Chapter Fifty-Seven
The oldest wounds still shape the sky
Yet even broken things may fly
Lara does not arrive subtly. She lands like a force—certain, decisive.
The Gateway tears open in the bowels of The Underbelly with a sharp distortion of air and light, the space folding in on itself before releasing her into it.
Heat hits her first, thick and damp, clinging to her skin.
Then the smell—iron and rot and something chemical that burns at the back of her throat.
The tunnels are packed in every direction.
Bodies pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, faces slick with sweat and fear, voices overlapping in a low, constant murmur that borders on panic. People clutch at one another, at the walls, at anything that might anchor them as the world above them tears itself apart.
Nobles lean away from slummers. Slummers sneer at nobles. There is no peace here. Only survival.
And threaded through it all: steam.
Great cauldrons line the central chamber, their contents roiling, bubbling, releasing thick plumes of vapor that curl through the air and into waiting lungs. The scent is sharp, medicinal, laced with something older that does not belong to this age.
Saana stands at the center of it, sleeves rolled, hands steady as she stirs one of the vats with practiced precision. Rubi moves beside her, directing the flow, adjusting mixtures, her voice cutting cleanly through the chaos.
“Slow your breathing,” she’s saying. “In through your nose. Hold it. Let it settle before you release.”
Rubi’s focus falters as she sees Lara, flicking her gaze between the cauldrons and the witch.
But it’s not just Rubi that falters—everything does.
The movement. The voices. The rhythm of the space itself stutters, like The Underbelly doesn’t quite know what to do with her presence.
Rubi’s gaze sharpens, her hand reaches for her sickle blade. And Lara doesn’t miss the way she softens her knees, crouching just enough to be ready but not too much to be noticed. Lara notices.
“What are you doing here?” Rubi hisses.
Lara shrugs. “There came a point where I had to choose a side,” she says coldly, as if the words haven’t lodged in her throat since Seren spat them at her.
She would never call it allegiance. Just the uncomfortable realization that neutrality had finally begun serving the wrong people. Seren had been right about one thing: eventually, the world demands a choice.
Annoying girl.
Reckless girl.
Somehow still lodged beneath Lara’s ribs like a blade she had stopped trying to remove.
Lara doesn’t waste time. “The Orbs are shattered,” she says, her voice carrying easily despite the noise. The room stills like the realms themselves are listening.
“Memory is not lost. They need the antidote now.”
The words land harder than anything else in the room.
Shock ripples outward across the Melders. Disbelief.
Which is a reasonable emotion.
They know what she is. What she’s always chosen. Coin. Coven. Survival. Not this.
Rubi studies her for a beat longer, searching for deception, for calculation, for the angle. She finds none.
“We’re working on it,” Saana says quietly, not looking up from her work, brushing her curls from her face, sweat glistening on her mahogany skin. “But it’s been in their cells for years—they need more than an inhale. They need to stay over the steam for some time.”
“Then make it stronger,” Lara replies.
Saana’s hands still for the first time.
Rubi exhales, strain pulling at the edges of her composure. “We’re trying.”
Lara’s gaze shifts past them. To the Melders.
They are leaning and crouching along the edges of the chamber, massive bodies pressed into the confines of a space never meant to hold them.
Blood flows from intentional wounds in controlled streams into steel bowls.
Their eyes are open, aware, tracking movement with a sharp intelligence that hums beneath their restrained forms.
Rubi rushes over, replacing full bowls with empty ones before blood spills over the edges.
She pours the dragonblood into the cauldron, feeding the mixture that rises into the air. Ancient. Powerful.
“Is it enough?” Lara snaps.
Rubi hesitates. Just for a moment. And Lara hears the one thousand words that pass over her face but never make it out of her mouth.
If they keep giving they’ll die.
Will bleeding them dry save the realms?
Will it even work?
“I don’t know,” she admits. “We won’t know until—”
The man hovering over the steaming cauldron rises like he’s seen a ghost. Or remembered one.
“Dawnmere,” he whispers, voice distant and confused.
Rubi’s eyes blow wide.
“What did you say?” Rubi snaps, desperation flashing through her. “Say it again!”
Saana leans forward, her movements stilling.
“The monarchy,” the man whispers, eyes darting around the room like he’s rifling through memories that are barely there. That are returning.
His eyes snap up then.
“The Dawnmere Monarchy ruled Dravara,” he breathes, and conviction finds its way into his words.
“You remember,” Rubi murmurs, tears filling her eyes like his memory is her redemption.
