The Serpentis Palace never truly sleeps.
Even in the dead of night, when its long corridors are silent and the crystal lights on the walls are dim to the point of extinction, there's something awake here. Not the guards or the security system.
Something more fundamental—like the palace itself, breathing, listening, and remembering everyone who has ever walked its stone floors.
Nav has known the rhythm of this palace's breathing since he could walk.
He walked quietly down the corridor to the east wing, his black robes silent. Vaelith—or rather, something that wasn't yet officially Vaelith because the ritual hadn't been performed—felt like a shadow on the edge of his consciousness. The sensation lingered since yesterday. Waiting patiently with the patience only something that has existed for thousands of years possesses.
Nav stopped in front of a dark wooden door carved with a picture of a coiled snake eating its own tail.
The Ouroboros symbol, it was the symbol of Clan Serpentis.
An endless cycle, Poison that becomes medicine. Death that becomes life.
He knocked twice.
"Enter."
The room always made Nav pause every time he entered it.
Not because of its sheer size, or because of the collection of herbs and poisons that filled every shelf from floor to ceiling. Nor because of the mixed aromas that filled the air—bitter, sweet, and a slight sting in the back of his throat that Nav had known since childhood.
But because of the person inside.
Lyra Serpentis sat at her always messy desk in a way that somehow managed to look orderly. Her long black hair, tied loosely behind her, a few strands falling onto her cheeks, she ignored them. In the brighter crystal light from the corridor outside, her emerald green eyes—the only core member of the clan who hadn't inherited golden eyes—seemed to glow as she stared at something in the glass bowl before her.
A small green snake coiled around her shoulder.
Seris, Lyra's contract beast, opened one eye lazily as Nav entered, then closed it again.
"Sit," Lyra said without taking her eyes off the glass bowl.
Nav pulled up a chair beside the desk and sat down. Unhurried, unperturbed, he watched his mother work quietly.
Lyra Serpentis was the greatest medic ever born into this clan. Even Corvus, with all his authority and power, never doubted his wife's medical judgment.
The outside world called Clan Serpentis murderers.
They never knew that the same hands that concocted the deadliest poisons in Aetheria could also cure ailments that even the best doctors had succumbed to.
"You're not sleeping," Lyra said.
"No need."
"Tomorrow's the contract ritual." Lyra put down the small instrument in her hand and finally looked at Nav. There was something in her expression that Nav had never seen on Corvus's: warmth. "Even the strongest predator needs rest before a great hunt."
"I'm not hunting."
"No?" Lyra smiled faintly. "Then what are you doing tomorrow?"
Nav stared at his mother for a moment. "Proving that the world is right to fear our name."
There was a moment of silence.
Then Lyra nodded slowly—not with an expression of overbearing pride, but with something deeper than that. Like someone who has heard something she has long awaited.
"Your father spoke to you this afternoon."
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"That the whole world is watching tomorrow. That I stand in the name of the clan, not just my own." Nav spoke Corvus's words evenly. "Things I already know."
Lyra studied him for a moment in that way that always made Nav feel like he was being read to the very core. A strange ability that only a mother, or perhaps only Lyra Serpentis possessed.
"There's something I want to show you," Lyra said.
She stood and walked to the back shelf of the room, the one with only two keys, one in Lyra's hand and the other in Corvus's. Nav followed her gaze.
Lyra pulled out a small ebony box. There were no carvings on it, and no clan symbols. Just plain, ebony wood that had aged gracefully.
She placed it on the table in front of Nav.
"Open it."
Nav reached for the box, it felt incredibly light. He unfastened the small clip on the side and slowly lifted the lid.
Inside, neatly arranged on a white cloth, was a small vial filled with a liquid that changed color—sometimes clear, sometimes silver, sometimes milky white depending on the angle of the light.
Nav stared at it without touching it.
"What's this?"
"Something I've been preparing for two years." Lyra sat on the edge of the table, her eyes unmoving from the vial. "I don't know exactly what monster will come for you tomorrow. No one does. But I do know one thing—whatever it is, its poison will be unlike any that has come before."
Nav looked at his mother. "Are you sure?"
"You are the First Young Master of Clan Serpentis, Nav. And your soul—" Lyra paused, choosing her words carefully, "—is unlike anyone else's. I am your mother, and I've known this since you first opened your eyes."
Seris, on Lyra's shoulder, lifted her head slightly, her tongue forking out briefly, then fell silent again.
"That vial," Lyra continued, "is a universal antidote I created from a mixture of one hundred and twenty-three different poisons. It will help you in the beginning, before your body fully adapts to your contracted beast's poison." She looked at Nav seriously. "This isn't a weakness. It's an investment of time. Even the strongest need a period of adaptation."
Nav closed the small box and set it beside him.
"You've been preparing this for two years," she repeated quietly. "That means you've known I was going to get something unusual for two years now."
Lyra didn't answer directly. She simply stared at Nav with an unreadable expression.
"Mother." Nav stared at her quietly. "What do you know about what's coming tomorrow?"
Silence filled the room. The bittersweet scent of the plants on the shelves around them hung in the air. Seris shifted slightly on Lyra's shoulder, curling tighter.
"I don't know for sure," Lyra said finally. "But something has been waiting in Venom Vale for a long time, Nav. Long before any of us were born." She stood and walked back to her desk, her back to Nav. "Tomorrow we'll find out whether that waiting is for you or not."
Nav studied his mother's back for a moment.
Then he took the small ebony box and stood.
"Thank you," he said—two words that didn't come often from his mouth, and Lyra knew that.
"Sleep, Nav."
"Maybe."
Lyra made a small sound that was almost a stifled laugh. "Just like your father. Unable to be ordered around, even for his own good."
Nav was already at the door when Lyra spoke again—more quietly this time, almost as if speaking to herself.
"Whatever comes tomorrow, remember that you are not just the heir to this clan's power." She paused. "You are also the heir to our way of loving each other."
Nav didn't turn around.
But his hand on the doorknob paused for a moment—just a second, before he opened the door and stepped out.
The palace corridors once again welcomed him with their reserved silence.
Nav walked back to his room with the same calm steps as before. In his hands, the small, ebony box felt heavier than its size.
Two years.
His mother had prepared this for him two years before the ritual.
Nav stared at the ceiling of his room after lying down, golden eyes open in the darkness. Outside the window, Venom Vale stretched out in a darkness that was never truly dark—there was always something moving there, among the ancient trees and the persistent fog.