Chapter 10
Elora
The world came back to her in pieces.
Her fingers twitched. Her skin was tender, smeared with something gooey—sap and grime—but not blood.
That shouldn’t have been possible. She remembered blood.
She remembered her skin splitting open, her spine breaking, the light inside her turning violent until it clawed its way out. She remembered thinking she was gone.
I was dead.
The memory flickered, heat like molten gold racing through her veins, the tree draining the life out of her, the melody threading through the dark, the moment everything inside her cracked apart.
And then that sound.
That impossible, thunderous sound.
The roar.
The heavy weight of something draped across her shoulders, a cloak. Her cloak. Brown wool, frayed at the hem.
“I… thought I—”
“You nearly did.” Kaela was kneeling down beside her.
Elora blinked, vision swimming. Her lashes stuck together with sap.
Every nerve still hummed, though the pain had dulled into something almost electric under her skin.
Bruises were already blooming, dark and ugly, spreading over her thighs where the roots had gripped her like a python that refused to let go of its dinner.
She pressed a shaking hand against her chest—still sticky, still trembling—and felt the thunder of her pulse.
But beneath the heartbeat, something else pulsed.
Hunger.
No, worse than hunger. A tension deep under her skin, pacing in circles like a caged thing, snarling and restless.
Her senses overwhelmed her—sounds pierced like needles, smells assaulted in waves, and the faintest movements screamed for attention.
She could hear the drip of sap falling off the roots twenty paces away.
She could smell blood—her blood—mixed with the earthy sweetness of the ritual pit.
She could hear Kaela’s heartbeat, steady and strong, just beside her.
The cloak tightened around her shoulders. She flinched before she realized she was simply pulling it closed, resting it gently over her front to hide her nakedness.
“Elor’ah,” Viliam murmured, voice low enough not to jolt her. “Breathe.”
Breathing felt like forcing air past teeth that didn’t feel like her own. A growl uncurled in her throat before she could swallow it back down. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, horrified at the sound.
“What… what is wrong with me?” The words scraped out raw.
“Nothing,” Viliam said. He knelt beside her, still giving her space, but close enough she could sense the heat radiating from his body. “You Thrask.”
“No.” Her voice shook. “The tree, it tried to kill me, Viliam. It was draining me—it…” Her breath hitched as the memory slammed back into her.
The light leaving her eyes. Her own veins going cold.
The roots coiling around her thighs, her arms, her ribs until she thought they would crush her.
“It rejected me. I felt it. I was dying.”
“This is true,” Viliam said softly. No denial. No gentling of truth. “You were unworthy.”
The words hung in the air. Her throat constricted, each swallow scraping like bark against raw skin. She stared at the ground, at the roots that had nearly crushed her ribcage.
Unworthy. A tremor started in her fingers, traveled up her arms. Her hands drew in until she noticed a warm, damp sensation—her nails, still sharp and grooved like an animal’s, had broken her skin. She didn’t loosen her grip.
It shouldn’t have mattered, but hearing it from the mouth of a god-tree, moments before it killed her—
“And yet,” Viliam continued, “alive.”
Her breath trembled again. “Why?”
Viliam’s gaze shifted past her shoulder. Elora turned, wincing as dried sap cracked along her neck.
Perched on a gnarled branch hung low with moss sat a black bird with gold tipped wings, feathers still faintly humming with that same eerie vibration she’d heard before she died. The song. That had been real.
Her throat tightened. “It saved me?”
He gave a slow, reverent nod.
“The Kirr’haen or Truthkeeper are messengers of balance. Not Thrask, but they are kin to Mahōamorah in their own way. They do not shift; they do not fight. They… correct. Where there is a lie, they reveal truth. Where there is imbalance, they guide,” Kaela said.
Her stomach flipped. The Truthkeeper’s white eyes blinked slowly as it titled its head at her.
“What truth?”
“Corruption blinded Nyt’morah’s judgment. Kirr’haen showed the tree your heart. That you are not Thorn’s creation anymore.”
Elora swallowed hard. Her throat burned from the sap, but deeper than that—from shame, fear, disbelief.
She didn’t feel pure of heart.
She felt feral. Raw. Violent. Full of claws and teeth and rage she finally understood she had been holding back.
Elora swallowed hard. “I thought I was being torn apart.”
Viliam shook his head. “Vrex’nur.”
“The moment a Thrask is truly born into their identity,” Kaela translated. “Their first shift.”
She stared at him. Her voice came out hoarse, barely audible. “A full shift?”
Kaela nodded. “Yes, a nightglider.”
Elora froze. The word didn’t feel real, didn’t belong in her mouth. “That roar…”
“You.”
She tried to process that, but her mind couldn’t hold it. The sound that had split the world in half. The scream that sounded as though it shattered mountains. That was me?
Her fingers trembled. “It felt like dying.”
Viliam and Kaela exchanged a glance, but said nothing.
Her pulse quickened. The heat from the ritual still burned faintly beneath her ribs, as though it might ignite again at any moment. “Will it always feel like that?” she whispered.
“No.” Kaela rested her hand on Elora’s shoulder. “The first shift is a binding, but once inside, it becomes easier.”
Her chest tightened, ribs constricting around something that wasn’t fear this time.
It was sharper, heavier—a molten weight that seemed to pulse beneath her sternum, spreading like wildfire through her veins.
Power, ancient and feral, coiling through her body like a predator waking from hibernation.
“What… happens now?”
“Now,” Kaela said gently, offering a steadying hand, “you get cleaned up.” She held her hand out for Elora to grab.
She took it.
Kaela and Viliam pulled her carefully to her feet.
