Chapter 27. The Hollow Queen

Veyra stood barefoot on a peak of obsidian and frost, her shadow stretching long beneath a sky that no longer obeyed day or night. The mountain had given her no throne, but she required none. Power was not something she wore or claimed—it moved through her, settled into her bones, answered her breath.

The wind bent around her as if listening.

Behind her, the flame-beasts gathered in a wide, solemn arc. Smoke curled from their spines like ancestral breath, thick with the scent of old fire and older blood. Some bore sigils burned deep into their hides, scorched marks of allegiance and loss. Others carried nothing but scars, layered and jagged, proof of battles that predated memory itself. None of them moved. They waited.

Veyra’s hair was braided tight, threaded with bone rings that clinked softly when the wind shifted. H