All Chapters of THE NIGHT MY MATE BURNED ME ALIVE : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Silence settled over the Hall.​Not the peaceful silence of a place at rest, but the suffocating stillness that followed a truth too large to process. The mountain continued to groan around us, ancient stone protesting under the force of repeated impacts beyond the sealed gates, yet none of us spoke.​I stood frozen, my fingers locked around the hilt of the Sword of Dawn, unable to look away from Lyra and Caelan.​Husband and wife.​The words refused to align with anything I'd been taught. Every story passed down through generations had painted them as eternal enemies, legends born to destroy one another. No tale had ever hinted that they had once ruled from the same throne.​"You were married," I said, the words barely louder than a breath.​Neither denied it.​My gaze moved between them, searching for some sign that this was another illusion crafted by the Hall. I found only ancient, weary grief.​"You fought together," I continued slowly. "You built the Dragon Kingdom together."​Ly

Pain split through my skull with such force that the Hall lurched out of focus.​The Sword of Dawn throbbed in my hand, its low hum vibrating through my arm and deep into my chest. I dropped to one knee as memories crashed over me in a relentless tide. None of them belonged to me—or at least they shouldn't have. Faces I'd never seen twisted with grief and triumph. I remembered battles I'd never fought, wounds I'd never suffered, and promises I'd never made. Names I didn't recognize carried the weight of lifelong friendships, every borrowed memory settling inside me with terrifying familiarity.​Then the torrent stopped.​Silence rushed in, pressing against my ears until I could hear my own ragged breathing.​When I forced myself to my feet, the woman across the chamber hadn't moved. She stood beneath the crimson glow as though she'd been waiting for centuries, watching me with an unreadable calm that unsettled me far more than open hostility ever could.​For a heartbeat, my mind refuse

The first chain coiled around my ankle before I could react.​A crushing cold surged through my leg. It wasn't the clean bite of ice, but something older, heavier, as though the weight of forgotten centuries had settled straight into my bones. The glowing metal tightened, and memories ripped through me with such force that my vision blurred.​I was six, crouched beneath Father's desk after snapping the hilt from one of his ceremonial daggers.​I was twelve, slipping into the royal library long after midnight, convinced I could decipher texts no child was meant to read.​I was sixteen, laughing so hard after finally knocking Rowan onto his back during training that neither of us could lift a sword for minutes.​The memories flashed past in a dizzying rush.​Then they were gone.​The chain had consumed them.​"No!"​I drove the Sword of Dawn downward. Golden light burst from the blade, cleaving the enchanted links apart. They shattered into bright fragments that hissed against the obsidi

The hand that emerged from the shattered mirror dwarfed the crystal pillars surrounding it.​Black scales overlapped like forged armor, each one veined with crimson fire that pulsed just beneath the surface. As those immense fingers curled over the edge of the broken glass, the entire arena groaned. Hairline cracks shot through the obsidian beneath my boots.​I couldn't breathe.​The crushing pressure pouring from that single arm knocked the wind straight out of my lungs. My knees hit the stone before I even realized I was falling.​Beside me, the other Seraphina fought the same suffocating weight. Her jaw tightened as she drove the point of the Sword of Dusk into the floor, using the blade to keep herself upright.​The little girl's face drained of all color. "We're too late."​The words barely reached me over the deafening roar filling the arena.​The darkness inside the mirror churned, folding in on itself until a towering figure stepped through the jagged frame.​He was impossibly

​The crimson blade hovered between us, perfectly still.​Its edge glowed with neither the blinding radiance of the Sword of Dawn nor the suffocating darkness of the Sword of Dusk. Crimson light flowed through the metal like blood through translucent skin, pulsing in precise rhythm with the Dragon Mark burning across my wrist.​It pointed directly at us.​Not at me. Not at her.​Both.​Beyond the shattered gateway, the First Hunger watched.​Hundreds of crimson eyes remained locked on the newborn weapon. The endless, shifting maw that split the darkness curled into something horribly recognizable as a smile.​"You remember," it murmured.​It didn't shout, yet every syllable settled into the back of my mind like cold iron sinking into wet earth.​Orion's shoulders went rigid. "Don't answer it."​"I wasn't planning to."​"Good." His dark eyes never left the abyss. "It doesn't speak to your ears, Seraphina."​A dull, throbbing ache flared behind my temples. "It speaks to whatever lives be