Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Fire Fates
Icounted under my breath, matching each number to the ghost-soft fall of my feet across the dry leaves that littered the Mourning Woods.
The darkness here wasn’t just an absence of light—it was alive.
It curled around me like breath, coiling between the trees, whispering things I couldn’t quite hear.
My power stirred beneath my skin, a restless tide responding to the primal terror prickling along my spine.
I wished I had my axe, or any weapon, for that matter.
I had nothing but the wild pulse of my heartbeat and the brittle resolve in my bones.
I pressed myself against a tree, counting the seconds it would take Solas to get to the other side of his perimeter.
One… Two… Three… I slipped past the path Solas had been patrolling and walked straight into his magic.
The barrier shimmered at the point of contact, invisible but solid, resisting me like a living thing.
It clung to my skin as I pushed through, thick and warm as honey.
Power thrummed through me, sharp and electric, raising the hair on my arms as the ward yielded and snapped closed behind me.
I ran into the dark woods, praying to the Gods that Solas hadn’t felt me move through his barrier.
The woods swallowed me whole. Leaves crunched like brittle bones beneath my boots, and I slowed, reaching out blindly, skimming the bark of the trees to stay upright.
I didn’t even know where to look. The Fire Fates would be close to our camp.
But where? The sky was starless, a yawning void above me like even the heavens refused this place. Like the Commander’s eyes.
A twig snapped behind me, and the woods held their breath. I froze, and the hair on my arms lifted ominously, as if I were being watched. Slowly, I turned, eyes straining against the black. Nothing. But the silence that followed was suffocating. Laughter echoed. Warped and inhuman.
Run. The voice whispered through the stillness, and instinct took over before thought could follow.
Branches clawed at me. My feet pounded against the ground.
The laughter followed. I ran through the suffocating darkness for what felt like forever, stumbling, colliding with tree trunks, skin burning where bark tore at me.
I came to a stop, leaning on my knees and panting as nausea clawed up my throat. Perhaps I would find nothing but my death in these woods, after all. But a small part of me didn’t want to die anymore. I just wanted answers.
Cold breath brushed the back of my neck like a whisper from the grave. I stilled. I turned, tears pricking my eyes. Nothing but darkness and dead trees. My heart thundered against the deadly quiet, eyes scanning the dark for monsters.
“Lyra…” a soft whisper slithered through the silence. I spun, and my heart lurched into my throat.
She hovered over me with hollow eyes and translucent hair drifting as if underwater.
The ghost from my dreams. The same unearthly woman who had led me to the axe. She lifted a hand and turned, gliding between dead trunks. If she meant to kill me, she would have done it already. Last time, she’d led me to power. She turned and wove through the dead trees.
Her unearthly glow illuminated the trees around us, and I was grateful to be able to see. My feet moved forwards, following her. To a horrible death? I wasn’t sure. But I wanted to know who she was.
She led me towards a mountain that loomed, jagged and foreboding against the void-slick sky.
Muted light leaked through the trees like a dying star from the base of the mountain, flickering through the dense trees.
The light spilling from the cave wasn’t warmth, not really.
But it was the only light I’d seen in this forsaken place.
My boots slammed through the dead leaves as I followed the ghost—every step sounded like a gunshot in the silence. My legs burned with each frantic step, but still, I ran. I stumbled, hands out for balance—
Only to feel something wet and sleek beneath my fingers, a scream lodging in my throat. I snatched my hand back and ran as fast as I could. An unearthly snapping sound echoed against the darkness, right behind me. Then another followed—warped, and wrong.
The unearthly woman disappeared into the cave’s entrance and I dove after her. I skidded on my stomach and my breath whooshed out of my lungs before I rolled onto my back, panting, bracing for—
Nothing. No monsters loomed behind me. No teeth. No claws. Only eerie stillness. I sat up, scrambling backwards. Each ragged breath filled my nose with the sharp scent of sulphur.
“Who are you?” I panted, turning to the woman.
But she was gone. Nothing remained but rocks and an unnatural orange light flickering from deeper in the cave.
I glanced back towards the woods, quiet.
Watching. The trees leaned like mourners frozen in grief, their twisted limbs silhouetted against the starless sky.
No footsteps marked the path behind me. Only mine.
Was I imagining it all? My chest heaved as silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
No laughter. No whispers. Maybe I was alone all along.
I let out an uneasy sigh before pushing to my feet and walking deeper into the cave.
Lava dripped lazily from cracks lining the caves, like blood dripping from an open wound.
It hissed where it met the stone floor. The molten liquid cast the cave in a flickering, hellish glow that pulled sweat from my skin.
I walked slowly towards a bubbling pool of molten lava as steam coiled from the hissing liquid.
The heat rolled off it in waves, blistering my skin.
The glowing liquid rippled unnaturally, and my steps faltered.
The liquid seemed to bend, two heads breaking the surface.
Their skin was cracked and glowing like smouldering embers, hair slick and clinging to their lithe, feminine forms. Their eyes opened, twin infernos that locked onto me with an intensity that made my spine arch.
The lava lapped at their rocklike skin just beneath their breasts as they watched me.
It felt like they were looking into me. The dark-haired one tilted its head.
Her lips did not move, but her whisper slid across the cave like silk soaked in poison. “Maraveth.”
The blonde echoed it, and the words layered over the first, like two instruments playing different melodies in the same key.
“You seek truth…”
Goosebumps prickled down my arms. I stumbled back a step, rubbing sweaty palms against my shirt. The lava clung to their skin like silk, glowing veins of flame pulsing beneath their cracked flesh.
