Silence fell over the cliff, broken only by the distant song of birds and the creak of branches still trembling from the impact. Garlan stood motionless, breath ragged, his hand still clenched. He wasn’t sure what he had just done—only that it had needed to come out.

  A deep rumble rose below. Stones tumbled, roots twisted. A figure tore through the foliage and leapt back onto the cliff.

  Elyzira. Nearly unscathed, dust clinging to her, eyes black as storm clouds. She reset her jaw with a sharp, annoyed snap, the sinister crack echoing in the air.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, hitting me like that? Who raised you? Tharion?”

  Garlan didn’t flinch, his gaze locked on hers.

  “At least he raised me.”

  Elyzira’s eyes narrowed, breath catching, as if those words had cut deeper than the blow itself.

  “You think it’s that simple? That I had a choice? That I wanted to abandon you?”

  “You did it anyway.”

  A brutal silence wrapped around them. The air vibrated—thick with mana, reproach, pain. Neither moved. Two flames of the same bloodline, ready either to explode or to gutter out.

  For the first time, Elyzira turned her eyes away.

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  “I wasn’t made to love, Garlan. Not to protect. I was made to survive. And you’re alive, aren’t you?”

  He stepped back, fire-armor still blazing around him.

  “I don’t need you to be perfect. Just to be here.”

  Elyzira exhaled. An ancient sigh. Tired.

  “Maybe that’s the hardest thing of all.”

  Her eyes dropped, her voice rougher as she went on:

  “I couldn’t stay with you. Your father was killed… and what he became afterward, what he was chasing—it was you. He wanted you, Garlan. He hunted you. So I drew him to me. By leaving you, I kept you safe.”

  “Safe? Maybe for you. But me? A dragon? You think I needed to be hidden? To live as a burden?”

  “He was stronger than I am,” she murmured. “I couldn’t have defended you against him. No one could.”

  The rage inside Garlan rose higher than he’d thought possible. It clawed out of his gut, his breath, his very bones. He roared—a long, raw, animal cry, steeped in hatred, pain, the sting of abandonment.

  It tore his insides apart. This wasn’t battle-rage. It was a birth cry. A wrenching. The scream of a son against his own history. There was no right or wrong left. Only a burning void inside him—and the instinct to fill it.

  A torrent of fire and wind burst from his throat, slicing the air with a shrill whistle, gouging the cliffside, scattering burning shards across the stone.

  And far away, in a sanctuary veiled in greenery, Marenna dropped to her knees, hands over her stomach, tears in her eyes.

  “No… Garlan… what’s happening to you?”

  But the life within her soothed her almost at once. Two pulses, soft and calm, like inner caresses. As if the children whispered, instinctively:

  Don’t worry. He’s all right. It’s only a passing sorrow.

  On the cliff, Elyzira still watched him. Her face remained hard, but her voice, when she finally spoke again, was quieter.

  “You’ve already surpassed me, Garlan. And maybe… maybe you’re even at his level already.”