CHAPTER 102: SYVRAK PT 2

Eris stood where the altar had been, perfectly still, and yet she looked like motion itself, like reality couldn’t quite hold her in place, like she existed in a space between heartbeats where the normal rules didn’t apply.

Her eyes glowed molten gold. Not reflecting light. Creating it. Pupils gone, replaced by pure liquid fire that shifted and burned and saw in ways no mortal eyes were meant to see.

Her skin was wreathed in flames that didn’t burn her. They moved across her flesh like living things, like silk in wind, flickering between white and gold and something that had no name because mortal languages had never needed a word for the color of divinity. The fire didn’t consume, it was, woven into her skin until there was no separation between flesh and flame.

And from her back,

Wings.

Not physical. Not flesh and bone and feather.

Fire given form and purpose. Dragon’s wings, massive and terrible, spreading fifteen feet to either side, their edges burning so bright they left afterimages in the air. They moved slowly, almost lazily, each beat sending waves of heat rolling across the chamber.

Her hair floated around her head, alive with heat, each strand moving independently as though underwater, shifting between snow-white and molten gold with every flicker of flame.

She was beautiful.

She was terrifying.

She was divine.

Around her, scattered across the scorched floor like discarded dolls, lay bodies. Rakhai, their seven tails reduced to ash, their bodies frozen mid-leap, eyes empty. Dravik, bronze wings crumpled, their blue-white flames extinguished forever. Lesser beasts that had answered the call and found something so far beyond them they’d died before they could even understand what killed them.

The altar beneath her feet was shattered, black stone split and glowing red in the cracks, and steam rose from where her flames met stone.

And when she spoke, the voice that came from her lips was layered.

Multiplied.

As though a dozen voices spoke in perfect, impossible harmony.

"You."

Not a question. Not a greeting.

An acknowledgment.

Soren couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do anything but stare.

Then he saw the movement.

From the far entrance, coiling through an archway that cracked under its weight, came another serpent. Smaller than Syvrak would be, but still massive, thirty feet of molten fury and scales like obsidian glass.

It lunged at her.

Fast. Desperate. Hungry.

Eris moved.

Not fast, instantly. One moment she was standing still, the next she’d shifted, her body flowing like water, like flame, like something that had never been bound by concepts like momentum or mass.

She raised one hand.

Slowly. Almost casually.

And fire erupted.

Not a stream. Not a wave.

A beam.

Concentrated. Pure. So hot it looked white at the core, edged with gold that bled into the air around it. It caught the serpent mid-lunge, struck it in the chest, and the scales that were supposedly impenetrable, scales that had turned aside swords and spears and lesser flames, melted.

Ran like wax. Like water. Like they’d never been solid at all.

The serpent screamed.

A sound that was agony given voice, that was rage and shock and the terrible understanding that it had made a fatal mistake. It thrashed, massive body slamming into walls and floor, trying to escape, trying to retreat...

Eris didn’t flinch.

Her expression didn’t change. Her hand didn’t waver.

She drove the flames deeper.

Through scale. Through flesh. Through bone.

Until the serpent’s thrashing slowed. Weakened. Stopped.

Its massive body collapsed, molten and broken, steam rising from wounds that would never heal, and the light faded from its eyes like candles being snuffed.

Silence.

Heavy. Absolute.

Broken only by the hiss of cooling flesh and the crackle of flames that still wreathed Eris like a living crown.

Soren started forward.

One step. That was all he managed.

One step toward her, toward the woman who looked like Eris but burned like something that had never been mortal, his hand reaching out even though he knew... knew... that touching her right now might be the last thing he ever did.

"Eris—"

The ground exploded.

Not cracked. Not shifted.

Exploded.

Stone erupted upward in jagged chunks the size of men, propelled by a force that came from below, from something massive moving through rock like water.

The altar chamber, already fractured, already glowing with heat, split open in a wound that ran from wall to wall, and from that wound rose fury made flesh.

Syvrak.

But not the Syvrak that had entered through the far archway. Not the serpent Eris had just killed with casual, terrible grace.

Another one.

Larger. Older. Its scales were darker, almost black, etched with scars that could only have come from surviving battles that should have been fatal. Thorns jutted from its spine in irregular rows, some broken off, some still dripping that viscous, smoking substance that ate through stone like acid.

Its eyes burned with intelligence older than kingdoms, colder than hatred, sharper than any blade.

This wasn’t just a beast.

This was a survivor.

The kind of creature that had watched its siblings die and learned from every death. That had faced Pyronox himself and lived, not through victory, but through being smart enough, fast enough, ruthless enough to know when to flee and when to strike.

And it had been waiting.

Waiting for the first Syvrak to test the waters. To measure the threat. To die so this one could learn.

Its massive head swung toward Soren with the inevitability of a falling mountain, and its mouth opened.

Heat built in its throat, not red, not orange, but white, the kind of heat that came from the planet’s molten core, from the space between stars where everything burned forever and nothing survived.

And it spat.

Fire roared from Syvrak’s maw in a torrent that made the air itself scream.

Not a beam. Not a blast.

A flood.

Liquid flame that moved like water but burned like the end of the world, filling the space between serpent and emperor in less than a heartbeat, swallowing light and sound and air until there was nothing but fire and the terrible certainty of death...

Soren moved.

His body reacted before conscious thought caught up, ice erupting from his hands in a wall so thick it looked solid, so cold that frost spread across its surface in intricate patterns even as the other side began to glow red.

The fire hit.