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Unwanted Honour

Penulis: Emeraldwrites
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-12-01 21:49:39

Chapter 6

Unwanted Honour

Elara, age 19,

I wake to a silence so absolute it feels like drowning.

No clank of buckets, no Seraphine murdering scales on her lute, no crows squabbling on my sill.

Just the soft, suffocating hush that comes right before a scream.

The fire is dead. Frost feathers the inside of the window in curling, delicate patterns that look almost like wings. Or scales. My breath fogs white.

On the little table beside my bed, the black scale I’ve hidden since I was nine stands on edge, trembling like a hound that has finally caught the scent.

It has never done that before.

I reach for it without thinking. The instant my skin touches obsidian, heat spears through my palm so violently I jerk back. For one heartbeat I see ember-bright eyes staring at me across centuries of darkness, and a voice like smoke and sorrow says my name as though it is the only word left in any language.

Elara.

Then it’s gone, and I’m just a girl on a frozen bed with a heart trying to hammer its
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