Chapter Text
Fool. Fool. Fool.
The word claws its way through Violet Sorrengail’s thoughts like a curse she can’t exorcise, each repetition a lash against her pride, her intellect—her very identity. She curls in on herself at the base of a massive, gnarled tree, its roots cradling her like a coffin. Her arms wrap around her shivering frame in a useless attempt to fend off the cold that’s already sunk bone-deep. Rain sheets from the storm-wracked sky, relentless and bitter, seeping through every thread of her clothing until it feels like her skin is soaked in liquid frost.
Her muscles twitch involuntarily from the cold—or is it the fever? It’s hard to tell anymore. Her breath comes in uneven gasps, and she can’t stop the way her jaw trembles. How long can a body survive like this? How long until hers gives out completely, collapses from the weight of her mistakes?
Her hand presses against her side, fingers curling around the spot where the wound once gaped open. The skin there has sealed, the torn flesh regenerated. She’d healed the injury well enough—or so she thought. But beneath the surface, pain pulses, steady and quiet like the toll of a funeral bell. It’s not the wound that worries her anymore. It’s what came with it.
Poison.
Her chest tightens as shame slices through her, sharper than any blade. She—who had mastered toxins, who had lectured cadets on vigilance, on scanning every injury for signs of venom—she had missed it. Had been so confident, so sure of her own skill, that she hadn’t even checked. The irony is bitter enough to choke on.
She had reprimanded younger cadets for far smaller oversights. She’d seen what negligence could do—how it ended lives in seconds, how it left bodies bloodied and broken. And now she was the one who’d been careless. Now she was the one paying for it.
Panic scrapes at her chest as she reaches for Tairn through their bond—but it slips away, as intangible as smoke. Gone. Muted. The thread between Dragon and Rider, severed or blocked. Whatever toxin had coated that blade—it wasn’t ordinary venom. It was crafted to disable more than flesh. Designed with intention. Patience. Precision. Finessed to silence power. To mute magic. It doesn’t kill quickly. No, it waits. It lingers, like a ghost in the bloodstream, invisible and quiet. It turns inward, devouring from the inside out—methodical and merciless.
It’s brilliant, really.
If she weren’t the one dying, she might have admired the craftsmanship. The slow horror of it.
A hollow laugh bubbles up in her throat, but it doesn’t make it out. Her eyes burn, though she doesn’t know if it’s from the cold or the shame or the sheer futility of it all. Tears trace her cheeks, indistinguishable from the rain; where one ends and the other begins she cannot tell.
This is it.
Not in battle. Not with a roar or a charge or some noble sacrifice. Not even with her blades drawn.
No, she’s going to die here—hidden away beneath a nameless tree in a forgotten patch of forest, soaked to the bone, teeth chattering, skin gray with cold. Alone. Abandoned by her own magic. Her own arrogance. A casualty of her own hubris.
Not a warrior’s end.
Just a quiet, pitiful one.
And the worst part is—she knows she deserves it.
From the moment she was named a Rider—when the sigil marked her flesh and her dragon claimed her soul—Violet Sorrengail had known she would walk hand-in-hand with death. It had been a truth etched into her bones, a silent agreement between her heart and the sky: You will soar, and you will suffer. You will burn, and you will bleed.
But not yet. She wasn’t ready. Not like this.
Not before she’d lived the rest of the story she’d imagined for herself, the one she’d clung to in stolen moments of peace. Not before one more breathless laugh shared between friends who felt like family. Not before the comforting crush of her siblings’ arms around her shoulders, grounding her in a world that had taken so much. Not before she could look someone in the eyes—anyone—and say she wasn’t afraid. That she still believed there was good worth fighting for.
She wanted one more chance. One more day. One more heartbeat.
But the world didn’t care what she wanted. And death doesn’t barter.
The forest around her is eerily silent now, the storm fading into a low, ominous hum. She is far from the path, isolated in a stretch of wilderness where no one has reason to search. Her limbs are stiffening, her movements sluggish, her body sinking deeper into the earth as if it already senses its own end. If someone did come looking, would it be too late? Would there be anything left to find but scraps of cloth and bone, scattered beneath a blanket of decaying leaves?
The thought turns her stomach.
Would her body be found torn open by the claws of a starving beast, reduced to nothing more than a whisper in the trees? Or would she simply vanish—another Rider swallowed by the wilds, her name etched on a stone and spoken in past tense?
She closes her eyes as faces began to swim before her vision—not hallucinations, but memories, vivid and unrelenting. People she had loved. People she had lost. Names that had once filled her life with meaning now taste like ashes on her tongue.
If she had the strength, she might have cried out, might have cursed the skies for the injustice of it all. But her voice has left her. Her fury has burned out. All she has left is the ache. The need for more time.
She’s never been one for prayer. Not really. The gods have always felt like distant myths, too far removed from the blood and breath of real life. But now, on the edge of something final, she clings to them. Any of them. All of them.
She prays.
She prays for mercy. For forgiveness—for every life she’s taken, every mistake carved into her past, every mother who has screamed her child’s name in the aftermath of a battle Violet had survived.
She prays for the friends she will leave behind—that they will find happiness, peace, even joy in the wreckage. She prays for their strength. And for her own.
Not just to live… but to face whatever comes next.
And then, like the flicker of a candle in the dark, an old memory stirs—unbidden, but welcome.
A man.
A man whose smile she hasn’t seen in years, whose rarely heard laughter still haunts her in quiet moments. She isn’t surprised to see him. He’s never truly left her. His body may have long since returned to the dust, but his memory is a permanent tenant in that fragile corner of her soul still clinging to childhood dreams—of love, of belonging, of hope. She’d never really had him. Not fully. Not the way she wanted. But he had owned a piece of her from the very beginning. A piece no one else had or has touched.
He is the what-if that lingers. The road not taken. The secret she holds close on sleepless nights.
He is her deepest sorrow—and her gentlest joy.
She wants to reach for him. But her fingers won’t move. Her magic is a whisper now, flickering like the last breath of a dying flame. The numbness creeps steadily upward, claiming inch after inch of her limbs as the poison finishes what it has begun.
If only...
The world blurs around the edges. Darkness gathers at the corners of her vision, and a low, thunderous roar fills her ears—it might have been the storm. Or it might have been her own heart giving out.
Her eyelids sag, impossibly heavy. She can’t hold them open anymore. Doesn’t have the strength.
Her arms, once wrapped tightly around her middle, slacken and fall to her sides.
And Violet Sorrengail begins to let go.