Chapter 175 The Eternal Emperor Part 1
Daisy hovered barefoot above the steaming pit. Her shadow flickered across the broken bones of what used to be home. The chain inside her had redrawn her outline in raw crimson. She remembered well the night it fused into her flesh, anchoring itself to her heart the moment she tried to shield her mother from Varian's curse. Every exposed inch of skin pulsed with her heartbeat; veins black as oil and twice as slick. Rain burned off her shoulders in hissing beads. Some drops vaporized before even touching her. The air wavered around her body, a heat mirage that made her blur even to herself. Where the house had once stood, only a hole remained—a place that smoldered, rimmed in red, spitting clots of ancient magic. At the bottom, the daisy circle glowed, half-petrified in fused bedrock. The petals were perfect.
She was not alone. The ley lines screamed it.
Daisy sensed Varian moving through the city before seeing him. It was like a spider crossing a web—each step tugged the ley, sending vibrations through Brightwater’s understructure. The ley lines, invisible currents of ancient magic beneath streets and foundations, always pulsed at the edge of Daisy’s senses. She saw them as the city’s lifeblood, a network only some could feel, and fewer could touch. She tasted copper in her throat as he closed in. Each pace flooded her mind with the sound of dead languages. Her body wanted to shake apart. She held herself together by sheer will, muscles locked against the trembling.
The locket at her neck—her mother’s, still unbroken—scalded her breastbone. Daisy clamped a fist over it; the pain snapped the world into focus. She forced herself to count the seconds until Varian reached the crater’s rim. His approach was the slow-motion collapse of every ward and warning left in the city.
He stepped into view with no fanfare or violence. He was just a tall man in silver robes, the hem stiff with old blood. His hair was pulled back from a face more wound than flesh. The veins mapped his features into a mask. Only islands of pink skin survived between the lines, and even these shifted, pulled tight by the black. His eyes were bottomless, two globes of polished jet with pinpoints of silver at their centers. He looked at Daisy like a scientist surveying a patient who had finally grown the right tumor. The flicker of calculation hinted at some private theory. In Daisy’s altered form, perhaps Varian saw a solution—a catalyst for an evolution only he understood. The hunger in his stare was not for destruction, but for completion, as if her existence unlocked a secret he had chased for lifetimes.
“At last,” said Varian. The words vibrated, every syllable a harmony. “The final piece approaches completion.”
Daisy let her bare feet drop onto the ground, then crouched and slid her boots on, making each movement deliberate. She rose to stand level with Varian. “Completion sounds a lot like extinction from where I’m standing.”
He smiled, and the smile cracked the corners of his mouth, leaking a thread of black. “You misunderstand. I do not seek your end. I seek your perfection.”
She spat, but the spit boiled off her tongue and left a fleck of smoke. “You’re late for your own funeral.”
Varian’s gaze tracked her every twitch. “You have become more than even I anticipated. The pattern in your veins—ah, a masterpiece, Daisy Smithson. No one else survived the change with so much… agency.” He flicked his gaze up and down her arms. “Does it hurt?”
Daisy flexed, letting the black on her forearms ripple and bloom into a daisy at each wrist. “Not as much as you’re going to.”
He laughed, and this time it was genuinely inhuman—a sound more like a cough from a hundred throats. “I admire your optimism.”
The ground shook.
Xeris landed at Daisy’s back, talons churning up the mud and shrapnel of the dead house. For a heartbeat, Daisy felt the old surge between them—the invisible thread that had tied their fates together since childhood. She had found him dying in the wild hills, named him, and he chose not to eat her. Much had broken since then, but their bond had never snapped. He was more wound than dragon now—wings tattered, scales scorched and dull, tail splintered and trailing smoke. Even with half his body ruined, Daisy still sensed the pulse of trust twined through her racing heart, a promise nothing could sever. The fire in his mouth was alive. When he opened it, the air warped, sucking heat from Daisy’s side and turning mist to frost.
Xeris angled his head so that a single golden eye locked on Varian. “You will not touch her,” he said, voice so low it shifted the stones at Daisy’s feet. Smoke curled from his nostrils, painting black ribbons through the rain.
Varian didn’t flinch. He studied Xeris like an antique he’d never seen in the flesh. “So that is the original bond. Fascinating. I wondered if the ancient lines could endure contamination.” He leaned forward, robes trailing the wet stones. “Did you know, Daisy, your dragon’s line was nearly extinct before the first chain? The world is full of such ironies.”
Daisy didn’t look away from the Emperor. “Is that why you never made one of your own? Afraid it’d eat you?”
He bared his teeth, and for a second, any humanity in his face vanished. “My soul is not so easily chewed, little root.” He turned, keeping Daisy and Xeris both in sight. “I admit, the old world’s dragons had their uses. Guardians. Wardens. There was perhaps some mercy in their creation. Did you know the Smithson line was never meant to survive the revolution? You, Daisy, are an error.”
Daisy felt the chain in her neck flare. “If I’m an error, you’re the bug that crawls out after.”
He almost laughed again, but stopped himself. “You always did speak out of turn.”
She stepped forward, and Xeris mirrored her, both moving a single pace in perfect sync. Daisy felt the ground ripple under her feet as they advanced. The ley lines trembled, anticipating violence.
The Emperor extended his arms, palms up, every finger tipped in black. "You have a choice. This time, it is real. Join me, and I will spare the city. Defy me, and I will show you what perfection truly looks like." His words coiled through the smoke and heat, heavy with something absolute. Daisy felt the ley lines convulse under her feet, recoiling from what might come. If she refused, the promise was not just her own end but the city’s, and everyone still holding out hope among the ruins. The threat hung there, burning against her skin, binding her to an answer she hadn’t spoken yet.
Daisy stayed silent. She reached behind her, extending her arm until her hand met Xeris’s flank. She pressed her thumb into his broken glass scales, drawing a cut, and welcomed the centering pain.
Varian’s eyes flickered to the dragon, then back to Daisy. “You need not answer now. I am patient. The ley will not hold you much longer, not as the chain draws tight.” He stepped back, robes sweeping the air. “Think well, Daisy. The end you pick is the only one the world will remember.”
He vanished, not in a shimmer, but in a fracture—one instant there, the next a crack in space where his body had been. The rain dropped back to normal, the crater settling into silence.
Daisy exhaled, her breath shaky, then leaned her weight against Xeris’s battered side. The dragon shuddered beneath her, vibrating with a mix of pain and pride.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You’re dying.”
He rumbled, the sound somehow fond. “So are you.”
Daisy closed her eyes, feeling the heat ebb from her skin. “What now?”
Xeris’s head dipped, massive and heavy. “We wait. Or we burn him out.”
She wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t find it in her. “Never thought I’d have to pick.”
She looked up at the sky, now clear at the crater’s center, then watched the smoke spiral away from where she stood. In the ruins, she could see the old daisy locket glowing.
Daisy resolved to reject Varian’s ultimatum, choosing instead to stand against him alongside Xeris, no matter the cost.
She would not be the last link.
Not alone.