They’re witnessing something fundamental.
Something that will change everything.
“This will hurt,” my mother warns, pale green eyes meeting mine one final time, giving me this last chance to reconsider, to step back, to choose the safety of what I know over the terror oftransformation. “The magic must burn away what you were to make room for what you’ll become. Your mortality isn’t a coat you can simply shed. It’s woven into every cell, every breath, every memory of what it means to be human. Breaking those bindings requires fire.”
“I understand.” My voice comes out steady despite fear clawing at my throat, despite every survival instinct screaming that this is madness, that changing yourself at this fundamental level is the kind of hubris that destroys people.
But I’ve already made my choice.
Already committed to this path the moment I looked at Raze and understood that losing him would hurt worse than any transformation ever could.
Raze moves closer, his presence at my back solid and grounding, fire and ice spiraling together beneath his skin in patterns I can sense without seeing. “I’m not leaving you,” he says quietly, and it’s not a question or an offer but anabsolutestatement of fact.
“I know.” I reach back without looking, finding his hand, twining our fingers together. Ice and potential warmth, balance incarnate, the physical manifestation of everything we’ve become to each other.
My mother begins to chant words in a language older than dragons, older than the first courts of fae, older than anything that walks this earth except perhaps the primordial forces she’s now calling upon. Magic rises in response, wild and fierce, building with each syllable until the air trembles with accumulated power.
Around us, the brothers fall into a silence so complete it feels sacred. Not fear or submission, but something heavier, the stillness reserved for moments that reshape destiny when power moves, and even monsters know better than to interrupt.
My mother lifts her hands.
Violet light threads through the air first, thin as lightning caught in slow motion. Dull gold sigils unfurl behind it, ancient symbols folding over one another until the space around me hums with pressure. Obsidian sparks scatter through the glow like fragments of night breaking loose from her fingertips.
Then the magic hits.
Pain detonates through me.
It isn’t heat.
It isn’t cold.
It is unmaking.
Every nerve ignites at once, a violent surge that tears through bone and blood as if mortality is being peeled away layer by layer. My vision fractures into shards of violet and gold, shadows bending at the edges of the world while my body locks rigid under the force of it.
A scream claws up my throat.
I swallow it down.
My knees give out anyway.
Raze catches me before I hit the floor, his arms locking around my waist, holding me upright as my spine bows and every muscle seizes. I feel him shaking behind me, fire and ice crashing beneath his skin, his dragon roaring in fury at something it cannot fight.
“This is her choice,” my mother says quietly, her voice threaded through the magic like a command etched into reality.
The power surges harder.
Obsidian light bleeds beneath my skin, violet currents racing through my veins, dull gold runes flaring across my wrists before dissolving into flesh that no longer feels entirely human. My heartbeat stutters, slams faster, then slows with terrifying precision until each pulse lands heavy and eternal, no longer bound to mortal rhythm.
Agony splits me open.
And beneath it, something else rises.
Power.
It floods through my bloodstream like molten starlight, reshaping, strengthening, and burning away the fragile limits that once defined me. I gasp as my lungs expand with air that tastes older, richer, threaded with magic I never had the senses to feel before. Every breath carries whispers of ley lines, forest roots, ancient laws humming beneath the earth.
My vision sharpens.