Seren Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 23 of 26

Seren's name glowed in the record hall. But glowing letters would not save her. Six gods would gather at the next council. Each would drop a stone to keep or strike her seat. Six votes against a witch who wrote herself a throne. She flew home with Payton's warning ringing in her ears. She needed proof no god could argue away. Not a story. A thing they could hold. She found it in an old tomb half-buried in earth, its stone door carved with signs older than the pantheon. Inside lay an oracle long dead. On the wall, a prophecy waited under dust. Seren wiped it clean and read. The lines named a witch who would rise and claim an empty throne. Her line. Her rise. The oracle had seen her coming before she was born. If the council heard this, they could not call her seat false. The gods themselves honored old prophecy. But a stone slab could not speak at council. She needed a living mouth to swear it true. She whistled, and a shape dropped from the storm clouds above the tomb. A griffin landed, lion-bodied, eagle-headed, lightning crackling across its wings. Seren had bound it days before, tired of gods who sneered at witchcraft. "Let them see what I command," she told it. The beast bowed its head. Proof she was more than herbs and blood. She flew the prophecy stone to Amber Prismforge's forge. Amber had known Seren since her mortal days. She was broad-shouldered, blue-Mohawked, a rainbow of crystals glowing at the tip of her staff. She looked up from her work and grinned. "The witch who ate the ash. Still breathing, I see." "I need you at council," Seren said. "You watched me raise the dead and heal the broken before I was ever a god. Swear to it. And carve me stones the gods can't lie with." Amber ran a thumb over the prophecy. Her grin faded. "This names you. Truly names you." She set down her hammer. "Then I'll speak. And I'll make you voting stones. Etched with sigils that hold a witness's true word. No god can twist a vote once it's cast on honest stone." They worked through the night. Amber cut seven stones and burned runes into each. Seren fed them power until they glowed. At the next council, Seren laid the prophecy on the floor. The six gods leaned forward. Amber stepped from the shadow and swore what she had seen. The griffin crouched at Seren's side, wings sparking. Then the stones passed. Each god dropped one, unable to cast a false word. The count came. Four stones held her seat. Two struck it. Seren's name stayed carved in the record. She had survived the vote. But two gods had voted to unmake her, and now they knew no honest trick would work. They would come with something worse.