Zodiac Academy 8.5: Beyond The Veil

I strode through the huge doors of a palace without end, a growl ripping free of my throat as I stalked down pristine golden hallways where the half visible forms of dead Fae loitered as if looking for something to occupy them.

Smoke rolled up the back of my throat, the Dragon in me desperate to break free of my flesh but as the shift threatened to take over, I felt a rupture spilling through me. A feeling so alien that it stole my focus, the need to shift overwhelming me and forcing me to give in.

I gasped, buckling forward and taking hold of the closest wall. Instead of transforming, my Dragon broke free of me, racing up and out of my body, roaring ferociously as it took off, leaping from a huge stone balcony and tearing away from the palace towards the stars beyond.

“What the fuck…” I stared after the enormous golden Dragon, my mouth falling open as I watched it race away from me, fire billowing from its jaws as it roared loud enough to rattle the walls of the ethereal palace around me.

Another roar answered it, a purple Dragon leaping over my head, the force of its wings lifting my hair as it passed, and I had to resist the urge to duck. I watched as it raced after my Dragon, the two of them blasting fire at one another, dancing through the sky in a symphony of wings and fire, not quite fighting, more like playing.

“Scared the shit outa me the first time that happened,” a deep voice said behind me and I whirled around, power balling in my fist, expecting to see my father there then falling still as I found a stranger instead. But that voice…

“Don’t you recognise your own uncle?” the man asked, rolling his shoulders back and lifting his chin.

He was a big motherfucker, clearly a Dragon Shifter like me, and now that he mentioned it, there was something familiar about him. He had a look of Lionel about him, that same blonde colouring to his hair and something around the nose, but this man was bigger, his chin squarer, brow more prominent and he looked to be around my age.

“Radcliff?” I guessed, wondering how many of these little reunions I was going to have to endure in this place. I may have been glad to have the opportunity to speak with some of the dead, but an uncle who had died before my birth hadn’t been high on my list of priorities.

“In the flesh. Let’s get a look at you then. I’d say you’re almost as big as me now…”

Radcliff Acrux, the man who had been born to become the Fire Lord, sauntered closer, swirling a glass of liquor in one hand, a red smoking jacket seeming to unfold itself over his body, the twin of the one my father favoured. I eyed him with interest, uncertain what to expect from this stranger who shared some of my blood. In all honesty, I had no further interest in my Acrux heritage. I was happy to leave all claims to it behind in the taking of my wife’s name. I was a Vega now.

Radcliff stopped before me, raising a hand to the top of his head before moving it towards mine. He angled it upward so his palm brushed my hair, making up for the few inches of height I had on him, then grinned.

“Yes. A dead match. And you’re nearly as broad as me too.” He indicated his chest and I glanced at him. He was big, yeah, but bigger than me? Not so much.

“Look, I’m not really interested in some drunk, muscle-measuring-get-to-know-my-uncle shit. It sucks you got stung by that mosquito and died and all, but I really have more important-”

“It was a wasp,” Radcliff hissed and for a moment the golden light wavered, a darkened room appearing around me, Radcliff immobilised in his own bed, his younger brother smiling down at him as he held the jar containing the norian wasp to his chest.

Lionel’s eyes were bright with glee as he watched his brother die, there was a heat to his expression which only ever awakened with cruelty and violence. I knew it well.

“Now there will be no question over which of us is destined for greatness,” Lionel hissed as he murdered his own flesh and blood like a coward.

“If we’re swapping stories about whose life that motherfucker ruined more then I’m pretty sure I win,” I said flatly, waving my hand so the room disappeared, flashes of beatings, Dark Coercion, what Lionel had done to Roxy and finally my own death at his hand surrounding us until we were drowning in the horribly tragic reality of my life.

Radcliff sighed, wafting the memories away like they were nothing but a fart on the breeze, and we found ourselves standing on the stone balcony once more, our Dragons darting through the air beyond.

“Well, I had to put up with the little runt stealing my life, watching him connive and wheedle his way into power from this golden palace of nothing while I just lingered here, never changing, witnessing all the ways I would have prospered where he failed,” Radcliff griped.

“Maybe you should move on,” I suggested, turning away from him to look up at my Dragon again. Longing filled my chest as the need to be at one with it consumed me. “Seems like all you’ve done with your afterlife is obsess over that bastard. I think you need a new hobby.”