Her eyes snap to Lara’s.
She understands.
Calculates.
“We have enough,” Rubi nods, her movements speeding up at the realization that she might actually free memory.
But that’s not why Lara’s here.
“I need the Melders,” she says, her voice free of sentiment.
Vren steps forward from the edge of the chamber, blood still running in rivers down his forearms, his presence cutting through the tension. His gaze locks onto hers, suspicion flickering beneath it.
“You’ve got a strange way of asking for help, witch,” he says.
“I’m not asking,” Lara replies coolly.
A heartbeat passes.
They stare at one another, years of rivalry, opposition, and carefully maintained distance sitting between them like a living thing.
“What are you doing?” he asks finally.
Lara holds his gaze.
“Fixing it.”
Something shifts. Nothing as absolute as trust. Definitely not that. But understanding. He sees it—the difference.
“Like the old days?” she asks, and the words taste bitter on her tongue. And they strike with force.
Vren’s expression changes.
“You taught me with no uncertainty that those days are gone,” he says, testing her.
“Only because we chose to bury them,” Lara replies. “I can just as easily… unbury them.”
She moves her body awkwardly, as if she can dislodge whatever this emotion is from her body. It’s not kindness. It’s tolerance, at best. Maybe even acceptance.
She turns before he can answer, already moving toward the nearest Melder. The girl sits up straight as Lara approaches, reacting to her presence, to the terror she has learned to feel for the witches—alertness. Always waiting for the next move Lara makes.
Smart girl.
The air changes.
The chamber holds its breath.
Lara reaches out.
The girl flinches, but Lara grips her forearm and hauls her to her feet.
“Do you wish to take to the skies?” Lara asks, voice cold and distant, though the offer is genuine.
The girl’s eyes dart from Vren to Rubi to Saana to the other Melders, slumped against the walls of The Underbelly.
Vren doesn’t hesitate this time.
“What’s the catch?”
Lara pins him in place with her stare, amethyst eyes fixing on him with force so powerful and absolute that Vren’s breathing falters.
“Scorch everyone from the north and do not repent,” Lara commands, the words coming out all vicious and venom.
The Melders move, languid and light-headed, but they move.
Lara nods.
“Above ground,” she says.
And no one argues.
The city above them is barely recognizable.
Structures lie in ruin, streets torn open, fire carving its way through what remains. The sky is choked with smoke, the air thick with ash and the distant roar of a battle that has already taken too much.
Vren comes to stand beside her, his gaze sweeping the destruction, and a low, horrified breath escapes him.
“What happened?” he asks, not looking at her.
Lara does not answer immediately.
She studies the city instead—the broken streets, the fires still burning through what remains, the distant flashes of power tearing through the skyline. This is what Nyrielle calls control. This is what she intends to rule. And a kingdom ruled through fear always mistakes silence for peace.
“Too much,” Lara says at last.
She steps forward.
The Melders gather around her, unsteady but present, their mortal forms moving with a heaviness that speaks to years spent bound inside something too small for what they are. Blood still runs down their arms, drying against their skin, the remnants of what they have already given.
She can see it now. The sacrifice. The selflessness. Things she had never deigned to give. Not for kingdoms. Not for gods. Certainly not for people.
Until now. Until Seren.
“Stand still,” Lara says.
They obey. Not because they trust her. Gods no. Because they recognize something in her now that they did not before.
Lara draws the blade across her palm without ceremony. Blood wells immediately, dark and steady, and she dips her thumb into it before stepping toward the first of them.
The Melder stiffens as Lara approaches, but she does not pull away.
Lara lifts her hand and presses her bloodied thumb to the center of the girl’s forehead. The contact is brief, precise.
She moves around the Melders, pressing a thumb to each forehead without explanation or artifice.
She steps back, the group of them staring at her for answers. For anything.
She spreads her arms out wide, calling in magic from her surroundings. It answers instantly. It does not surge—it threads.
Lara draws from the world around her, pulling from the life that still clings stubbornly to the ruined city, from the roots beneath the earth, from the breath in every living chest nearby. It gathers in her with a deep, steady pull that feels older than anything Nyrielle has touched.
She directs it forward.
Into the mark.
The girl gasps.
Sharply, but not in pain, in… freedom.
The moment tastes strangely like freefall to Lara. There is no undoing it now.
Magic ripples down the girl’s form, stripping away the bindings that have held her captive for years. That have caged her. That have caged them all.
