The plume burned like ice in Raihan's hand, scalding its mark into his skin—a gnarled sigil that glowed with the fires of the divine.
Lian Yue watched in horror. "It's a Celestial Bind. Once tagged, they can track you anywhere."
Raihan gritted his teeth and bit back a wince. "Then we move fast."
"No," she said. "It's worse than that. The Bind is a contract. They've claimed your soul."
He looked down at his palm. "They can try."
The world outside the Godless Sanctuary was different.
No silent sky any longer. Cracks of splintered light and shadow rippled across the clouds as a storm of spirits danced, heralding the wrath of the gods. The wind brought rumours — of rebellion, of a ship that would end the rule of the divine.
And under the earth, the ancient things moved.
They skirted the edges of mountain ranges, traversed them as fast as they could, consulting the map Kaelen had pilfered, which now faintly pulsated with bloodline magic. Each step nearer the Wyrm's Library divested something from the world as if unwinding the final stitches of the veil of fate.
"You're satisfied this place even exists?" Lian Yue asked, jumping down after him, over the lip of a desert-blasted cliff.
Raihan followed close behind. "The map is Celestial. And Kaelen took a gamble to secure it. That level of desperation doesn't fib."
She sighed, her eyes sweeping the horizon. "The Wyrm was before the gods. It is said that he hoards wisdom like treasure. If he doesn't kill us first."
"Good," Raihan said. "Because I am intending to pose dangerous questions."
---
The entrance to the Wyrm's Library was not a door but a mouth.
Underneath the Withered Tree— a Titan-leg sized trunk long since turn to stone that reached halfway up to the sky— they had discovered an entrance like a mouth full of serrated fangs. Runes gleamed on its surface, a warning to any who entered.
His burnt hand against that light Rune, Raihan palmed it.
They hissed.
Then parted.
The cave absorbed them entirely.
The air was the thick, humid air of memory. Bone and stone walls contorted in ways they shouldn't be able to as the way before shimmered, as though it floated in water.
"This isn't a location," Lian Yue murmured. "It's a memory."
Raihan nodded. "Which means the Wyrm is stroking."
The hallway ended in a round room, flanked by monolithic stones carved with vague images. Every tablet had a name and a story — some still very much in the process of being written, their scripts aglow with ghostly ink.
A shape crouched in the middle.
Twined, scaled in the colors of ink and gold, with eyes like old moons.
The Wyrm.
Its voice was a thousand pages turning simultaneously.
"Who has the temerity to disrupt the ink of eternity?"
Raihan stepped forward. "One cursed by the gods. One marked by prophecy."
The Wyrm's eyes glinted. "Many say that. Most of them die before you flip the final page."
"I don't want immortality," Raihan said. "I want the truth."
A long pause. And then the Wyrm uncoiled a little, and there was a mouth that did not smile so much as unravel.
"Then pay the price."
"What do you want?" Lian Yue asked warily.
"A memory. Not yours—hers."
She stiffened.
"My memory?"
"One that was taken. Sealed. Do you want to find out the truth? But then you have to give up what little of it you still have left."
Raihan turned to her. "You don't have to—"
"Yes," she said.
Raihan blinked. "What?"
She moved closer to the Wyrm, her voice was even. "If there's some piece of me that's been locked up, I want it. Even if it hurts."
The Wyrm's tongue flicked out—glimmering as ink— and touched her brow.
Then the chamber resounded with a crash.
---
Flashes. Screams. A moon-splintered sky of burning silver lotus. A chained young girl, screaming as a temple fell around her. A voice—"You're not the goddess we created. You're the mistake we buried."
Lian Yue gasped and stumbled back as the visions receded.
And the tears ran down her cheeks.
"I know it now," she whispered. "I wasn't just a vessel. I was their weapon. The gods made me to force the First Flame back into its hole."
"And when you turned us down …" Raihan murmured.
"They imprisoned me. Rewrote me. Caged me in a thousand lives so I would forget who I am."
The Wyrm turned to Raihan.
"Now your question."
Raihan stepped forward.
"I want to know what made me 'the one'. Why me?"
The Wyrm unraveled completely, exposing the long line of runes adorning its scales.
"Because you intimidate them most. Not a god. Not a mortal. But something new."
"What does that mean?"
"You are the first to bear Celestine's light and the Flame's anarchy, both. You are the anomaly. The one prediction that was impossible to see coming."
Raihan felt the air shift.
"So what do I become?"
Wyrm's eyes narrowed.
"That … is still being written."
Then the chamber trembled.
The air was rent by a scream—a scream not from the Wyrm.
Lian Yue pivoted to the door.
"They found us."
From the blackness of the space behind them charged celestial warriors, armor white hot, blades brandished.
And behind them—Kaelen.
His sword gleamed. His face was unreadable.
"Raihan," he said softly. "You were supposed to be dead.
Lian Yue was shielded by Raihan. "You betrayed us."
"I've saved you from what you're becoming."
The Wyrm rose, sending a blast of pressure which shattered the nearest stone.
"Foolish insects. You violate sacred ground—"
Kaelen tossed a starlight blade. It crashed into the Wyrm's flank and a few of the shadows and ink splattered against the walls.
"No more secrets," Kaelen said. "No more monsters."
Raihan seized Lian Yue's hand.
"Can you still teleport?"
"Only once," she panted. "And not far."
The Wyrm screamed as it died. "Take my eye. It remembers everything. Use it to rewrite your fate."
Out of its chest rose a scintillating orb — swirling, ink-and-sable flame.
Kaelen saw it too.
He leapt.
Raihan was faster.
He grabbed the orb.
And the world shattered.
---
Raihan and Lian Yue appeared in a field of snow, the orb in his hand.
The whites of his eyes were aflame with runes now—branded onto them.
Lian Yue crawled beside him. "Raihan…"
He didn't speak.
Because he was no longer exactly himself.
He looked at her—
And didn't recognize her.