Page 21 of Elemental Becoming

I trail my fingers lower, past the Fire Clan’s borders down, down, down.

To the Forsaken Lands.

A barren stretch of gray thread. Lifeless. Empty. Just as Valen showed me in his lessons.

But the map can’t capture the truth of it—the way the landbreathes. Shifts. Watches.

No kingdom claims it. No army dares to cross it. It is a graveyard of the Shadow Clan.

I press my palm fully against the tapestry, feeling the thickness of the fabric beneath my skin.

Feeling the absence of what should be here.

The space where something should still remain.

Andhecomes to mind.

Thane.

A flicker of warmth follows, unfurling low in my chest. Subtle. Faint.

The bond stirs.

My hand rests over the place the world forgot—and I think of him. Of his bloodline. Of everything buried.

The bond tightens, sharp and sudden, like it knows exactly where my thoughts have gone.

Valen’s voice echoes in my mind:

“Legends say the land is cursed. That it devours those who enter, twisting their minds, making them disappear.”

I see him again, standing at the old table in the war room, pointing to this very spot, expression grim.

“The air is thick with old magics,” he’d said. “Remnants of what was lost bleeding through fractures in reality. Some say the land shifts, that paths once taken do not lead to the same place twice.”

But what unsettles me most isn’t the land.

It’s what waits within it.

Selene.

Valen said the Shadeheart commands her forces from deep within the ruins, hidden in a fortress of obsidian and shadow. Some believe she built it upon the wreckage of an ancient citadel, a place of power before the fall. Others whisper that it has always been there, older than the clans, older than the war itself.

Waiting.

The Shadow Forces gather there, growing stronger.

Because the Shadeheart isn’t hiding.

She’s preparing.

And the only thing keeping her from spilling into Lumoria—into the realm we call home—are the wards. Ancient magics, bound to dragonkind, protecting our borders.

For now.

“The wards hold,” Valen had said, “as long as the dragons do.”

But for the first time in three decades, no new dragons have hatched, and no one knows why. If the wards fail—if the last remnants of that magics falter—then nothing will keep the Shadeheart out.