Page 117 of The First Scar
Fifteen. Sixteen.
He didn't flinch. Didn't make a sound. But the dragon tattooed across his chest was writhing now, scales lifting and convulsing. He was absorbing it. Every wobble in my control, every slip—he was taking the damage I should be feeling.
Stop. Let it go.
"Hold it." His voice came rough, strained in a way I'd never heard from him.
Nineteen. Twenty.
I pitched forward. The Shadow surged—a tidal wave trying to drown the Light—and Dreadscale hissed, his head snapping back, tendons standing out in his neck like ropes.
I'm killing him.
"Surrender," he wheezed.
The word didn't make sense. Surrender what? The fight? The fusion? My gods-damned pride?
“Stop fighting it."
And then—like a door opening in a room I'd been locked out of—I understood.
It wasn't the Shadow I was fighting. It was the part of me that would rather shatter than let someone else bleed for my failure. Every time I hit nineteen, I chose the hit. Chose to be the one who broke. Because breaking was easier than trusting myself not to destroy the person standing next to me.
Dreadscale's blood was on his lip and his knees were locked and he hadn't moved.
He's not leaving. So stop making him carry what you won't hold.
Twenty. Twenty-one.
The marks didn't wait to be called. They rose together—not Light first, not Shadow first. Both at once, tangled at the root, like they'd always been one thing and I'd been the only one insisting they weren't.
Twenty-five.
Dreadscale's breathing eased. The blood stopped.
Twenty-six. Twenty-seven.
It didn't feel like battle anymore, didn't feel like forcing two halves together until they screamed. It felt like breathing, like my heart finding a rhythm it had been searching for.
Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.
I held it one second longer. Just to be sure. Just to know I could.
Then I let it unravel and the tether snapped.
I slumped against the wall, gasping, every muscle in my body suddenly made of water. Dreadscale stayed kneeling, head bowed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
When he looked up, his eyes had softened, just a fraction.
"Thirty," he said.
I couldn't stop looking at the blood on his hand. At the proof of what I'd almost done. My throat closed around words I didn't have.
"You're a lunatic."
"And you—" He rose slowly. "—are ready."
Ready. The word should have felt like victory. Instead, it felt like the air before a storm breaks.
