Serelith: The Flame and The Wound

The snow fell sideways, carried by a wind that scraped the frost off old stone lions and wrapped itself around broken lamp posts like a lost scarf. She moved through it without sound. Heavy boots crunching over packed snow and old ice. Her cloak—thick, fur-lined, and stitched by hand—dragged at her shoulders as if mourning something. The staff she carried was longer than her arm span, ironwood dark and etched faintly with marks too old to shine. It struck the ground with each step, not for support, but rhythm.

Purpose.

Beneath the hood, her face was pale and lean—the kind of angular that once might have been called beautiful, before beauty froze with everything else. Her long golden hair was tied in a thick braid, tucked deep beneath her cloak. But the ears, barely hidden beneath the fur trim, were unmistakable: narrow, curved slightly upward, and too pointed for comfort.

She had once been told to hide them.

A warm kitchen. Her mother’s voice.

“You don’t have to, love. Let them be. I think they’re perfect.”

She wore thick headbands to press her ears down, brushing her hair forward. Doctors offered solutions, but her mother refused.

“You are what comes next,” she said. “Don’t let them shrink you down.”

She remembered being over twenty and still stopped at mall entrances, asked if she was lost. Grown men offering help in that strange tone reserved for children.

“Where are your parents, sweetheart?”

“Do you need to call someone?”

She had to carry proof of age. State ID. Driving license. None of it mattered unless she stared them down with quiet, calm defiance.

To the north, the avenue opened ahead like a tongue of ice leading toward a heart that hadn’t beat in years. The side streets were barricaded—burned-out cars, collapsed brick, and piled debris funneling everything forward.

Her staff left long, deliberate lines behind her, like a plow across a dead field.

She passed beneath the half-collapsed bridge—the one where he showed her fire the first time—and slowed for a moment.

None of it had made sense before him.

The years before that had been shapeless—just a string of odd moments she carried like stones in her coat.

It wasn’t until the university that her world cracked open.

He had seemed quiet at first. Thin, bony, with disheveled hair that looked like it had never been introduced to a comb. But his eyes—they burned. Like coals that would never go out.

He was not polite. That was the first thing.

“You’re an elf,” he said, the moment they met. No hello. Just fact.

She had stared at him. Blinked. Thought about walking away from the weird guy in the second-hand coat and fingerless gloves.

“Don’t tell me I have to tell you,” he added, exasperated. “Have you lived under a stone?”

She didn’t leave. She wanted to, but she didn’t. Something in his voice made her stay.

They sat in a coffee shop, once. Then again. Then more often.

He drank bitter tea, never sugar. Talked too fast.

She listened, mostly. But when she asked, she asked the right questions.

He said she was the only one who didn’t bore him.

She said he was the only one who didn’t pretend not to stare at her ears.

It was under the bridge where it changed.

He held out his hands.

“Watch.”

A small flame curled into life in his palm. It sat there, dancing gently, like it belonged.

He passed it to his other hand, as easily as one might hand over a coin.

“Your turn,” he said.

She held out her palm. The flame jumped—slid up her wrist, danced along her forearm, curled beneath her chin, spun across to the other arm, then leapt back to him, laughing.

“Magic,” he said.

She nodded, breathless, half-smiling.

But he wasn't done.

“No,” he said. “You don’t understand. It’s not illusion. It’s not theatre. It’s real.”

Then he turned, pointed behind her—and the bush growing wild and tangled under the bridge, burst into flame. Not a flicker. A roar.

She jumped.

He caught her arm, steadying her, and smiled.

“We are what comes next,” he said.

The wind howled through the broken frame of a bus stop, dragging the scent of rust and old oil with it. The moment dissolved.

The bridge was empty now. He was long gone.

But the fire had never left her.

The street narrowed—not by design, but by time. Buildings leaned inward, as if trying to remember each other. She walked down the center, her boots carving a trail across layered ash and snow.

Ahead—lights.

Faint, flickering. A window, half-covered with ragged cloth. Another, glowing behind broken blinds. People still lived here. Between ruin and frost, they had carved little spaces, hidden and stubborn.

