molten gold that pulsed as if magma flowed through its flesh.
Ren had fought monsters. She had bled in pits. She had seen things that made grown men scream.
But nothing prepared her for this.
The sheer size of it defied reason. Each slow rise and fall of its chest sent gusts of heated air rolling toward her, carrying the scent of smoke, stone, and blood long since burned.
It opened its eyes.
Twin furnaces fixed on Ren. Every shield she had ever built crumbled beneath that stare.
Her heart thundered not only with terror but with a thread she hadn’t known existed, drawn taut between her chest and the dragon before her.
As the dragon shifted, the cavern groaned around it. A growl rippled from its throat, shaking the walls until dust and pebbles rained from above. It was a language in a tongue older than mortal memory.
And impossibly, Ren understood .
Her name was Fryphessyrth .
The words curled through Ren’s mind, not spoken aloud but sinking directly into her thoughts.
“You bear the blood of the Flameborne, Renaria.”
Ren flinched. Hearing her true name now after all these years made Ren’s blood sing and her skin crawl all at once.
“We have waited. The Pact frays, and the fire stirs anew.”
“Is Ren communicating with it?” Lucan’s whisper cracked, eyes darting between Ren and Fryphessyrth.
“I think so,” Talen answered uneasily, flexing his fingers around the hilt of his sword.
Ren maintained Fryphessyrth’s gaze. “I am no pawn. And I will not be your servant.”
“Neither servant nor pawn,” Fryphessyrth rumbled . “Choose wisely, Flameborne. Your choice is our salvation or our doom.”
Ren straightened, refusing to yield beneath the weight of those eyes. “I don’t know what I’m meant to be yet, but I’ll decide that before anyone else does.”
“You are not only flesh. You are a tethered flame. He stirs in you.”
Heat surged through Ren’s blood, a pulse not her own matching her heartbeat. Her vision flickered—flames, stone, skies torn with wings. She staggered, her breath ragged.
“What are they saying?” Lucan whispered again, desperate.
“Not sure, just stay ready in case we need to intervene,” Talen snapped, eyes never leaving Fryphessyrth.
“You know of the Pact struck to preserve the balance of realms.”
Ren’s vision warped. The cavern fell away, leaving visions burned in firelight: dragons and fae queens and kings meeting in a world aflame. In the heart of it, a figure stood wreathed in living fire. Not fae. Not dragon.
Yet bowed to by both.
“One bloodline marked by dragonfire. Flamebearers. The fae feared what they could not control. They burned the line from the world.”
“And now?”
Fryphessyrth’s gaze was a storm of fire. “Now, one rises again. The last spark. You.”
“Who broke the Pact? ”
Shadows veiled Fryphessyrth’s face. “ A creature cloaked in fae flesh. The Pact lies broken. The dragons will return. Some remember mercy, and others remember betrayal. Their vengeance will wake with them.”
“What am I meant to do, stand between them?”
Fryphessyrth lowered her massive head until the cavern boiled with her heat. “Not stand between, but to judge.”
Fryphessyrth bent lower still, until her shadow swallowed Ren whole.
And bowed.
Not to a queen. Not to a warrior.
To her.
To Renaria Harper.
Daughter of flame.