Serala broke through the earth with wings blazing.
The soil parted before her descent, stone and root and packed dirt giving way to power that had been refined across a night of unexpected cultivation. Her white-gold wings spread wide behind her, radiance cutting through darkness as she plunged toward the source of the scream that had torn through the Cradle of First Flames.
That scream.
She had never heard anything like it.
It hadn't sat well with her that Damian wanted to face an entire army alone. When he had told her to stay back, to protect the tribe, to trust that he could handle whatever came, she had wanted to argue. She had wanted to remind him that she was Vessel Completion, that her Physique granted power beyond her Circle, that she had traveled with him specifically to fight alongside him.
But he had said so, and she had listened.