Smoke curled from a steel drum on a distant rooftop. Then another.

The smell of burning wood, coal, and oil hung low in the wind.

She watched the lights, then reached beneath her cloak.

Her fingers found the amulet—a phoenix carved in burning red crystal, wings etched with gold, feathers like flame caught in motion.

His wedding gift.

They had become friends first. Then lovers. Then something more.

More children began to appear around the world.

Strange ones. Wild-eyed, luminous, impossible.

As if something old had lost its patience. As if the worlds people once dismissed as fantasy—Middle-earth, Krynn, the realms of Faerûn—had begun to seep through the cracks of reality, not all at once, but child by child.

Elves first. Then dwarves. Halflings with quick hands, giants who learned to hunch, gnomes with sharp eyes. And others. Goblins, orcs—or something like them. Broad-boned, tusked, marked by fear before they ever understood why.

“Magic is returning,” he used to say, half-smiling over the rim of his chipped tea cup.

“Returning?” she had asked once, skeptical.

He’d only shrugged, firelight dancing in his eyes. “Who knows? Maybe we’re just dreaming this world. Maybe this is what we dream now.”

She had never believed in dreams.

But she had believed in him.

Magic had bound them together. She learned quickly. At first he was proud—amazed by her precision, her hunger, her ease with the elements and symbols. But that pride had shifted. Bit by bit. His hair grayed. His hands began to shake. She did not change.

He stopped touching her face when he thought she was sleeping.

And on a late autumn evening, gentle as leaves falling, he passed.

She gripped the staff a little harder.

Snow kicked up from the east wind as she passed beneath the skeleton of a tilted sign.

Above her, on the third floor of a building half-consumed by ivy and frost—movement.

Three men stood behind shattered glass, haloed in firelight from a burning barrel inside.

Coats layered over armor. Guns slung low. Survivors. Or predators. Or both.

“Hey.”

One of them leaned forward, breath fogging the air. “Elf.”

A sneer behind the word.

“What are you doing here?” another called out. “This isn’t your road.”

The third stepped closer, expression half-lost in shadow.

“We don’t want your kind here. You bring death behind you. Suffering.”

He lifted his hand and pointed, as if the air itself might accuse her.

“He knows you’re coming. He watches the road.”

His voice dropped lower. “He’ll eat you if you go any further.”

She didn’t stop.

“We warned you,” the first man hissed, louder now.

“Elf-scum. Monster. We warned you.”

She vanished into the snow.

And said nothing.

She walked steady through deep snow, breath rising in thick clouds that curled like smoke around her face. The remains of Rockefeller Center loomed ahead.

She turned to the west, through a broken gate in the barricade, and kept walking.

It wasn’t just the human races of old tales that had returned.

Horses were born with horns and wings. Eagles grew vast—their cries shook towers, and they carried lightning in their talons. Snakes, fed by strange weather and stranger time, split and grew—some with legs, some with many heads, some too large to kill.

It was startling. Then terrifying. Then—most terrifying of all—unexplainable.

Science tried, of course. New branches bloomed overnight: Arcano-genetics. Quantum Thaumaturgy. Mythic Evolutionary Biology.

But none of it gave reason.

Religion split. Some swore it was revelation. Others, apocalypse. And louder than either were the prophets who claimed they had always known.

Of course they didn’t. Nobody did.

And last—but never least—

Dragons.

Though it was dragons to take shape last, he was certain it began with them.

“Dragons live among us,” he said once. “Always have. Walking in suits, trading on exchanges, attending galas. Smiling. Charming. Voting. Lying.”

They were resistant to magic—and taxes.

But they hoarded. They fed on admiration, on fear, on silence. And when the magic began to return some whispered it was their doing.

Some said it was punishment. That God had grown tired of the dragons ruling mankind like livestock—groomed for obedience, bred for purpose.

Others said it was a schism between dragons. A breach in their hidden world that let everything else pour through.

No one knew.

But she believed him.

She reached Times Square from the north, following the ghost of 7th Avenue.