The bindings that stripped Dravara of protection and the realms of balance.
Lara can see it now.
The way she broke it all.
“I—” the girl’s voice falters, breath catching as her body tenses. “I can feel it.”
Lara moves to the next.
Directing her magic.
Another thread of magic.
Another binding stripped.
Another piece of atonement.
“It’s there,” someone else says, voice shaking. “It’s—gods, it’s right there—”
The air shifts.
The Melders begin to straighten, their bodies reacting to something returning to them, something that had never truly been gone—only buried, restrained, denied.
Lara does not rush.
She moves between them with deliberate intent, marking each one in turn, her blood acting as the anchor, a silent incantation reversing a spell that never should’ve been uttered, and her magic serving as the tonic that purges the bindings that hold them in mortal skin.
Vren is the last.
He watches her approach, his expression unreadable, though something in him has already changed. He does not flinch when she lifts her hand.
“Try not to regret this,” he mutters, a scowl still lifting his mouth.
“I have the power to do it again so don’t piss me off,” Lara replies, but she doesn’t mean it.
He shakes his head, throwing his arms in exasperation, and Lara can’t help it—she smirks.
She directs her magic to his forehead. For a moment, nothing happens. Then—everything does.
Vren inhales sharply, his body locking as the magic takes hold. His head tips back, eyes squeezing shut as something vast moves beneath his skin, pushing against the limits of what he has been forced to remain.
“I remember,” he says, the words tearing loose. “I remember what it feels like—”
Lara steps back.
The magic completes.
The bindings unravel.
Lara drags her gaze across the group. “Find a witch. Take to the skies.” Her voice is cutting, commanding.
Every bit the High Witch of The Dreaded. The Keeper of The Harrows. The Ruler of The Perils.
“Do not stop,” she continues, her tone sharpening. “Do not falter. You burn every soldier, every weapon, every trace of the north from this battlefield.”
The Melders look to Vren, seeking approval.
“Go!” he shouts, and they do not hesitate, no sign of the languidity that ailed them only moments ago.
Lara’s gaze lands on Vren. Her enemy that doesn’t feel like her enemy. He stares back at her, deep-brown eyes and a narrowed brow locked on her.
“This isn’t forgiveness,” he grits out. “You culled my bloodline.”
Lara shrugs.
“Elyssara’s family hunted mine.”
Vren stares at her for a moment, chest rising and falling too fast.
“That doesn’t sound like an apology.”
Fucking insufferable Melders.
Lara rolls her eyes, frustration blooming in her chest.
Skyfire lands in the distance, shuddering the earth beneath her feet.
“Are we going to stand here arguing over a weak apology whilst Skyfire rains down on us, or can we just fucking move on and take to the skies?” she hisses.
He grunts in irritation.
“Just say sorry, witch,” he snarls.
Lara doesn’t move, but her eyes narrow.
She pauses for a heartbeat.
Then, finally, “No. But I will offer a truce.”
Vren pinches the bridge of his nose, huffing a breath of disbelief.
“You’re fucking impossible,” he groans.
“Shut up and Meld. You’ve been talking about this moment for years and now you’re delaying it for pretty words. Hurry the fuck up and do it,” she replies lazily.
He shakes his head.
But he doesn’t push.
Good.
The first shift is subtle.
A ripple beneath skin.
A distortion of form.
Then it takes hold fully.
His body expands, stretches, breaks past the confines of bone and flesh, midnight-blue scales forcing their way through, wings tearing open into the smoke-choked air as something ancient and immense reclaims what was always its own.
His eyes stretch open, depthless pools of black unfurling from behind the lid.
The sound that follows is not a roar.
It is a release.
Lara holds her ground as the transformation completes, as Vren—no longer a man—rises into what he was always meant to be.
A dragon. Not extinct. Not myth. Not memory. Living.
Even Lara—who has spent years refusing awe—feels something primal tighten in her chest at the sight of him.
The smell of sulfur and char escapes his throat in a plume of steam.
Power floods the air.
Her gaze lifts, tracking the distant chaos where Nyrielle’s forces tear through what remains of Virellin.
Lara’s gaze snaps back to him.
“Vren,” she says.
But he’s already lowered himself to the ground. She steps forward and mounts him without hesitation, a deep, ancient rightness settling into her bones. She won’t admit it, but it feels like home.
Perhaps she did not simply cage the Melders.
Perhaps she caged herself, too.
“Let’s fly,” Lara commands, and his wings expand, snapping down with the force of history remembered.