“Says the man whose eyes are full of revenge,” Radcliff scoffed. “Mark my words, Darius, you’ll be stood here in another twenty years watching him, hating him, wishing all the worst on him while unable to do more than fuck with things he doesn’t even care about.”

“My obsession doesn’t lie with the man who sired me,” I dismissed, my heart aching for all I’d lost. “If I end up trapped here, that won’t be what I’m stood here watching.”

Even as the words left my lips, they cost me something, the admittance that I might be stood here in twenty years’ time watching someone at all. The idea that I wouldn’t find a way back from this fate was a wound I couldn’t let fester.

“But I won’t be here at all,” I added darkly.

Radcliff blinked at me then barked a laugh. “Oh, I do love it when the dead refuse to accept their fate,” he said, clapping a hand down on my shoulder. “But you aren’t the first who swore to return, and you won’t be the last. I’ll tell you what you will be though, son.”

“What?” I growled, not liking his patronising tone.

“Disappointed. The sooner you get comfortable here, the better. Because there is only here or what comes after, should you wish to pass beyond.” He glanced to the side, and I followed his gaze over the edge of the balcony to the sweeping lawn below, an arch climbing up out of the shadows there, mist twisting through vines which grew around it, and a door of glimmering light forming in its centre. There were whispers coming from within it, soft and peaceful, promises of more, of an ending which was utterly complete.

Radcliff shuddered, barking a command for the door to leave us be and it spilled away into grains of sand as if it had never been there at all. Yet somehow, I knew it was still close by, waiting for us to summon it again, knowing its time would come.

Radcliff gripped my shoulder and drew my focus back to him. “Nothing that came before will ever be yours again unless it steps through The Veil and joins you here. And even then, unless fate is kind and sends them soon, they won’t miss you the way you ache for them. Time heals and grief fades. People move on. Your pretty bride will likely find a new husband in time and when she passes over, she won’t be looking for you anymore.”

“Fuck you,” I snarled, shaking his hand from my shoulder but he caught my arm, refusing to let me leave.

“I’m not telling you this because I’m a son-of-a-bitch like your daddy,” Radcliff growled and there was something in his eyes which stopped me from striking out at him again. A deep sadness laced with the kind of pain I didn’t want to understand. “I’m telling you because it’s true. Right now, you still feel connected to them the way you were when you died because it’s fresh. They think of you all the time, they grieve you and the power of that pain, that connection, it draws you back. It might even let you slip into their world from time to time and let you be with them again. Except you aren’t with them. They can’t see you or feel you – hell, you’ll be lucky if they feel strongly enough about you to allow you to a flip the page of a book. That’s what it is, see?”

“No, I don’t see. It sounds like you’re rambling,” I growled, and he huffed out a breath laced with smoke.

“Them. Their pain, grief, love, whatever you want to call it, but the power of what they feel for you is what lets you go back rather than just sitting here staring into the great orb in The Room of Knowledge like a forgotten spectator, or lingering alone with your memories in your room here in the Eternal Palace. So for now, especially right now, while it’s fresh and their love for you burns with the agony of your loss, you’ll be able to step back and see them clearly, maybe stir the wind around them, drop a flower in their lap if they care enough to look for you, but that’s it. And while you fight to hold onto them, they’ll be working to let you go, to move on, to…fucking live their lives without the constant pain of your loss. So in time you won’t stir the wind, they won’t react if you try to brush your hand over theirs. When you go to them, the details surrounding them will start to fade, get fuzzy, until one day – poof. You’re sitting on your ass watching from out here instead of over there. Their need for you will fade as they find a way to move on, to cope with your loss-”

“You’re saying I won’t be able to visit them like that once they start dealing with their grief?” I asked, a frown furrowing my brow.

“One by one,” he replied. “One by one by one, they’ll move on. Your bride will likely be the last, but I’ve known folks whose spouses are the first to forget them and push them out into the cold. I don’t say it to be harsh, I say it because no one told me. I had to figure it out on my own, watching from further and further away as my girl grieved, then found a way to deal with it and finally moved on. She married someone else, she has her own family. I feel the pull whenever she thinks of me, but it’s less and less often now. And I can’t cross back to see her anymore. Haven’t been able to do that in years. It’s not a bad thing, not for them at least, and for us I guess it’s a sign that we should just move on ourselves, cross over, let it be done.”

