The storm that rolled over Soryu three nights ago still lingers in Teinshi's bones.
He can feel it under his skin—the hum, the pull—like a heartbeat that isn't his. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees flashes of the valley again: gold fire tangled with silver light. And always, a voice whispering from the edge of sleep.
Find me.
He hasn't told anyone. Not even his mother. The Council is already restless, whispering that the gods are displeased. The slightest hint of heresy would put him on the pyre.
Instead, he buries himself in duty. Training drills. War councils. Patrols that take him farther from the citadel. But the further he rides, the stronger the pull becomes, dragging him west—toward the mountains where the Bloodfang banners burn.
That night, he sits in the temple archives with an old chronicle cracked open before him. The title glimmers faintly: The Falling of the Third.
"In the age of the First Tamers," the text reads, "a man and woman broke the Rule of Two. Their third beasts awoke as one, and the world split beneath them. The gods punished the bloodlines with the Oath—so none may break their will again."
He runs a thumb across the faded ink. Punished the bloodlines… The words feel wrong, off. Not a divine decree, but a warning someone wanted remembered the wrong way.
When he looks up, Aegra's eyes gleam from the shadows. The wolf's fur crackles faintly with static, and her voice touches his thoughts.
The story is a lie.
He freezes. "You can speak?"
Not speak. Remember.
Lightning flickers across her pelt. For a heartbeat, he sees another form superimposed over her—vast, serpentine, made of silver flame. Then it's gone.
Aegra lowers her head. The serpent sleeps inside us all. Only those bound by fate can wake it.
The mark on his chest burns again. The serpent's eye flashes once in the dark.
Far across the mountains, Adodeme wakes from the same vision.
Her breath steams in the cold air of the fortress. Rukhar growls low, restless. Velith's shadow writhes on the wall, forming patterns that match the marks burning faintly on her hands.
She rises, heart hammering. Outside, the mountain wind howls through the stone corridors. The war banners snap in the gale.
Her mother waits by the balcony, cloak drawn tight. "You've felt it too, haven't you?"
Adodeme doesn't answer.
"The serpent whispers when the world begins to shift," Delaya says softly. "Your great-grandmother heard it once, the night before the Fall. The elders called her cursed."
"What did she do?"
"She followed it," her mother replies. "And vanished."
Adodeme's pulse quickens. She looks west, where storm clouds bleed into dawn. The serpent mark on her palm glows faintly, silver at its edges now—like his.
Rukhar's low rumble fills the silence. He is calling you, the lion's voice rumbles inside her mind, deep and patient.
She grips the railing. "If I answer, the clan will brand me traitor."
If you don't, the beast replies, the mountain will forget your name.
For a long moment she stands there, torn between blood and something far older. The wind smells of rain and steel. Somewhere beyond the horizon, she knows he's looking toward the same sky.
Across that distance, Teinshi steps out onto the citadel wall. The storm has cleared. The stars are sharp as shards of ice. In the silence, he feels it again—a pulse, warm and steady, echoing against his own heartbeat.
He doesn't know how, but he knows she's awake too. The connection hums through the night like a thread of light, invisible but unbreakable.
Not a curse, he thinks. A signal.
The serpent's eye flickers once across the moon, vanishing before he can be sure it was ever there.