Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Fire Beneath Ice

Kaela's breath caught in her throat.

She had not meant to stir. Her body felt like stone bruised, bloodied, heavy with magic burn. But her ears, ever sharp, had caught the whisper.

Seralyn's voice.

"Why do I care if you live?"

Kaela didn't open her eyes immediately. She let the words linger, memorized them, let them soak through the haze of pain and the ragged silence of the ruined archive.

Her heart beat faster.

Not from fear.

From something far more dangerous.

Hope.

Her lashes finally fluttered open. Moonlight slanted through a cracked arch above, dust hanging like silver threads in the air. Seralyn knelt beside her, stiff, lips still parted from the confession she hadn't meant to be heard.

Kaela rasped, "Didn't think… you cared."

Seralyn stiffened. "I didn't say anything."

Kaela's lips curled faintly. "You whispered it like a prayer."

Seralyn leaned away, suddenly cold. "You should rest."

Kaela coughed, the motion slicing pain through her ribs. "You're deflecting."

"I'm protecting you. Again."

"Protecting yourself, maybe."

The tension was brittle. Seralyn stood abruptly, backing away.

Kaela pushed herself up against the wall with a grimace. "You keep acting like I'm the enemy, but I nearly died saving you."

Seralyn's jaw tightened. "I didn't ask you to."

"No," Kaela spat, "but you didn't stop me either."

Silence stretched.

The runes along the walls flickered, matching the pulse of the sigils on their skin.

Kaela's voice lowered. "Say it. You felt it too. In the dream. You kissed me. You wanted to."

Seralyn's eyes flared with something like panic. "It wasn't real."

"But we both saw it. Same dream. Same vision."

"Echo magic," Seralyn snapped. "The city twists thoughts. Uses desire to confuse "

"To reveal," Kaela interrupted, rising on shaky legs. "It reveals what we won't admit. So stop lying. To me. To yourself."

Seralyn's breath hitched.

Kaela stepped closer. "Then prove it."

Seralyn blinked. "Prove what?"

Kaela's voice was low. "Prove you don't feel anything."

Seralyn froze. Her fists clenched. "You don't understand "

"I understand perfectly. I'm the one who always feels. You're the one who always runs."

Seralyn's face twisted in anger. "You think you know me?"

Kaela didn't flinch. "I know enough to see you're afraid."

With a strangled growl, Seralyn turned and stormed out of the ruins.

Kaela didn't follow.

---

The air outside was colder than Seralyn expected.

She walked fast, then slower, then stopped.

A crumbling stairwell led her to the edge of Velcrath's upper terraces, where once-proud towers overlooked the Blasted Wastes. The desert stretched out like a scar under the moonlight, sand glinting like shattered glass.

Her thoughts whirled.

She hated Kaela. She had to.

Didn't she?

But the way Kaela had looked at her like she wasn't a soldier or a name or a symbol, but a person

Seralyn rubbed her hands down her face.

"Damn her."

She remembered the softness in the dream. Kaela's fingers tangled in her hair, her lips tasting like dusk and ash. The way her own heart had calmed under that phantom touch.

That wasn't magic.

That had been hers.

A part of her she never let see daylight.

Because if she did

If she let herself want Kaela

What would she become?

A traitor?

A fool?

Or just finally… herself?

And then she saw it.

A flash.

A vision

Kaela, lying in the ruins, bleeding from the chest, her eyes lifeless, her sigil gone dark.

Seralyn stumbled backward, choking.

The vision clung to her like smoke.

"No. No, no, no "

She turned and bolted back into the archive.

"Kaela?!"

The hall was empty.

Scrolls still floated.

The runes still pulsed.

But Kaela

Was gone.

Seralyn's heart pounded in her ears. "Kaela!"

No answer.

Her breath caught in her throat.

The dust on the floor had been disturbed drag marks, faint and erratic.

Magic residue clung to the air like mist.

Another presence had been here.

Seralyn ran her hand over the stone, tracing the direction.

North.

She sprinted.

Through empty corridors and memory-haunted chambers.

Past skeletons frozen mid-scream.

Through hallways laced with ghost-light and echo-song.

And all she could think was

Why did I leave her?

She reached the lower spire, lungs burning. A shattered doorway opened into a dome choked in ivy and shadow. Her boots skidded across broken mosaic as she followed the pull of the sigil.

It throbbed now.

Calling her.

To Kaela.

A trail of arcane scorch marks ran along the floor Kaela had fought. Fought hard.

But she'd been weakened. Alone.

Seralyn felt a rising panic she hadn't tasted since her first battle.

She reached a fallen statue of a winged mage and froze.

Blood.

Not much. A smear.

But fresh.

She pressed her palm to the sigil on her arm. "Guide me."

The mark pulsed, and a thin line of silver light stretched out from her wrist, pointing like a compass.

Seralyn ran.

She descended narrow stairs swallowed in roots. Flames bloomed at her fingertips as she summoned light.

Each step echoed.

Each breath carried Kaela's name.

When she finally broke into another open chamber, moonlight sliced across Kaela's cloak torn, trailing from a pile of rubble.

She wasn't in sight.

But someone else was.

A figure cloaked in shimmering dark.

Not quite visible. Not quite real.

A thief of shadows.

Seralyn drew her saber. "Where is she?"

The figure turned.

"You came too late, elf."

"Where is she?"

The shadow-smile widened.

"You should have stayed by her side."

A surge of light burst from Seralyn's sigil.

The shadow staggered back, shrieking.

Seralyn stepped forward, her blade glowing. "I will burn every inch of this city to get her back."

The shadow hissed. "You'll burn yourself, too."

And vanished.