Radcliff sighed, stepping back, and swiping a hand over his face, a sadness clinging to him which bit into me. I’d never given much thought to this man who had died before my birth. Never really wondered about him or the life he would have led, aside from speculating whether things might have been different for me with Lionel if I hadn’t been the direct Heir. Then again, knowing my father, he would have groomed me to challenge for the position of Heir anyway, likely putting even more pressure on me than he had. Though I doubted there was ever any future for Radcliff available once Lionel had decided to take his place. He clearly hadn’t believed he could win in a fight with his brother Fae against Fae, so murder was the obvious path. And if Lionel hadn’t succeeded in that then I likely wouldn’t have been born at all.

“Sorry,” I said roughly, making myself look at the man before me, the uncle who should have been well into his fifties yet stood before me frozen in his twenties, his life ended before he’d had a chance to really live it at all. I guessed we had that in common.

“For what?” he asked curiously.

“For my father being a total cunt.”

Radcliff snorted. “Yeah. Well, I’m sorry too.”

“For my father being a total cunt?” I guessed and he grinned.

“Yeah, that’d be it. Looks like he fucked us both over in the end. If anyone had told me Lame Lionel would end up here, seizing the throne of Solaria for himself, placing a crown upon his head, and seeing almost all of those more powerful around him dead in the quest for it, I would have laughed in their faces and told them to go check the cards again. But here we are. He won. By cunning, deception, and unFae tactics, but he won all the same.”

“Not yet he hasn’t,” I refused. “The Vega twins are rising. They’ll hunt him down and gut him before this is done.”

“Seen that in a vision, have you?” Radcliff asked with a low scoff, and it was clear he didn’t believe it would come to pass, but I knew better.

“I don’t need to. I’ve seen it in my wife’s eyes. And I can tell you now, that nothing in their world or this one will ever stand in the way of those twins. They were born to rule. And I get it, you’ve been here a long time, forced to watch while Lionel rose to power, taking down every obstacle in his path by whatever means necessary, and you’ve lost hope that anyone can stand in his way-”

“He saw the Savage King dead, boy,” Radcliff growled. “Hail Vega was the most powerful Fae of our time-”

“That time is done,” I replied firmly. “But the time of the Phoenixes is beginning now. They will rise to power. And I will be there to help see it come to pass.”

I turned and stalked away from my uncle, the golden Dragon bellowing in the skies above before racing after me, diving straight from the air and slamming back into my skin again, making me whole once more.

I didn’t slow my pace, trying to forget his words as they carved their way deeper into my skin. The people I loved wouldn’t simply mourn me and move on. They wouldn’t forget me. They wouldn’t give up. Roxy had sworn a curse upon the stars, promising to change our fate and I wouldn’t be convinced to do anything other than help her in that quest. So I needed to figure out how I could defy the stars from within this place.

I didn’t know where I was headed, only that I needed to do something to keep that vow, and as the palace warped and changed around me, I found myself stepping out into a garden thick with flowers, the air filled with the rustling wings of a million butterflies as they swarmed overhead. They danced and shifted, creating unnatural shapes with the combination of their bodies.

I thought of her, my heart aching for the night we should have had together, celebrating our wedding, consolidating our union. I wanted to hold her in my arms and have our first dance, but instead I found the butterflies twisting themselves into her shape, burning wings beating hard on her back.

I could almost feel the wind rushing through my hair and as I pushed into that sense of her, the world fell away once more, The Veil retreating, letting me push back through until I was with her again.

“Roxy,” I breathed, but she didn’t react at all, her face set with determination, her wings beating hard as she flew, a net of air magic towing Geraldine along with her through the sky.

With a thought, I shifted, a Dragon’s roar escaping me as I fell into the body of the beast, no longer separate but whole, as we should be, though no answering echo replied from the valleys below. I was there with her, but I wasn’t.

The sun was rising, illuminating the land bit by bit as the shadows lifted and I blinked as I recognised the landscape stretching out below us. Acrux Manor lay just over the next rise. I’d flown these skies a million times, knew this land better from the air than I did from the ground. What was she doing here?

Roxy wheeled to the side, putting the sun at her back so she would approach the manor in the thick of its light, shielding her from view of anyone on the ground.