Her legs nearly buckled; the world tilted, blurry around the edges.
Sap clung to her hair and skin, tightening as it dried, making every movement stiff and uncomfortable.
The cloak slid loose down her arms, and she dragged it back up around her shoulders with shaking fingers.
“And then you rest,” Kaela added, guiding her slowly forward.
Rest didn’t mean anything to Elora right now. Not when her mind still spun with the memory of roots closing around her throat. Not when Thorn’s face showed up behind her eyelids every time she blinked. Not when the thing under her skin pawed at her bones, hungry and furious and untrained.
She lifted her head, fighting the dizziness. “I meant long term.”
Both Kaela and Viliam slowed.
Viliam’s jaw tightened slightly, but not in annoyance. More like restraint. As if there were too many answers and none gentle enough.
“You will stay here,” Kaela answered. “With us. In Al’tera.”
Elora’s stomach churned from the sudden heaviness of being told where she belonged again.
“You will learn to wield your new form. To control the instincts. To understand the balance, you are now a part of. You will learn our ways, our history, our philosophies. It will take time.”
She said it like it was all decided. Like Elora had no choice.
Viliam nodded, still holding her steady. “You safe. You learn—”
“No.”
The word broke from her chest before she could stop it.
Kaela blinked, surprised.
Elora shook her head, the world tilting again. “I’m not asking about training. Or culture. Or balance. I’m asking what you’re going to do about Thorn.”
The feral thrum in Elora’s chest sharpened to a savage point, her blood suddenly scalding in her veins, muscles coiling tight as a predator’s before the killing leap. Her body knew what her mind couldn’t yet accept. She would tear this place apart, root by sacred root, if they denied her vengeance.
Viliam and Kaela exchanged a look.
A long one.
Too long.
Her breath hitched. “You do plan to do something… don’t you?”
Another shared glance. Kaela exhaled through her nose. Viliam’s expression didn’t change, but something about his posture did, a slight tightening, a bracing.
“We discuss,” Viliam said, voice steady. “After you rest.”
Something primal thrashed beneath her skin, her muscles spasming with the need to hunt, to pursue, to tear Thorn apart with hands that itched to become claws.
No. Not later. Now. Hunt. Finish what he started—
Her knees buckled, and she swayed. Kaela caught her under one arm, Viliam under the other. The cloak slipped, and Elora clutched it weakly to keep herself covered.
“I’m not—done,” she breathed, fighting the spinning in her head.
“You’re exhausted,” Kaela said. “And in no shape to deal with Thorn right now.”
Elora’s lips parted, a denial forming that died before it could escape. The beast inside her hissed at the truth, claws scraping against her ribs in protest even as some quieter part of her recognized the wisdom in waiting.
Kaela squeezed her arm. “Come. There is a hut prepared for you. Warm water. Salves. A bed.”
They began leading her toward the woven archway at the edge of the clearing, where a massive hut rose from the roots of an ancient tree. Soft firelight flickered inside, shadows moving like gentle hands.
Elora stumbled, breath shaking. “I just want… to know you’re not going to ignore him.”
“We will not,” Viliam said.
That wasn’t enough.
Still, she was too weak to argue. She let them guide her forward.
The interior of the hut was warmer than she expected.
Lanterns carved from hollowed gourds glowed with a soft, amber light, casting a gentle shimmer across the woven walls.
Strands of dried herbs hung from the ceiling like soft curtains, their scents—mint, sapwood, something floral she recognized but couldn’t think of the name for—soothing and cool against the raw heat under her skin.
Kaela guided her toward a sunken bath carved directly into the floor, lined with smooth, pale stone shot through with veins of gold. Steam drifted from its surface, perfumed with crushed petals.
Her eyes caught the light—molten gold where there should have been blue. The reflection blinked when she did, but the connection seemed off, like watching someone else’s puppet mimic her movements.
Her reflection was taller somehow, straighter, fiercer. The leaf-woven leotard Kaela gave her hugged new angles in her frame. The vines clung to muscles she didn’t know she had. Her shadow on the wall looked like a creature who could hunt in darkness, who could protect herself.
She hardly recognized the person in the mirror.
Elora pressed her fingertips against her sternum, sensing the new strength there. Not soft anymore. Not sheltered. Not the delicate thing Tehvan held together with gentle instructions and careful routines.
The girl he carried away from the snatchers. The girl he protected from Thorn for as long as he could.
Would he recognize me?
Would he still see me as his daughter?
No.
The answer came before she could stop it.
He wouldn’t be able to see you as Florence’s replacement anymore—
She pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to push the doubt back under. She wouldn’t believe it. But once one came through so did others.
He wouldn’t be able to control this new you—
Control disguised as love.
That’s not true—
She had started questioning him near the end, in the days before the arena.
Small things. Questions she never should have had.
The ring monitoring her heartbeat. The way he softened certain truths. The way he always seemed to know what was best for her before she had the chance to decide for herself.
She thought the doubts had died with him.
Or maybe she had simply buried them beneath grief.
How could she question him now? How could she pick apart the choices of a man who had given everything—his life—to save hers? Thinking badly of him felt wrong. Cruel. Like standing over his grave and demanding answers from someone who could no longer defend himself.
“I’m sorry,” She whispered to the empty room.
She didn’t know if she was apologizing for doubting his love or for no longer being the woman he raised her to be.
The golden eyes of her reflection stared back at her. The eyes of a predator.
She wasn’t the girl Tehvan loved.
She was the monster Thorn created as he took piece by piece of her until she couldn’t recognize herself in the mirror.
No.
The thought came sharp enough to cut.
Thorn doesn’t get to keep what he stole.