Chapter 36 Nerina
Nerina
Ymirskald
Veyrion walked beside me, his fur-lined cloak sweeping the frost-dusted stone. Since the knock at my door, he’d spoken little. Short commands. An occasional sideways glance. The quiet wasn’t comforting. It was deliberate. Controlled.
Every word he didn’t speak was its own calculation and I was being measured with each step I took.
The longer the silence stretched, the more it felt like I’d stepped onto a chessboard mid-game with no idea which side I was on—or what piece I was meant to be.
Pawn, sacrificed to open the way for something greater.
A knight moved in unexpected arcs to strike where others couldn’t.
Rook, built to hold the line. Or queen—powerful, dangerous only if the king allowed her to move.
Almost like he read my mind, he broke the silence. “The Elders,” Veyrion said as we descended deeper into the mountain, “They guide Ymirskald not by crowns or blades, but by—"
The path narrowed, forcing us shoulder to shoulder. He slowed as the steps steepened. “Memory. Presence. Possibility.”
His attention cut to me. “They will not care who you think you are. Only what the world will become because of you.”
The weight of his words settled in my stomach like sinking anchors.
Veyrion exhaled slowly. “I believe you don’t belong to one world—because the gods carved you from pieces of many."
“You don’t know what I am,” I said, voice low.
“Maybe not.” His focus shifted forward. “But I see it in you. The power. The loneliness. The weight of knowing there’s something in your blood others will fear, twist, or try to claim as their own.”
“And binding me to you makes that go away?”
“It protects you,” he said—too quickly.
“I don’t need you to protect me,” The words came out sharp enough to draw blood.
Veyrion chuckled, low and unbothered. Like distant thunder deciding whether to come closer. “Your fire is familiar, Nerina,” he murmured, delight curling at the edge of his voice. “I see now why he fell for you.”
I stared straight ahead, letting the moment pass.
We passed beneath an arch of ice, its jagged fangs glazed with frozen condensation, and entered a tunnel lit by blue flame. With each step downward, the air thickened. My breath fogged in pale spirals, curling around runes that shimmered with a light older than memory.
Blue fire licked iron sconces shaped like howling beasts, their shadows writhing along the walls like restless spirits—welcoming us, or warning us.
I wasn’t sure which was worse. My pulse quickened.
The crescent mark on my forehead began to thrum—warmth blooming beneath my skin like a second heartbeat.
It always answered emotion, glowing with a life of its own.
Part of me wanted to run—bolt back up the ice-cut stairs and into the open air, anywhere but here.
Another part burned to keep going, to tear truth from the Elders’ mouths if I had to. I didn’t know which side would win.
I pulled the soft gray cloak tighter around my shoulders and forced myself to steady. I’d come this far. I would see it through.
If the Elders could tell me what the artifact was, why my mark burned, why my dreams swam with stars and voices that weren’t my own—then it would be worth it.
But I would not walk blindly.
Whatever waited in the mountain’s heart, I would meet it standing—eyes open, teeth bared—ready to bleed.
The Elder's
The tunnel opened into a vast hidden chamber, and I stopped dead.
At its heart rose a tree unlike anything I’d ever seen.
Pale, silver-white bark spiraled upward in smooth, elegant coils, as if sculpted from moonlight itself.
The trunk was thick and gnarled—its roots spreading across stone before sinking into a still, dark pool at its base.
From it hung long crystalline strands—icicles spun from starlight and frost.
Before the tree—carved directly into the stone—stood three thrones. Each faced the tree, not as ornament or altar, but as one sovereign acknowledging another.
The Elders. Memory. Presence. Possibility.
The first looked impossibly old, spine bent as if time itself had pressed her into that shape. Her skin was a map of fissures and fine lines, pale as driftwood hardened by centuries of frost.
The second appeared barely older than me. Her face was smooth, skin catching the light in opalescent shades. Her eyes held the color of storm-washed skies—unsettlingly alive.
The third stood between them, ageless and unmoving, features held in perfect, unnerving symmetry. There was no telling whether she would grow older or younger in the next moment.
For a heartbeat, I thought they were carved from ice and set here to watch until the end of days.
Until the eldest stirred. When she spoke, her voice cracked like thawing stone—each word weighted with the past. “She walks with stars in her blood…” Sightless eyes—pale as bone—tilted toward me.
At her voice, my crescent mark flared hot beneath my skin. A faint glow spilled against my temple—soft but undeniable.
