Scars and Sovereigns: 13

Lira (POV)I stood slowly, more aware of the weight behind my hips, the tightness along one side where everything inside me had started to shift. I didn’t rush. I didn’t need to.Kael hadn’t moved. His gaze followed as I crossed the edge of the bank and rejoined the soft track of moss that wound through the ferns ahead.My feet found the path on instinct.It led deeper, quieter, into a hollow of white-dusted leaves that waited without judgment.We didn’t speak again as we moved through the undergrowth. The fog stayed low, curling around our ankles, tugging at roots that looked like ribs under skin. The air smelled like fern rot and wet bark. Familiar. But older than I remembered.A clearing opened up to our right. Small. Ringed in stones that looked too evenly spaced to be natural.Kael didn’t stop, but I did.He glanced back, one step ahead, then waited without question.I crouched low, pressing my palm into the soil. It was damp and soft, threaded with gray moss and bits of black ba

Last Updated : 2025-08-04

Rooted in Flame: 1

Lira (POV)I hadn’t named it yet. The thought. The shape of what might be growing. But my body had already started acting like it knew. And I hadn’t told it no.We kept walking.The trail curved beneath us in quiet loops, lined with bark-heavy trees that creaked in the wind. Every so often, a branch brushed my shoulder like it was reaching. The ground sloped up gently ahead, the moss thinning where rock took over. I felt it in my thighs. That same pull low across the hips. Not pain. Just presence.Kael didn’t speak. He let the silence stretch between us like something earned.The spiral hadn’t stirred in days. I still felt it, sometimes, a phantom echo beneath the scar. But now even that had faded. Like the fire that once moved through me had found another place to live.I paused where the trail narrowed against a shelf of stone. Lichen traced curling lines across the surface, pale green and soft with age. At first, it looked like nothing. Just erosion. Weather marks.But when I stepp

Last Updated : 2025-08-07

Rooted in Flame: 2

Kael (POV)She walked past me, quiet and measured, her hand hovering low over her stomach like it had started meaning something without her permission. She didn’t look at me when she passed, and I didn’t follow her with my eyes. I followed her presence instead. That quiet weight she carried now, steadier than when we’d escaped the Pit. No spiral glint. No unnatural heat. Just the shift of something real inside her. And it wasn't mine. Not yet. But I still felt it.I stayed seated on the root, elbows on my knees, watching the coals blink against the moss like slow breath. The ruin we’d taken shelter in was half-swallowed by the earth; moss-laced stones crumbling into themselves, ceiling low enough that even I ducked to enter. It wasn’t a place meant to hold fire, but the warmth had stayed longer than I expected. Long enough to make the silence feel like comfort, not absence.Across the fire, she knelt to sort through her pack. Her movements were slow, but not weary. Careful. She wasn’t

Last Updated : 2025-08-09

Rooted in Flame: 3

Kael (POV)She didn’t pull away when I touched her wrist. But she didn’t lean in either. Her stillness held something I recognized. Not hesitance exactly. Not fear. Just the careful kind of waiting people do when they’re trying not to break what barely holds. The silence between us stretched, not tense, but fragile in the way of something newly formed. I let go first. Not because I wanted the distance, but because she needed to know she could have it. That she could choose. It wasn’t the tether, or duty, or the weight of shared survival that brought us here. It was just us. That had to be enough. She didn’t move, not right away. Her hands rested in her lap, one still faintly curved toward her middle. Her eyes tracked mine like she was still deciding if this was something that could last, or just another moment waiting to be taken. But she didn’t look away. “I never wanted the bond,” I said. My voice came quieter than I expected, more steady than soft. It didn’t shake. It didn’t ple

Last Updated : 2025-08-10

Rooted in Flame: 4

Lira (POV)The trees changed when we crossed deeper.Their trunks thickened, bark dark and furrowed, rising higher than the reach of light. Branches leaned inward until the sky narrowed to a gray slit. Moss climbed in sheets, swallowing stone and root alike. The air felt damp and close, not heavy with threat, but with something that remembered before we did.Each step sank quieter into the earth. Roots coiled across the path like ribs. The silence was not empty; it was listening.Kael walked half a pace behind me. His presence filled the space the way it always did; steady, bone-sure, unbending. But here even that seemed small. The Wilds pressed around us, old and unhurried, as if they had been waiting for centuries for someone to walk through again.A stone jutted from the slope ahead, taller than my hip, its surface swallowed in lichen. At first, it looked like any boulder broken loose from the ridge. Then I saw the marks. Faint, almost worn smooth, but carved too cleanly to be mist

Last Updated : 2025-08-26

Rooted in Flame: 5

Kael (POV)The river ran colder than it looked. White water slipped fast over black stone, biting at my ankles when I stepped close enough to drink.She was already there.Lira waded knee-deep, her shirt clinging in patches where the water had soaked through. She didn’t speak. Didn’t notice me at first. Her palms moved over her stomach, slow, deliberate. At first, I thought it was only the chill, the way people brace against cold. But then her hands stayed. Pressed.And something in her face changed.Her jaw tightened; not in pain, but in knowing. Her body had answered her.I froze on the bank. The air hit the back of my throat like stone dust. My fingers wrapped around the hilt of my blade