“Oh, in the valley of the fruit of my loins, sweet Petunia shall rise and claim her salmon,” Geraldine called, swinging her flail aggressively while she was propelled through the air with Roxy’s magic. She looked completely insane and at least as terrifying, the armour she wore glinting in the sunlight, the pointed tips on her breastplate looking sharp enough to cut.

With a jolt I realised why they must have been here, my shock over my own death having pushed all thoughts of my brothers from my mind, but I’d left them here not long before my death and one look at the manor below showed the pulsing shadow rift still very much in place in the courtyard outside.

“No,” I gasped, my body yanking away from Roxy and Geraldine, dissolving then reforming in the centre of that courtyard. Horror gripped me as I took in the sight of the other Heirs and their families, each of them tethered to the shadow rift, their magic rolling into it from their bodies while they were forced to replenish over and over again.

I ran to Caleb whose jaw and chest were coated in blood, his fangs bared and desperation in his eyes as he looked towards the others.

They didn’t know I was gone yet. They hadn’t been grieving me so I hadn’t felt the pull towards them from their side of The Veil, but now I knew what had become of them after I’d abandoned them to save Xavier, I couldn’t help but rage against the stars for cursing us even further.

“Cal?” I reached for him, gripping his arm in a fierce hold and he turned his head towards me, glancing at the place where my hand lay almost as though he had felt it. “I’m here. Roxy’s almost here too, I-”

I turned from him, looking up toward the sun, just about spotting her and Geraldine in the sky. But the wards were still up, the power my father had channelled into them over years upon years still standing, keeping them out.

I spared a glance for Seth who ran endlessly on a turning ball of stone, and Max whose face was crumpled with the pain of Fae who were being tortured by Nymphs beside him as he was forced to feed on their suffering, then I broke into a run and leapt into the sky.

The Dragon tore from my limbs, and I flew hard for the dome of magic that I knew surrounded the manor. Roxy plummeted from the sky overhead, her sword drawn, Geraldine right beside her, the two little more than a streak of light descending from the heavens.

“For honour and death and the true queens!” Geraldine cried, her words finding me as I summoned all the power of everything I was and everything I had been, tearing up to meet them as little more than a blur of raw energy.

Roxy held her sword up, Phoenix fire bursting along the length of it as she hurtled towards the wards. She swung it with a ferocious cry, a bird of red and blue flames erupting from its tip.

Power blasted from her, and I threw myself and all the power I had into the wards from below just as her magic struck it from above, colliding with it so hard that I broke apart in the explosion that followed.

The world fractured and spun around me, and I fell in and out of The Veil, flashes of reality coming too fast for my mind to fully comprehend.

Roxy and Geraldine were fighting with the ferocity of feral beasts, my brothers crying out warnings from their positions chained around the stone altar, blood spilling, Nymphs screaming. Geraldine in Cerberus form, Nymphs swarming my girl, an eruption of ice then an explosion of fire hotter than the pits of hell itself.

I materialised in the Acrux Manor courtyard again just as a shield of solid ice broke apart, a great wave of water crashing across the soot-stained stones and broken altar, revealing my queen standing among a pile of ash beyond it, panting, wounded and utterly devastating.

I stared at the beauty of the woman who had claimed me for her own, my soul thrashing with the desperate need for her to see me too, to turn my way and meet my gaze with the blazing fire in her eyes.

The closest wall of the manor was in ruins. The house which had been home to so much pain for me, my mother and brother, now falling to rubble at her back while the Heirs found themselves free of the hellish fate that had befallen them.

She was hurt, a jagged wound carved into her side, frozen with ice to stem the flow of blood though she was in desperate need of real healing. I moved to her with little more than a thought, my presence here entirely my own, no other Fae aware of me in the slightest, and I was surprised by the sharpness of the pain that carved into me at that realisation.

Radcliff’s words burned into me as I looked between the people I loved most in this world, wondering if he might have been right, if this might be the closest I ever got to them in this life again.

The thought alone was enough to close my throat over, my chest heaving with a panic I refused to feel.

No.

I wouldn’t accept that fate. I’d find my way back to them. Whatever it took, I’d do it.

“My daughters have been forged in a fire far hotter than any a Dragon might hope to tame.”

I flinched at Hail Vega’s voice, turning to look at him as he moved between the flashes of reality which were swirling around me. I wanted to stop and experience what was happening with the people I loved but time seemed to be leaping forward in sudden jerks and gasps, flashes of what they were doing appearing then fading just as fast.

