Moonlight filtered through the trees like silver blades, slicing shadows across the forest floor. The air was rich with pine and damp earth, yet something sweeter clung to it---a sickly sweetness that pricked at Elara's senses. She felt it before she saw it: an itch behind her eyes, a ripple beneath her skin. The forest had always whispered to her. Tonight, it screamed.
Crouched beneath a towering oak, her breath even but hands trembling, Elara pressed her palm to the ground. The sigil on her wrist---ancient, ink-dark---throbbed like a second heartbeat. It had been silent for years, a dormant mark she'd tried to forget. But it had chosen now to wake.
The forest seemed to hold its breath. Even the wind stilled.
Crackling energy stirred the air, faint as static. Elara closed her eyes and reached inward. The sigil pulsed in reply---alive, aware. The mark of the Void was no longer sleeping.
Then, the soft rustle of leaves. She froze, fingers brushing the hilt of her dagger.
"Easy, Elara," came a voice---deep, steady, unmistakable.
She turned swiftly, eyes narrowing. Kael. The mercenary. The man who should have been gone by now. The one whose presence annoyed her more than it should---and comforted her more than she dared admit.
"What do you want?" she asked coolly, though tension twisted in her chest. The sigil's power simmered just beneath her skin.
Kael stepped into the clearing, moonlight catching the edge of his jaw. "I should ask you that," he said, gaze fixed on her wrist. "You're about to do something dangerous, aren't you?"
She didn't answer. The sigil called to her like a flame, and his warning sounded distant, irrelevant. But his presence---that grounding, frustrating certainty----made her hesitate.
"You think you can stop me?" she challenged, voice rising with the surge of magic. The sigil glowed faintly now, casting ghost-light along her arm.
"I'm not here to stop you," Kael said, stepping closer. "I'm here to make sure you know what you're unleashing."
There was something in his voice---quiet but unyielding---that made her breath catch.
The forest fell deathly silent. Thunder rumbled low in the distance, too far to be natural. Then it happened.
The sigil burst into light.
Elara cried out, staggered by the flood of power. Fire and frost danced through her veins, her limbs trembling under the weight of it. The sigil seared like molten iron, as if it meant to claim her from the inside out. She clenched her teeth and reached for control---some anchor, anything to hold onto.
The world twisted.
A vision crashed over her: Velkaria---her kingdom----reduced to broken towers and ash. She stood at the center, cloaked in flame, crowned in shadow. Her power was unshackled. Absolute.
The vision snapped away. Elara collapsed to her knees, gasping. The sigil's light faded, dim but steady.
Kael knelt beside her, hand firm on her shoulder. His touch sent a chill racing through her, and yet... it steadied her.
"Are you ready to claim what's yours?" he asked, voice low. "Or will you let it consume you?"
Elara met his gaze, the fire still flickering inside her. For the first time, she understood: the sigil wasn't a curse. It was a summons.
"I'm ready," she whispered.
And the world began to change.