Chapter 130. The Awakening

Xerina’s POV

The flames licked at my skin, but they didn’t burn. They fed me. They consumed me, their heat merging with the fire raging inside my veins. I could feel the world around me—every crack in the stone beneath my feet, every breath of wind stirring the flames higher.

This was the ritual. This was what Zane wanted.

I stood at the center, the fire swirling in a wild dance of power. Zane had dragged me here, forcing me into this moment of reckoning. Forcing me to remember.

And now, I did.

The memories crashed over me, fierce and unrelenting. A thousand years of pain, of betrayal, of blood. My mind burned with the truth I had once forgotten. Kaelen. My sacred bounds. Umbraxis. All of them had turned against me, every one of them betraying me when I had been at my strongest.

I had been a goddess. I am a goddess. And they had feared me for it.

The faces blurred in my vision, shifting in and out of focus. I saw Kaelen’s smile