“Why is it like this?” I asked, reaching for Roxy as she strode towards the house I’d grown up in, her jaw set with determination, her power making the air crackle around her.

She passed straight through me, not pausing or flinching, simply heading inside with Max, Seth and Geraldine closing in around her.

“The Veil doesn’t follow the rules you lived by when you were on that side of it,” Hail replied, waving a hand towards Roxy and the others as they moved into the house, leaving us outside by the broken altar and the destruction the battle had wreaked. “Our desire isn’t what draws us to it, it’s their need for us which allows us to step close, to experience time the way they are. When their grief or need is sharpest, we can experience it the best, our reality drawing so near to theirs that we can even reach between the two, press through The Veil and influence certain things around them. But we can never truly be with them. We can never really change anything.”

“I need to go back,” I said, turning my back on the damaged building and it all fell away as I did so, leaving the two of us standing in a grand hall, banners hanging from the walls which glowed with that golden hue, depicting a Hydra bellowing to the stars.

Hail sat and a throne appeared beneath his ass before he could fall to the floor, with gilded Phoenix wings sprouting from the back of it, one blue and one red. He reclined into the throne like it was as natural as breathing to him, his legs spread wide, his arm hanging loosely over one side.

“Sit,” he commanded, a nod of his head making a grubby three-legged stool appear for me.

I arched a brow at it then sat, not really giving a shit if he offered me a throne or a toilet to sit on, I only cared about figuring out how I was going to keep my promise to his daughter.

“You’ve been here long enough to know how this place works,” I said, resting my forearms on my knees, keeping my tone level despite the sneer on his lips. “I need to know how to get back.”

“Back?” Hail snorted. “You think if there was a way back, we wouldn’t all have taken that path?”

“I made a vow,” I said, ignoring his sneering. I didn’t really care if he liked me or not, I just needed to know where to start looking for the fate I intended to seize.

“Which vow was that?” Hail asked. “The one where you swore to chase my daughters out of their academy? To rid them of their birth right and inheritance in one fell swoop? The one which drove you to make them relive their worst fears and ended with you near drowning my-”

“The one where I swore to love and protect your daughter with all that I was for all the time I had in that world and the next. The one that I joined her in when she vowed to change our fate at the cost of the stars if that was what it required. She has sworn to defy destiny in the matter of my death, and I have sworn to do all I can to defy it too. So will you help me, or would you rather allow your distaste for me to leave her grieving and alone for the rest of her life?” I demanded.

Hail sighed heavily. “I preferred the blonde one,” he grunted.

Merissa clucked her tongue as she appeared suddenly, stepping out from behind the throne as if she’d always been there. She looked more like the twins than Hail did, her features reminiscent enough of theirs that it hurt to look at her for too long.

“You mean the Vampire who threw Roxanya off of a roof and broke her spine in a blood frenzy?” she asked sweetly. “Honestly, Hail, next you’ll be saying you preferred the mortal who drove her off of a bridge and left her to drown.”

Hail straightened at the reproach, his attention shifting from his wife to me once more. “I did rather enjoy watching you beating the shit out of that son-of-a-bitch,” he said to me, and my lips lifted in a grim smile.

“I’d have killed him if I didn’t know Roxy would have castrated me for it. She deserves her own chance to kick his ass one day if she wants it.”

“Regardless of who might like to kick whose ass, it’s safe to say that Roxanya’s taste in men leaves a lot to be desired,” Merissa interrupted, the look she gave me letting me know that she’d seen all there was of the mistakes I’d made.

I dropped my gaze to the ground, but she moved to stand before me, lifting my chin so that I met her eyes again.

“I meant what I said before,” she said softly. “You made up for your poor choices in my eyes as well as in the eyes of my daughter. Besides, I always knew you’d be the one for her. I held you as a baby when I was pregnant, and I saw it.”

“You saw me and her together?” I asked, clinging to that fact, and wondering if it might give me a clue into the way this might all work out. “How old were we? Did we have a family? Did we find a way back from this mess or-”

“You know it doesn’t work like that,” she said softly, brushing her hand against my cheek in a maternal gesture which still felt unnatural to me after so many years of my own mother’s coldness. I knew she hadn’t wanted it to be that way, but it didn’t change what I had grown up with, didn’t make me any more used to a mother treating me this way, like she cared about more than just what I could give her. “I saw a hundred possible fates, all of which tangled the two of you up with one another. None of them mean you can thwart death itself.”