“Are you… Are you the Fates?” My voice barely made it past the heat-stifled air.
“Obviously,” they said in perfect, chilling unison. “We see all,” one hissed, while the other rasped, “We see what was… What could be…”
I forced myself to swallow, though my throat felt carved from ash.
“What am I?” I asked, hating how my voice cracked.
“Not what, who,” whispered the dark-haired one, head tilting slowly.
“Who am I?” I whispered the question.
“Maraveth.” A bone-chilling smile spread across the cracked stone lips of the blonde one.
“The last. The first. The Soul Relics are yours,” the other whispered, layered over the other. The cave spun. My stomach dropped.
“She could be the saviour of realms,” the dark-haired one murmured, voice strangely soft.
“Or the destroyer, if she does not save her Fated Mate,” the other cooed, overlapping and sickly sweet.
Their voices laced like venomous vines, one always curling around the other, never truly separate. My knees buckled. I swayed, sweat dripping down my neck. One of them laughed gleefully. “Maraveth, your fate is a tangled web.”
“That’s not my name,” I whispered, the words shaking. “I’m Lyra Meridian. Daughter of King Vaylor. Princess of the Mortal Kingdom.”
Their laughter crawled across my skin like insects. “You are none of those things, Maraveth.” My nails dug into my palms, deep enough to sting. I understood now what Solas meant about their riddles. They were not giving me answers.
“The Mortals need to join the Fae. The Hells are rising. You are Maraveth. But you are also Lyra. Unite the fractured Kingdoms with vows, or all will be lost to the heat of the sun,” hissed the other from behind, leaning in as if to scent me.
Her words bled from the empty cave. I spun, but there was no one there.
They hadn’t moved from the lava, and yet they were everywhere.
“These are not answers!” I cried out. I had come here for information, yet all I had were more questions.
“Listen closely, Maraveth. Time is running out and you are depleted of water,” the blonde taunted. “And our heat makes you weaker,” the other hissed. They joined hands, glowing brighter than before. The heat pressed unbearably against my skin, my mouth as dry as sand.
“Three Relics of fractured soul…”
“…forced by a lover scorned.”
“Scattered to guard… to hide… to stall…”
Their arms rose in unison and fingers tipped in fire. Their heads snapped backwards, their voices rising, screeching.
“One to wield…”
“…One to wear.”
“One that bridges two broken hearts.”
Their eyes burned brighter, and small rocks skittered down from the roof of the cave as the stone beneath my feet trembled.
“Only you can stop the sun, because you broke it.”
A tear traced down my cheek before I could stop it. I didn’t understand, but something in me did.
One laughed, a gleeful shrill that made my ears sting while the other seethed.
My hands were shaking and my mouth turned dry.
I couldn’t tell if I was frozen by fear…
or by fate itself. Their words echoed long after their voices stopped.
A large crack split open in front of me on the ground, molten liquid bubbling up from it as though it were reaching for me.
I spun on my heel, running through the shaking cave as debris rained from the roof.
I ran from the suffocating heat and into the cold embrace of the Mourning Woods.
The Fire Fates’ laughter haunted me with every step.
Outside the cave’s entrance, coolness enveloped my body like an odd comfort.
My steps faltered, and bile rose in my throat.
My hands grasped my knees, my stomach tensing.
A heave tore up my throat, but nothing came out of my soured stomach.
Absently I wiped at the tears trailing down my overheated cheeks as uncertainty threatened to burn me alive.
I took a deep breath to steady myself and almost gagged again as the smell of decay hit the back of my throat.
Rot clung heavily to the cold, stagnant air as I glanced around me at the dead trees, covering my mouth and nose with my forearm.
I stilled instantly. Creatures from nightmares stalked through the shadows, twisted mockeries of what once might’ve been men.
Their black cloaks swayed with each movement as they walked without sparing me a glance.
Fear brought me to a sudden stop as one passed through the flickering light of the cave.
Bone jutted through torn skin, their flesh sagging in loose folds, rotting and half-melted against splintered ribs.
Their eyes glowed with unnatural hunger, blazing like coals in hollow sockets.
Some crawled, dragging their mutilated bodies behind them with clawed fingers slick with old blood.
Others stalked upright, skeletal frames wrapped in the remains of human skin, their teeth exposed in lipless, eternal grins.
In their hands, they carried swords forged not of steel, but of sharpened bone, stained dark with ancient gore.
The air reeked of decay, of death left too long in the sun.
And still, they kept coming… a legion of the damned, pulled from the veil’s thinning grip.
A soft whimper left my lips, and I took a small step backwards. A snap broke through the heavy silence, my foot breaking a dry twig.
Unearthly glowing eyes snapped towards me. Jittered noises bounced between them, raking my nerves raw—some warped form of communication I wasn’t meant to understand. They moved towards me, weaving through the dead trees with steady strides.
I was trapped. The rockface of the mountain loomed behind me and the decaying warriors in front.
Skeletal fingers grabbed my upper arm from the side, squeezing the already marred skin from the woods. A half-melted face loomed above me and maggots crawled through the liquified skin that clung to his skeletal form. I lashed out, struggling against his grip.
“No!” I screamed. Everywhere I pushed against him, my hand sank into soft, wet flesh with a cold squelch.
Hands wrapped around my ankle, pulling my weight out from underneath me.
A cry of terror left my lips. Dirt scraped against my body as they dragged me by my wrist, pain blooming in my shoulder from the weight of my own body struggling against the creatures’ relentless pulling.
I screamed as my joint popped from its socket.
“Fight,” the Commander’s roar reverberated through my mind with a violent jolt,
and something deep inside me answered.