Words lifted her—slow and silent above the ground.

There was no square anymore.

Only a mountain of wealth—glowing, tangled, spilling through the dead streets like treasure in the grip of frost.

And atop it all, curled like a crown: the dragon.

Terrifying. Beautiful in the way storms are beautiful.

Its scales shimmered dark red, blood-wine and garnet, lit from beneath as if smoldering. Its long tail twitched slowly, keeping rhythm to the symphony echoing across the square.

Above, massive tree trunks hammered upright into old steel bones. Stretched between them, thick military-green canvas draped low over the hoard like a tented cathedral.

On the far side of the hoard, a bale fire burned. Iron rods stretched across it, slowly turning carcasses charred black around the edges. Cow, maybe. Or sheep. The scent of grease and scorched meat clung to everything.

Around the fire men and women in stitched-together gear—makeshift soldiers. A few had polished gear, but most looked like ghosts of wars never fought. They drank from metal cups and repurposed canteens, laughter raw in the air, too loud, too human.

As they saw her the music faltered, the laughter stopped.

And at the peak of the golden mound, the dragon stirred.

Eyes opened—the color of furnace embers under wet coal.

Its long head lifted.

Slowly, it smiled.

“Seeee-relith,” he said, drawing out the name with the kind of sweetness that made the skin prickle.

“Hundred years, or more... I was beginning to worry, my dear. But look at you. Still glowing. Brighter, even. You always did wear defiance well.”

She said nothing. Her gaze drifted toward the massive necklace slung around his thick neck—layered chains tangled with gold medallions, signet rings, broken brooches. Among them, unmistakable: a red phoenix carved in flame-hued crystal.

“You know why I’m here, Vauronax. Spare me your sugar,” she said, voice low.

The dragon’s eyes glinted. He followed her glance and lightly touched the phoenix pendant with the tip of one claw, caressing it like an old friend.

“Oh, this? You only need to ask. Truly. One word, and I would place it at your feet. I seek nothing but peace between us.”

His voice turned like a dagger in silk.

“And how is Thalen? I do hope he recovered. I’d be so dreadfully sorry if he took things… personally.”

Serelith’s face didn’t change. She had burned that softness out of herself long ago.

“He’s gone,” she said. Flat. Final.

The dragon stilled. Then gave a quiet sigh, like a king musing over distant thunder.

“A shame,” he murmured.

Slowly, Vauronax stood upon all fours, wings unfurling halfway in a gesture of lazy magnificence. The firelight danced across his jeweled hide, casting crimson light on snow and steel.

“People,” he said, as if to himself, “so brief. So fragile. And we…”

He turned his eyes back to her. “We were never made for grudges, Serelith.”

“I didn’t come to talk,” she said.

“I came to kill you.”

He froze—then laughed.

A full-bodied, echoing roar of amusement. Fire slipped from his nostrils, danced from the edges of his lips.

The soldiers joined in, jeering and howling like dogs around a butcher's cart.

When he finally spoke, he was breathless with mirth.

“Oh, not this again.”

He began to descend the mound—each step scattering coins, broken jewelry, scraps of old power. His tail swept behind him like a banner.

He gestured lazily toward the fire with one wing.

“Look around you. They adore me. They eat because of me. They sleep beneath my wings. I give them heat, meat, meaning.”

Her voice cut through the rising laughter. “You chain them.”

He turned his head slightly, addressing the crowd.

“Slaves, are you?” he called, the mockery rich in his voice.

“No way!” someone shouted.

“We love you, Vauronax!”

“Burn the elf bitch!”

“She’s just jealous!”

The dragon smiled—smug and slow.

“You see? What would you give them, little flame?”

He tilted his head, theatrically curious.

“Freedom?”

He let the word hang like a challenge, then answered himself—with a soft, almost sorrowful smile. The kind that made the blood run cold.

“They wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

A slow breath.

“They like to fight. To hate. To hoard their small miseries and feed them to each other. They look down. Take from the weak, flatter the strong. They are small creatures, Serelith. They need us.”

She answered without hesitation.