The chamber seemed to inhale with it. The tree’s silver light bent—subtly, impossibly—as if drawn toward me.
The second elder’s attention cut into me next. She lifted her chin, eyes narrowing at the glow.
“What is your purpose in bringing her here?” she asked Veyrion. Her voice was stripped of metaphor. Clear. Exact. A demand for truth—though she sounded like she already knew.
Her attention shifted once to my mark, and a faint shiver rippled through the tree’s branches behind her.
Veyrion bowed his head. “I brought her here so you might judge the consequences of what she is. I would see her bound to Ymirskald—should you bless it.”
I froze.
Heat surged from my brow. My mark burned hotter, bright enough I swore it would split my skin.
I had thought he led me here for answers. Not judgment. Not… this. Not yet.
I turned toward him, searching his face for any flicker of hesitation or jest. There was none.
His expression was carved in stone—unwavering. Certain.
Leaving Thalassia only to end up bound to Veyrion would be trading one cage for another.
And here I stood—wrapped in a gown I hadn’t chosen, in a mountain I didn’t know—while the man beside me spoke my future aloud like it was already his to claim.
The middle Elder’s storm-colored eyes hardened.
“She is not yours to claim, Veyrion. Stars do not bear cages.” A beat. “They burn them.”
My crescent flared again, as if it agreed.
The eldest leaned toward the second elder, voice rasping like stone breaking on ice. “Such bonds have crowned kings and broken empires. To bind her is peril, maybe—but peril has ever been the price of greatness.”
The third’s gaze drifted through me, distant as snowfall. “Empires will not survive… but something better will.”
The second Elder’s mouth pulled into a tight line. She leaned forward, eyes locking on mine.“Enough. She is flesh, blood, and choice—not theory, not omen.” Her voice cut clean through the chamber. “Do you want this? To be bound to Ymirskald?”
My mark blazed, light spilling down my temple. Part of me wanted to scream that I was no one’s prize, no one’s queen. Another part whispered that maybe Veyrion was right—that maybe this was the only way to survive what hunted me.
I looked at Veyrion. He didn’t ask. He declared.
I swallowed hard and lifted my chin. “No.” My voice came out raw, but steady. I turned fully toward him. “You do not get to decide my fate.” The words scraped out like iron dragged across stone.
My heart hammered. My breath came thin and uneven. But the moment it left me, something inside felt… unshackled.
Terrifying. Exhilarating. Inevitable.
Veyrion didn’t flinch. Didn’t rage. He only tilted his head slightly, the ghost of a smile curling at his mouth—as if I’d spoken a line he already knew by heart.
The Elders did not move, but the weight of their attention pressed down like the stillness before an avalanche.
The middle Elder spoke, calm and final. “Then it is decided.”
The third’s ageless voice followed—soft as drifting snow. “The storm is patient.”
My knees trembled, but I forced myself to stand taller under their scrutiny. I had spoken. And the choice had been mine.
The middle Elder turned on Veyrion, storm light in her eyes. “And what did you expect? That we would bless an forced bonding?” Her mouth twisted with disdain. “That is primitive. You know we do not deal in chains.”
Veyrion’s hand tightened around mine—uninvited. Unyielding. “I only wish to protect her.”
“Even protection can become a prison,” the middle Elder said. “And prisons—no matter how golden—always breed revolt.”
The eldest rose, bones creaking like old ice, and stepped toward me. Her gnarled hand reached for mine, fingers like frozen branches.
My pulse was a frantic drum, but I let her take it.
Her touch was cold—not cruel, but searing with the weight of ages. Her eyes clouded. For a heartbeat, something passed between us—like a door opening just wide enough to glimpse what lay beyond.
Flickers struck like lightning: Children laughing beneath a bioluminescent reef—scales glittering like scattered stars. A silver-haired babe cradled in kelp-wrapped arms, her cry muffled by the sea. A circle of robed figures beneath glowing glyphs, hands pressed to skin. A lullaby—warm and soft—
…and then a hollow chill.
The Elder’s brow furrowed. “They took something you cannot remember losing.”
The world tilted.
I was no longer standing.
I was small. So small the world felt enormous.
I was wrapped in slick kelp, its strands clinging too tight, my limbs useless and heavy.
My mouth opened, soundless at first—then breaking into a thin, terrified wail.
Light pulsed at my brow. The crescent glimmered weakly, fragile and new, like it didn’t yet know how to exist in the world.
Every beat of my heart sent a flicker of silver-violet through it. Unstable. Alive.
Hands descended.