And the cave.
His voice dropped when he spoke of it. Dropped to something barely above a whisper, as if naming it too loudly might summon its attention.
"The sea cave at the base of the cliffs. It used to hold nothing but tide pools. My grandfather taught me to collect shells there when I was a boy." His hands twisted together, weathered fingers interlacing and pulling apart. "Now it pulses. Light that shouldn't exist. You can see it from the village at night—colors that hurt to look at, shifting and moving like something alive."
A fisherman stepped forward, his face gray with something beyond exhaustion. "The hum. Tell them about the hum."
The headman nodded jerkily. "It makes sounds. Deep sounds, the kind you feel in your bones more than hear. When the wind blows right, the whole village vibrates with it. The children's teeth ache. The pregnant women can't keep food down."
My own bones had started vibrating the moment they mentioned it. I could feel the cave from here—a pull in my transformed blood, the thread of my bloodline connection stretching taut toward something that called to it. Called to me.
"Two of our men went in," the fisherman continued. His voice had gone hollow. "Three days ago. They wanted to see what was causing it. Wanted to end the nightmares, stop the dreams, give us back our lives."
He stopped. Swallowed hard.
"They came back different."
I watched his face as he struggled to find words. Watched the other villagers exchange glances heavy with fear and something else—something that might have been hope, desperate and thin, directed at us like we could fix what had been broken.
"They wept," the headman finally said. "For hours. Couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. And when they finally spoke—"
He met Morgrith's eyes. Met mine.
"They said something was waiting to be born. A presence, they called it. Old and new at once. Sleeping and waking. They said it knew they'd come. They said it was almost ready."
The thread in my blood pulled so hard I nearly staggered.
I felt Morgrith's hand find mine, felt his steadiness anchor me against the overwhelming call. Through the bond I sensed his recognition—he'd been searching for this resonance across all seven territories. He'd investigated failed leads and candidates who didn't carry the right frequency. And now, finally, we'd found it.
Not in a woman walking the world.
In something waiting to be born.
I stepped closer to the cliff's edge. The mist below was thicker here, churning with colors that shouldn't exist, shot through with light that made my transformed eyes water. I could see the cave mouth from this angle—a dark wound in the cliff face,exhaling fog that tasted of salt and ancient magic and something that reminded me of the flowers from my dreams.
Something that reminded me of Evara.
"She's there," I whispered.
Morgrith's attention sharpened through the bond. The villagers had gone quiet, sensing something beyond their understanding pass between us.
I turned to face him, and I knew my eyes were glowing—silver-grey light spilling from pupils that were no longer quite human, my bloodline connection blazing like a beacon toward what waited in that cave.
"She's almost ready."
Thecavemouthbreathed,and I felt it like a hand pressing against my chest—an inhale and exhale of power that matched no rhythm I'd ever known.
Each step down the cliff path brought us closer to that impossible respiration. I counted the breaths without meaning to: three seconds in, four seconds out, steady as a heartbeat but wrong somehow. Too slow. Too vast. The rhythm of something ancient dreaming in the dark.
The energy here was thick enough to taste—salt and ozone and something sweeter beneath, something that coated my tongue and made my transformed nerves sing with recognition. This was old magic. Older than dragons. Older than the seven territories and the bonds that connected them. This was the kind of power that had existed before anyone learned to shape it, raw and primordial and utterly indifferent to the beings who walked its edges.
Morgrith's hand tightened around mine as we reached the base of the cliffs.
The cave mouth yawned before us, larger than it had seemed from above. Fog spilled from its darkness in slow waves, carrying that wrong-colored light the villagers had described—shifting hues that made my eyes water even with my expanded spectrum of perception. The hum was louder here, a vibration I felt in my teeth, in my newly-transformed bones, in the marrow of me.
The shadows that had followed us from the Sanctuary stopped at the threshold.
I watched them gather at the cave's edge and refuse to enter. They curled and twisted against an invisible barrier, reaching toward their master with something that looked almost like fear. Morgrith's power had been restored—I'd felt it blazing through the bond during our flight, vast and ancient and absolute. But here, at the edge of this place, his shadows recoiled like children from a dark room.