“You summon your kind. Start wars. Then offer salvation—after the suffering you cause. You keep them starving so you can feed them. You are not a god, Vauronax.”

Her voice was cold fire.

“You are a wound.”

The murmurs swelled—curses, the rasp of weapons leaving slings, the snap of anger trying to become courage.

Vauronax chuckled, low and resonant.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Go ahead. Tell them that. Preach it.”

He shook himself, jewels clinking like trophies.

“They won’t listen.”

His voice rose slightly, filled with the practiced grandeur of someone who had once spoken to kings and watched them kneel.

“We are the strongest in this broken world. And people… people follow strength. Always have. Always will.”

He looked at her then, more directly—his eyes narrowing, breath hot in the cold air.

“You,” he said, almost sadly. “You threw your fire into mud. Stood beside the weak. Held their hands while they drowned.”

A pause.

“What a waste of a mage.”

Serelith answered with motion.

She spun the staff once. Darkness bloomed beneath her boots. A spiral of ink and void carved itself into the ground, growing outward, slow and soundless.

Vauronax’s expression shifted.

He inhaled.

Then exhaled.

A tempest of fire roared from his mouth, engulfing the square in red fury. The soldiers scrambled, shouting, ducking for cover—and opened fire.

But none of it touched her.

Around Serelith, the world bent.

A perfect sphere of stillness held her, and all things slid around it. The fire curled like a serpent, the bullets arced, twisted, vanished into the edges of space made wrong.

The spiral beneath her feet swelled—and then, with a thunderclap of silence, a crystal rose from its collapse.

Tall and clear as sky ice, the crystal hovered just above the ground, humming with inner power. Its tip rose high above her, casting a strange blue glow across the ruined buildings.

Then came the lights.

One after another, countless shafts of brilliance struck down from the sky—white fire spearing the ground, bright as falling stars.

And from each burst, they emerged.

Figures, tall as giants, floated in the air around her. Women—armored in silver and light. Each wore a suit of gleaming mail, half-forged like medieval knights, half-engineered like war-machines. Wings—translucent and humming—extended from their backs. Each bore a weapon: long spears, sleek rifles, war-forged devices not meant for this century.

Radiant. Unshakable.

The square fell silent.

Even the dragon paused.

Their leader stepped forward, hovering in place, her voice amplified by something older than machinery.

“This is Lieutenant Brynja Kaalsen, commanding the 72nd Valkyrie Platoon of the Army of Valhalla.”

“You are ordered to disarm.”

“Leave your weapons, and walk away.”

Her voice was not cruel.

But it allowed no refusal.

The sky cracked.

With a roar that shook rust from steel and snow from stone, Vauronax surged into the air—wings snapping wide, scattering coins and ash from the hoard in a golden storm. His body spiraled upward like a blood-red storm, and as he rose, the clouds above twisted, blackened, churned.

Lightning fell.

Not from him—but through him.

He called it down like a priest calls fire, and the sky obeyed.

The Valkyries scattered.

With inhuman speed, they took cover—behind shattered facades, leaping to rooftops, perching with rifles that gleamed with runes. A few raised shields like angled wings, redirecting energy, holding position.

Serelith stood at the center.

She gripped her staff in one hand—and with the other, she traced a symbol in the air.

And the earth answered.

Steel burst upward in jagged spears—molten dark, spiked like thorns—rising in arcs around her. They caught the lightning as it fell, splitting it, grounding it, devouring it in screams of light and fury. The smell of ozone and iron filled the air.

And then—

She tore the chain from her neck.

The phoenix pendant blazed in her palm—alive, for the first time in years.

She threw it skyward.

It spun through the air once—twice—and then ignited.

Fire bloomed. A color without name. It flared into wings, into shape, into life.

A phoenix.

Born of love and wrath and the memory of Thalen.

Its cry split the air like prophecy.

And the flames kissed her shoulders, her staff, her eyes—without burning.

Above, Vauronax wheeled in the dark like a god of ruin.

Below, Serelith stood in the eye of storm and fire, cloaked in light, unflinching.

And the war began.