CHAPTER 242: HOME

The seal was completely gone.

The gatekeeper of the stories, deeply invested in what was happening, felt the absence of it like a wound in the fabric of her soul... the chains her father had carved into her essence, the bindings meant to keep Pyronox caged, all of it dissolved. Nothing held the dragon back now. Nothing prevented him from doing what gods did when given mortal form.

Take over. Consume. Use.

Eris knew it too.

She remembered her first death with crystal clarity... the moment Pyronox had seized control, her consciousness shoved aside like a child pushed from a throne.

She’d been a passenger in her own body, screaming silently as divine fire poured from her hands, as her voice spoke words she didn’t choose, as Caelen drove his sword through her heart while the dragon laughed.

It would happen again. Had to happen again. This was the price of channeling godhood without restraint.

Sadness washed through her, heavy and bitter. She wouldn’t fulfill her promise. Wouldn’t come back to Soren. Would die here with a god wearing her corpse, and he’d never know that in her last moments, she’d thought of him.

Then...

Nothing.

Something no one could predict...not even Eris nor Orrian himself.

The dragon didn’t move.

Didn’t surge forward to claim Eris’s body. Didn’t shove her consciousness aside and take the reins. He simply... stayed. Present but still, a vast presence in the back of her mind watching, waiting, curious.

She felt his attention on her determination, her purpose, the memory of Soren’s kiss still burning on her lips.

The dragon was examining her love for the ice emperor the way a jeweler might study a rare gemstone... turning it over, testing its facets, fascinated by something he’d never encountered before.

He was allowing her control.

Lending power instead of stealing it.

In a million years, across multiple lifetimes, she’d never imagined this. Never dreamed the god imprisoned inside her might choose cooperation over conquest.

His voice rumbled through her mind, amused and ancient.

"You are pushing your limits, Vessel."

"I know."

"This spell requires more. More than you have. It will burn you from inside. Consume your mortal form like kindling."

She was surprised he warned her. Surprised he cared enough to point out what she already knew... that this would kill her slowly instead of quickly, eating her alive from the inside out.

"I’ll handle it."

The dragon’s amusement deepened, became something almost warm.

"Stubborn vessel. Like the last one."

Her father. He was comparing her to her father.

"Very well. Use what you need."

Eris raised her other hand, both palms now facing the smoke-choked sky.

Her body lifted.

Not a conscious choice... the power simply pulled her upward, defying gravity as easily as breathing. Her feet left the blackened ground, rose a foot, two feet, three. Fire wings burst from her back in a rush of black flame and living ember, spreading wide behind her like a god’s banner.

Magnificent. Terrible. Divine.

She drew the deepest breath her burning lungs could manage and pulled. Pulled power from Pyronox, from herself, from the air and earth and reality itself. Everything. Every scrap of strength, every ember of divine fire, every drop of mortal determination. She gathered it all into her chest, her throat, her mouth.

When she spoke, there was no humanity left in the sound.

Just god speaking through mortal throat, reality itself bending around words that shouldn’t exist in mortal language.

She slammed her hands downward.

Not physically, she was still floating, still burning, still cracking apart. But the power slammed down, crashing into reality like a hammer into glass.

The ground beneath the demons ripped open.

Not a crack or tear or hole. A rift. A wound carved straight through dimensions, slicing through the barrier between realms with the precision of a surgeon’s blade. The edges dripped molten reality, lava that was more concept than substance, the liquid form of broken natural law.

The air screamed.

Actual sound, high and shrill, as space itself bent and broke under the weight of what she’d done.

Her voice echoed through the city, through the realm, through hell itself... layered, divine, absolute.

"PYRA’THEL VOKHAR!"

The ground shook. Buildings that had survived demon attacks now trembled, cracks racing up walls, tiles cascading from roofs.

"VULKARIS’THAE!"

The chains blazing around the demons flared white. Not gold anymore, pure, unbearable brightness that seared afterimages into watching eyes.

"IGNIS CAELORUM, ARDE ET VINDICA!"

The chains yanked.

Hundreds of demons dragged downward simultaneously, pulled by divine command toward the rift’s gaping maw. They screamed and thrashed at empty air, at each other, at anything that might stop their descent.

Their claws scraped frantically, their talons gouged trenches in stone, their voices rose in languages that predated human thought.

It didn’t matter.

Divine law was absolute.

One by one, dozens at a time, they were dragged into the rift. Back to hell. Back to the prison they’d been desperate enough to escape. Back to eternal fire and torment and the abyss that would hold them until reality itself ended.

The last demon vanished with a shriek that cut off mid-sound.

The rift began to close.

Its edges melted together like wax, sealing with heat so intense the stone beneath turned to glass. The transformation spread outward in a perfect circle...rough cobblestones becoming smooth, flawless crystal that reflected the smoke-stained sky.

Then the crack sealed.

A final burst of heat exploded outward, a shockwave of warmth that was almost gentle compared to what had come before. Then...

Silence.

It spread like water, unnatural and terrible. The kind of quiet that came after battles, after disasters, after reality had been wounded and was still bleeding.

Eris floated in the center of the glass circle, wings beginning to dissipate. Black flame faded to ember, ember to ash, ash to nothing. Her eyes shifted... gold to orange, orange to amber. Human. Exhausted.

Then they closed.

Her body went limp like a puppet with cut strings.

She started to fall.

Free fall, the kind that ended in shattered bones and spilled blood and promises broken before they could be kept.

But a hand caught her wrist.

Strong arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her against a chest that smelled of ice and pine and winter mornings. Safety. Home. The scent she’d memorized without meaning to, the one that had become synonymous with the only person who’d ever made her want to stay.

Soren.

Orrian smiled from beyond the veil.

"Stubborn," he murmured to the void. "Both of them. Absolutely, magnificently stubborn."

And for the first time in millennia, he found himself hoping the story would let them win.