Chapter Sixty-Three
KAEL
The air feels wrong.
Too still.
Too quiet.
Too many bodies twisted unnaturally in the damp earth.
Even the rain hangs in the air like it’s holding its breath.
Seren kneels in the dirt, eyes fluttering shut, her trembling fingers tracing sigils into the earth in the way Mavyrn taught her.
The marks burn faintly, threads of light weaving into the dark.
She’s shaking—but not from fear. From power.
Elyssara steps forward, steady as the moon, unfastening her cloak, removing her armor and leather, pulling her tunic down over her shoulders until the faint lines of her scars catch the moonlight. The marks gleam like constellations cut into skin—an atlas of every wound she’s ever endured.
But it’s the brand that holds my attention. The brand she refuses to heal.
Teddy sucks in a horrified breath, his eyes squeezing shut.
The others mutter curses under their breath at the sight.
“The brand,” she murmurs. “Made in the Kryntar Castle dungeons,” she snarls with disgust.
I knew this would be confronting for her. I fucking knew facing this place, this man, would be psychological warfare.
“Heal yourself, El. You don’t have to live with the evidence of Kryntar etched into your fucking flesh,” Ronyn pleads, his eyes sad.
“What have they done to you, my daughter?” Lesara breaks, her hands covering her mouth in devastation.
Elyssara steadies herself with a long, sustained exhale, and then she lifts her chin in defiance. “They found out they can’t break me, mother. Because I’ve lived through pain for twenty years, and nothing has broken me, yet.”
“Let him see it,” Morrathys snarls cruelly. “Let him know he did not win.”
Seren’s voice trembles as she whispers, “It’ll work. It will take us to Kryntar.”
Elyssara nods once, no hesitation, and the gold beneath her skin begins to pulse.
“Then use it,” she says, eyes locked on the horizon. “Let the wounds that hurt me be the ones that lead us to victory.”
The sigils around Seren flare, searing through the dark. The ground hums with power.
Seren draws the light from Elyssara’s veins through her scars, as threads of gold pull toward Seren’s palms. Thin filaments lift, alive, coiling around Seren’s hands.
Shadows bend. Air twists.
I can feel the magic—like a heartbeat, like a scream.
Seren gasps, her voice breaking. “It’s— It’s too strong—”
“Then stop holding back,” Jax commands like the skilled Luminaar she is, her tone both grief and fire. “Let the magic move through you. Let it break you open.”
And Seren does.
The power lashes outward, wild and beautiful, turning night into a split in the fabric of the world.
Threads of golden Starlight move through Elyssara’s scars to Seren’s hands—a conduit—weaving and stitching together, forming into a Gateway between places.
Magic roars like a beast awakened, flinging debris and light in every direction. Trees bow. The ground fractures.
Seren’s body arcs with energy, the air shimmering around her as the Gateway blazes open—a portal in the world, bleeding silver and gold.
Her eyes turn to dark chasms, her hands stretch open like a sorcerer, and I see her for what she is: a pure-blooded witch.
Elyssara doesn’t flinch. She steps into it, her scars blazing like a thousand suns.
I reach for her hand as the wind howls, but it’s already pulling us in.
The light swallows her first, then me.
And the world disappears.