I stood suddenly, knocking the stool over in my haste as I moved away from her. “If neither of you know anything that can help me then I’ll seek it out myself,” I growled, stalking away from them.

The Veil fluttered around me as I walked, the corridors I’d grown up in appearing in place of that golden, ever-changing palace. Roxy was walking ahead of me, fire blazing all around her as she moved from room to room, burning every last piece of it to the ground.

My heart swelled at the sight of it, watching her as she struck out against my father, stealing something from him which he would mourn far more than the life of any Fae. This manor had been a symbol of his wealth and power. To see it destroyed by his enemies would destroy a piece of him in turn.

The thundering boom of the roof cracking overhead had me moving faster, closing in on her as she fell still, her eyes closing like she was drinking in this moment.

A sharp stab of pain lanced through my chest which I knew had come directly from her, the tears rolling down her cheeks clear as I made it to her. She was hurting. Because of me. Despite all the promises I’d made to her, I’d done it again, hurting her worse than I ever had before by leaving her when I’d promised to stay.

I moved up behind her, coiling my arms around her waist, leaning in to press my lips to her neck, goosebumps rising across her flesh at my touch like she really could feel me.

“I’m here,” I promised her again. “And I’m not giving up. We’ll rip The Veil to shreds if that’s what’s required for us to be together again. I’m yours Roxy. There is only you,” I swore, holding her tighter while the world fell to ruin in her flames surrounding us.

“I’ll burn it all if that’s what it takes,” she breathed and I could have sworn her words were for me, that she’d felt me there, knew I wasn’t giving up.

“Then burn it all, beautiful. Every fucking piece of it,” I growled, because whatever the price of our reunion cost, I’d pay it. Anything it took to return to her. Everything it might cost me.

I watched as the flames rose up around her, her wings flaring either side of her as she walked away from me, Acrux Manor crumbling to ruins beneath the might of her power and I knew that I would keep that vow or let my soul be cast to ash in the effort it took to attempt it.

She was lost to me again and I found myself facing Hail and Merissa once more, my stool righted before them, Merissa now perched in Hail’s lap while he lazily stroked her thigh. It seemed as though they’d been waiting for me, and Hail’s scowl deepened as I met his gaze without so much as dipping my head in deference.

“If you’d stop storming off like a petulant child it would make this conversation pass more swiftly,” Hail ground out.

I folded my arms, meeting his scowl dead on, not flinching at what I assumed was an attempt to intimidate me with that whole old, dead asshole glare thing he had going on.

“Spit it out then,” I urged.

“Azriel is hunting for the missing Guild Stones,” Hail said, eyeing me like I was something distasteful as I stood before him. “We believe they are the key to helping the twins now. They need to reform the Zodiac Guild and use the power of the stones to restore balance within Solaria. With the Guild at their backs, Solaria can rise once more, they will have the strength they need to take on Lionel and crush the power he has built up around himself before finally ending his reign once and for all.”

“How does that help me with crossing back over?” I asked and he sighed.

“You won’t let that go, will you?” Hail muttered.

“Do you really want me to?” I demanded in turn. “You’d rather I give in to this fate, leave Roxy a widow before she’s even been crowned?”

“Of course we would wish to see you return if we thought it was possible,” Merissa said, raising a hand to slow my anger. “But if there is a way to do such a thing then we don’t know it. Perhaps some of the ancient souls who linger here would have an idea, those who were versed in the ways of old and didn’t solely rely on the power of the stars for their answers in life. If you wish to defy the will of the stars, it would make sense to find a path unlit by their light after all.”

I considered all they’d told me and nodded.

“Fine. I’ll do what I can to help in the search for those Guild Stones, but my priority lies with my return to the Fae realm,” I said.

“Then I’ll see who I can find to speak with you on the subject,” Merissa promised.

My brain was pounding with so much information, The Veil tugging at me as I felt the Heirs and Xavier grieving over me too, drawing me closer to them with their pain and need. I gave in to the tug, letting Hail and Merissa fade away and finding myself kneeling at my own grave alongside the other Heirs.

I took my place beside them as their grief filled the small clearing where a tree shaped like a Dragon grew over a coffin made of ice, and as I looked upon the face of my corpse and felt how much damage my death had caused, I swore to do everything I could to make all of this right again.