Page 143 of Bound to the Dreadlord

Then another.

The wind rakes through the battlefield behind me, howling through the ruins, carrying the stench of blood, of war, of everything I have left behind.

I do not stop.

I do not look back.

Veylan does not stop me.

No one does.

Let them watch me leave. Let them see what they have created.

My body should ache.

I should be weak, trembling, barely able to keep myself upright after everything that has happened. But I am not.

Something in me has shifted, and I feel it in my bones. In the air curling around me like an unseen force, waiting. Breathing.

I was supposed to die.

I did die.

But I didn’t. Why? I’m not alive. Not dead. Something else entirely. A new being.

My transformation has been complete.

I glance down at my hands. The skin is smooth, unmarred, untouched by the wounds I should still bear. But beneath the surface, I feel it—the raw power slithering inside me like a second heartbeat, like something not my own.

It does not feel wrong.

It does not feel foreign.

It feels inevitable.

The war is over. The House Drazharel is no longer under Hazeran’s rule. The brothers have their victory.

But this? This is mine.

I reach a broken archway, stepping over shattered stone, my boots slick with dried blood. Beyond this point, the land stretches wide and wild. Unknown.

I do not hesitate.

The wilderness swallows me whole.

I was once a girl locked in a cage.

A human girl. A fragile, breakable thing.

That girl begged. She fought against chains that were too strong, against a fate that was never hers to control.

That girl died on an altar.

I do not mourn her.

Let them think they buried me. Let them think they ended me.

Let them fear what rises from the ashes.

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