Vision:
She saw herself from above, not as a woman but as a point of light.
Around her: Ravon, broken yet burning.
Within her: a child whose soul was wrapped in stardust and ancient language.
And beyond them, circling like wolves at the edges of destiny:
The Cradleless
The Silent King
A serpent of prophecy with no mouth, only eyes
A girl with no face, already holding a blade to the child's throat
Then darkness, then silence.
And a voice:
> "Only one path ends in light.
And it is not the path you've taken."
---
Seraphina fell back, gasping. Ravon caught her just in time.
"What did you see?" he asked.
She looked at the shard, now dim in her hand.
"…We don't have time," she said. "They'll strike before the child takes breath."
---
The sky above trembled again.
Somewhere distant, horns began to sound — not loud, but final.
The Shardbearer turned and began to fade into ash.
> "You have seven days.
That is all the veil will allow."
Ravon looked to Seraphina.
"Then we find a place they cannot reach."
Seraphina held her hand to her womb and whispered,
> "Or we make one."
They traveled by silence.
No path. No maps. Only instinct — and the pull of something ancient in Seraphina's bones. Each step they took away from the broken veil was a step toward something older than the cradle, older than the prophecy — something that knew the child's name before it was even whispered.
Ravon, still recovering, leaned heavily on her shoulder, but his eyes never left the shadows around them.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"I don't know," Seraphina said. "But… I think she does."
Her hand drifted over her belly, and the child moved again — not with a kick, but a nudge of direction. As if leading her.
They reach the edge of the world
Through forests that wept light, across rivers that sang in tongues no longer spoken, they arrived at a mountain with no name — one that didn't exist on any realm's map. But on her chest:
> This was the last sanctuary.
The place where the Ashborne were once formed, not just born.
A place that remembered the first fire.
They entered through a crack in the earth, where time moved differently.
Inside, the air hummed..
Walls of living stone glowed with ember veins. Roots of light twisted through the ground, humming with a heartbeat not their own.
Ravon dropped to his knees. "What is this place?"
Seraphina knelt beside him. "A cradle… for the flame no prophecy could control."
---
Visions in the Stone
As Seraphina walked deeper into the hollowed mountain, the walls began to shimmer — revealing flickers of past Ashborne:
A girl crowned in flame, holding a blade of bone and mercy
A man weeping in chains of gold, whispering to a star inside his chest
A woman giving birth beneath a bleeding moon, while veiled figures stood around her in awe
And then — her.
Seraphina saw herself.
Holding the child, but alone.
No Ravon.
Only ash.
---
"You must choose how this ends"
A voice echoed through the stone, soft and clear.
Not prophecy.
Not command.
Invitation.
> "You must choose what is born:
A child of fire… or a child of flame."
Seraphina's chest tightened.
"What's the difference?" she asked.
No answer.
Only the mountain breathing.
---
Ravon bleeds again
Behind her, Ravon coughed — and blood touched the ash beneath him. The Abyss within him was spreading. Fast.
"I don't think I have seven days," he whispered