143.Dragonblood

143.Dragonblood
ALLISON.
I hated her. I bit my lip, swallowing back the pain, but it was nothing compared to what came next. Celestine lifted her arms and began to chant. The words weren’t in any language I recognized, but they slithered into the air like a dark prayer, thick with power.
The drums pounded louder, faster, matching the racing of my heart. I sucked in a sharp breath, but something was wrong.
My chest tightened. My skin burned. A thrum of energy surged within me, coiling like a serpent in my gut. It was foreign and terrifying, and I knew, I knew it wasn’t coming from outside of me.
It was inside me.
Something inside me was waking up. I opened my mouth to speak, to shout, to stop this, but nothing came out. My voice was gone. Like my throat had been locked up. I could not utter even a single sound.
My eyes widened in horror as my gaze met Sullivan’s. He looked just as terrified as I felt. I began to panic. I didn’t know what was happening to me, what the ritual has done to make me feel this strange sense of fullness within me.
I frantically tried to tug the chains off my wrist but they only rattled as I struggled against them. A hiss escaped my lips when the silver burned deeper into my wrists, forcing me still. Having these silver shackles felt like wearing a bracelet made of scorching livewire!
The thrumming inside me intensified. It crawled up my spine, spread through my limbs, filled my chest like it was about to burst.
The platform beneath me shook. A low, resonant hum vibrated through the air as the symbols on the stone floor lit up, golden and alive, twisting and writhing like they were crawling toward me.
Celestine lifted her head to the sky, her voice slowing to a whisper.
Then, she spoke clearly.
“Let the power of the great red flame come to life.”
She turned her gaze to me, her smile radiant with victory.
“Awaken, Dragonblood.”
The symbols surged forward.
They wrapped around my ankles, climbing my legs, slithering across my skin like glowing tattoos.
I choked out a silent scream, horror clawing at my throat as the markings spread everywhere—up my arms, across my chest, into my very bones.
Celestine’s triumphant smile was the last thing I saw before the world exploded in light.
A blinding light swallowed me whole. It consumed everything—my thoughts, my senses, my very existence. My head pounded, my body weightless as if I had been untethered from reality itself. A sharp breath caught in my throat. Where was I? What was happening?
Then, through the piercing brightness, a figure emerged.
My mother.
My mother stood before me, her presence otherworldly in the endless void. Her features were untouched by time, exactly as I barely remembered them. Her face was expressionless, but her eyes, those hauntingly familiar eyes that resembled mine stared at me as if she was trying to tell me something.
Mom…
Her lips moved. She was speaking but I couldn’t hear her. No voice was coming out of her mouth. I took a step forward, reaching out. My fingers shook as they stretched toward her, desperate to close the impossible distance between us. I missed her so much. I wanted to touch her again… to hug her again! I tried to call her name, but my voice didn’t exist here.
Still, she kept speaking, her lips forming words that refused to reach my ears. I felt frustrated. I needed to hear her. I needed to know what she was trying to tell me.
Mom…!
Just as my fingers nearly brushed against hers, the world shattered. A blinding explosion of light tore through everything, consuming my mother, the void, and me.
A violent gasp ripped from my throat as I was yanked back into reality. The chamber around me came into focus in sharp, overwhelming detail—the damp stone walls, the flickering torchlight, the biting cold pressing against my sweat-drenched skin. My lungs heaved, struggling for air, but each inhale felt like fire and ice tearing through me at once.
I looked at the golden lines stretched across the stone floor, writhing like living veins of light, twisting and curling as they slithered toward me.
What the…
I tried to move, away from whatever shit that thing was, but there was nowhere to go. The strange symbols crawled towards me, as if they were cashing me. I let out a sound, somehow in the middle of a gasp and a scream, when the strange glowing symbols from the floor latched into my skin, the golden ink reached my skin, searing my skin in the process.
“AHH!” I cried out.
The glowing symbols wrapped around my thighs and then, looping over my arms like glowing tattoos. They stretched across my skin, covering my entire body as if they were alive. They pulsed, embedding themselves into my flesh, burning their way into me like they were branding my very soul.
What the hell was happening? My hands trembled as I look at the golden ink on my skin.
A chuckle cut through my disorientation. I forced my head up, my vision swimming as my gaze landed on the woman watching me with wicked satisfaction.
Celestine.
“The Dragon has awakened,” she murmured, her voice dripping with triumph.
A violent shudder wracked my body. Something inside me twisted, coiling and uncoiling like a living force beneath my skin. It was suffocating, overwhelming, yet at the same time, a power unlike anything I had ever known surged through my veins. My muscles trembled with weakness, but beneath that exhaustion, something pulsed. It was a very very strange feeling. I felt an intense surge of power within me and yet I felt weak. It terrified me.
Celestine turned to Sullivan who was standing beside her like a sentinel. She handed him a sword, the polished steel catching the dim torchlight.
“Free her,” she ordered.
Sullivan moved instantly. His body obeyed like a robot activated by his master’s voice. His face was devoid of emotion as he swung the sword, arcing downward in a single, precise movement. With a sharp clang, the shackles snapped.