42. Chapter 42
AMARIA
Weeks passed. Or maybe months. I stopped counting. For the first time in my life, there was no deadline. No battle on the horizon. No prophecy ticking down. Just days—ordinary, unremarkable, miraculous days.
I walked through Skal'Varin.
The corridors were busy now—dragonborn and lowland refugees mixing together, voices echoing off stone walls, the ordinary chaos of people rebuilding their lives.
Someone had set up a makeshift market in one of the wider passages.
Children ran past me, laughing, chasing each other between the stalls.
I was heading back from Serenya's. Or maybe toward Eryndor's. It didn't really matter. I was just existing, letting the mountain's steady pulse set my pace instead of adrenaline.
Just walking when a baby's cry cut through the noise.
I slowed. Turned toward the sound.
A small crowd had gathered in one of the common areas—a natural alcove where the corridor widened, warmed by braziers, softened by furs draped over the stone benches.
At the center, a woman lay propped against cushions.
Lowlander, by her clothes. One of the refugees who'd fled to the mountain when the Void started spreading.
She'd just given birth.
The baby was tiny. Red-faced. Lungs working hard, announcing its arrival to anyone who would listen. The fae around her smiled—the universal expression of joy at new life, of hope after devastation, of the world continuing despite everything that had tried to end it.
I paused at the edge of the gathering.
The mother lifted the baby for others to see. Someone leaned in—an older dragonborn fae—and reached for the child. Cradling her gently. Examining the chest the way everyone did with newborns.
Checking for Marks.
The dragonborn female went still.
She double-checked the sternum.
Nothing.
Clean skin. Unmarked. Whole.
A murmur rippled through the crowd. Other mothers and ladies leaning in, peering, checking for themselves. Hands reaching, touching, confirming what they were seeing.
No Marks.
The whispers built. Shock. Confusion. Then—understanding. Laughter breaking through, wet with tears. Mothers embracing each other, crying, their voices rising in a sound that was half-sob and half-celebration.
The mother looked up.
Her eyes found mine across the crowd.
She smiled.
Something settled in my chest. Something I didn't have a name for yet. Something quiet and vast and still, like the surface of a lake after a storm.
The Fury hummed once. Satisfied. At peace.
I kept walking.
The baby's cries faded behind me. The celebration continued—joy spilling into the corridors, spreading through the mountain, carrying a truth that would reach every corner of the realm in time.
The Marks were gone.
The lie of duality erased.
The children born after this would grow up unmarked. Unburdened. Free.
I stepped out onto one of the open platforms.
The sky stretched above me—blue and clear and impossibly, achingly beautiful. The Veil's hum threaded through the air.
A cry split the silence.
I looked up.
A griffin wheeled against the clouds. Steel-and-blood feathers catching the light. It circled once. Twice. Its cry echoed off the mountain peaks—piercing and sovereign, the sound of something worth answering.
The sound of something beginning. The sound of freedom.