bChapter /bb222 /b

*Jiselle*

The fire didn’t burn me.

I knew it should have–the edges of it crackled too close to my skin, heat licking at my ankles, rising up my legs like a living thing. But it didn’t scorch. It didn’t scar. It bloomed.

Beneath my bare feet, the stone shifted and shimmered, softening into something that wasn’t entirely earth. me moved like water, folding in on itself as flowered shapes grew from the cracks. Violet petals with golden veins unfurled in waves. The scent–sweet and strange–reminded me of something I’d never touched and yet had always known.

And then I saw her.

Serina.

She stood in the center of it all, her back to me, hair braided down her spine, her cloak dusted with the ash of a hundred fallen timelines. I didn’t have to call her name. She already knew I was there.

“You’vee far,” she said, turning slowly. Her face was unchanged. Older than memory, but still so painfully familiar. “Further than any of us dared hope.”

I didn’t answer right away. I looked around instead—at the mirrored ruins rising around us, tall like crumbled cathedrals, reflecting fragmented pieces of people I almost recognized. Other Sovereigns. Other me’s. Versions that had once burned. Versions that had once ruled. Versions that hadn’t survived.

“Is this what waits for us?” I asked, voice rough. “More cycles? More fire?”

“No,” Serina said gently, stepping closer. “Because you broke it.”

I swallowed hard. “How?b” /b

“You chose love when the me offered you vengeance. You chose protection when the Gate asked for sacrifice. And now…” Her eyes softened. “Now you must give her the only thing that will let her be more than what we were.”

I stared at her. “What?”

“A name.b” /b

I felt my breath catch.

“She needs to know who she is,” Serina said. “Not what she is. She’s already bound to the leyline. To the me. To the bloodline. But you… you are her mother. Only you can give her the thread to anchor her to herself.”

The fire pulsed behind Serina’s shoulders. It brightened–not like an ending, but like a dawn.

“She already is everything,” I whispered. “What could a name possibly give her?”

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“Direction,” Serina said. “Memory. And the power to choose.”

The silence wrapped around us then–not empty, but full. Like the world was holding its breath.

Serina raised her hand and ced it over my heart..

“She is Sra,” she whispered. “Sra Ashen Vale. Let her remember.

I gasped.

And woke.

The room was dark, except for the faint hum of the leyline threading beneath the floor. My arms were already moving before my mind caught up–grabbing at the swaddle beside me, the warmth nestled there.

She was awake.

Not fussing.

Not crying.

Just… awake.

Watching.

Her violet eyes glinted in the shadows like twin stars pulled too close. And then-

She whispered it.

“Sra.”

I felt my entire body still.

Her mouth had formed it like a memory. Like she’d been waiting for me to catch up.

“Sra,” I breathed, brushing a strand of down–soft hair from her forehead.

Her skin glowed then—not erratic, not burning—but steady. Warm. She blinked once, then reached for

my face. Her tiny fingers touched my cheek, and I swear I felt something ancient pulse through them.

The me that used to flicker around her in fits and bursts… calmed. The glow softened. The waves of heat that once radiated unpredictably now curled inward, nesting in her like it had found home.

Nate pushed open the door slowly. “You’re awake?”

“She said her name,” I said quietly.

He didn’tugh. He didn’t joke. He just stood there, staring. “What name?”

“Sra.”

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His breath hitched.

And then–across her chest, just above her heart–a sigil glimmered to life. For a heartbeat. Maybe less.

But it was hers,

And it was Serina’s.

He moved closer, his eyes wide. “You saw that?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t speak again. Not even when sheughed–and herugh wasn’t light. It was weighty. It echoed off the walls like it carried more than joy.

It carried history.

And then, just like that, she yawned and curled against me, as if nothing had happened.

But everything had.

The next morning, Eva came in pale.

Her steps were hesitant. Her hands trembled slightly as she traced the outline of a vision scroll in her palm. She didn’t need to say anything. I already felt it–the Gate.

It hadn’t closed.

Only rested.

Eva confirmed it with a quiet voice and averted eyes. “It’s going to open again.”

“Of course it is,” I said softly, running my fingers through Sra’s hair. “The me wasn’t done.”

“Not for power this time,” Eva added. “For choice.”

That made me look up. “What kind of choice?”

She hesitated. “That’s what we don’t know yet.”

But someone else might.

Ethan had been drawing again.

Unconsciously. In sleep.

Runes. Spirals. Symbols we hadn’t taught him. Every morning, he’d wake to find his fingers ink–stained, the parchment beneath himced with things no one had seen before–except now… now they hummed with the same soft violet that lived in Sra’s skin.

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“She’s speaking to me,” Ethan saidter that evening as we sat around the observatory hearth. “Not in wordsbi, /i/bNot out loud. But I dream in fire now. And she’s there.”

Sra yed at my feet, humming a tune I didn’t recognize.

“She’s showing me the runes,” he added, voice low. “I just… I don’t know what they mean yer”

I looked at Nate across the room. He hadn’t said much all day. But I saw the tension in his shoulders. The ache behind his eyes.

That night, when we met in the cracked observatory dome–just the two of us–the air between us felt more fragile than it had since the war.

“I can’t sleep,” I told him.

“Neither can I.”

We didn’t say much at first. Just watched the moon filter through the broken ss above us.

“She’s changing,” I said finally. “Every day. Every minute. Sometimes I don’t even feel like her mother. Just… someone she chose to pass through.”

“You are her mother,” he said, his voice firm. “You gave her breath.”

“And Serina gave her name. And the leyline gave her power. And the Gate gave her prophecy.”

He stepped closer.

“What did I give her, Nate?”

He touched my hand gently. “You gave her love.”

I looked at him then, and the weight of the year–all the ruin, the fire, the prophecy–settled between us like a question neither of us could ask without tearing something open.

So he asked anyway.

“If you had to choose again,” he said, his voice breaking just slightly, “would you still let me stay?”

The silence stretched.

And I didn’t answer.

Because I didn’t know how.

Because the truth was tangled in fear and faith and me. I loved him. I had never stopped. But Sra’s path was no longer bound by ours. And I wasn’t sure if my choice would still be enough.

I turned away, breathing slowly, watching Sra draw in the corner with a small shard of chalk.

“What’s she drawing?” Nate asked softly.

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We both leaned in.

And my blood ran cold.

Because the rune she sketched–over and over–was one of Ethan’s.

And neither of us had taught her that.

She looked up then, as if hearing our thoughts.

“It means listen,” she whispered.

And I knew, then and there-

The Gate hadn’t just rested.

It had started speaking again.

And she was its voice.

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