After Dying for his Life, I Became the Abyss Queen Chapter 08
As my words fell, the dark–gold flames in the Abyss hall roared higher. Cassius pulled me against him, his breath warm against my ear. “They’ll pay for everything. I promise you that.”
His fingers traced along my spine–protective, possessive. The gesture said what words couldn’t: I would never face my demons alone again.
The wheels of vengeance turned from that blood moon night onward.
didn’t send armies to burn the Silvaris territories to ash. That would’ve been mercy they didn’t deserve.
What I wanted was slow destruction–watching them crumble from the inside out, losing everything piece by piece until nothing remained.
First, I severed the crystal passages. As Queen of the
Abyss and inheritor of the purest ancient dragon Bloodline, I cut off the Silvaris and Shadow Dragon
Clans from their power sources. The Dragon God’s sanctuaries closed their doors to them.
Without pure–blood support, the Silvaris Clan’s prophecies fell apart like wet parchment. The Council elders who’d kissed Isabella’s boots turned on her the moment their territories started dying. Resources dried up. Magic weakened. Panic set in.
They stripped Isabella of everything–her title, her dignity, her lies. The evidence surfaced: consorting with inferior wyverns, switching bloodlines, forging divine prophecies.
The Council exiled her to the frozen wastes. They took her warming magic first. I made sure of that.
Reports came back over the following months. She lasted longer than I expected–hunger, frostbite,
madness. In the end, the low–class beasts she’d spent her life despising tore her apart in a feeding frenzy.
prakon’s fall was almost poetic. Without the Abyss’s stabilizing force and my pure–blood purification, the volatile shadow magic inside him went feral. His own power turned against him.
The backlash shattered every bone in his body. He didn’t die—I made certain of that too. He lived as something less than the lowest servant, crawling through sewers, begging for scraps, staring up at an Abyss sky he’d never touch again.
But Roran and Zephyra? They destroyed each other, The severed mate bond broke something fundamental in Roran’s mind. The guilt from two lifetimes, the knowledge of what he’d done–it
hollowed him out. He dragged Zephyra down into the deepest dungeon beneath the Silvaris Temple and chained her to the ceiling.
Every night, he forced her to wear my clothes. Speak like me. Move like me.
“Say it again,” he’d whisper, circling her. “Say you forgive me.”
The moment she faltered–showed even a flicker of her real self–he’d lose control. Glacial dragonfire would scorch her skin while he screamed at her for hiding me, for taking me away, for existing when I didn’t.
Zephyra begged for death. He kept her alive with expensive healing potions. They were trapped together in that cycle–predator and prey, locked in a dance of mutual destruction.
It ended the way it had to. When Roran’s soul finally began disintegrating, his golden dragonfire erupted
wild and uncontrolled. The same flames that had killed me and my unborn child in another life consumed them both.
The dungeon collapsed. Nothing remained but ash and twisted metal.
felt it when it happened a distant snap, like a thread breaking. The last connection to my past life, finally severed.
Three years later.
Warm sunlight streamed through the tower windows. Cassius had changed the very laws governing the Abyss–the perpetual shadow and mist were gone. Now golden light touched the dark–gold roses that grew in the courtyards, and the Abyss had become something new. Something alive.
I watched from my throne as Cassius—the terrifying Abyss Lord who’d conquered kingdoms–sprawled on the obsidian floor, completely at the mercy of a three- year–old.
Alexander had both hands fisted in his father’s hair, yanking on the black dragon horns with delighted giggles. “Again!” he crowed. “Fly again!”
“You’re going to pull them off, you little tyrant,” tassius grumbled, but he was grinning as he shifted forms, scales rippling along his arms.
Alexander had his father’s black eyes and my dark- gold scales. When he was born–that first piercing wail–Cassius had held us both, his hands shaking, tears tracking down his face.
“He’s here,” he’d whispered against my hair, “He’s really here.”
That’s when I knew. The child I’d lost in flames, the part of my soul that had remained broken and bleeding–it healed in that moment.
“Cassius,” I called now, standing and smoothing my gown. “We should go.”
He scooped Alexander up immediately, settling him on his hip. When he took iny hand, his thumb traced circles on my palm–a habit he’d developed, checking that I was real, that I was still here.
“Ready?” His voice was soft.
I nodded.
We stepped through the portal and emerged in the bandoned cemetery where my mother rested. Abyss servants had cleared the weeds at my request. Ancient tombstones stood in neat rows, weathered by time but dignified in their silence.
I knelt before my mother’s grave and laid down the dark–gold roses.
Her name was carved in simple letters. Once, this place had represented everything I couldn’t have- legitimacy, belonging, love. Every visit had felt like eopening a wound.
Not anymore.
“Hi, Mom.” I traced the letters of her name with my fingertips. “I wanted you to meet someone.”
Cassius crouched beside me, Alexander balanced on his knee. Our son was trying to catch the light Filtering through the trees, his small hands opening and closing on empty air.
“This is Alexander,” I continued, my voice steady despite the tightness in my chest. “He’s got your stubbornness, I think. And your kindness.”
I took Alexander’s hand, guided it to touch the cool marble.
“Everything you went through, everything they did to us- -it’s over now. They paid for it. All of them.” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “I’m not angry anymore. I wanted you to know that.”
Cassius’s arm came around my shoulders. He pressed kiss to my temple, then spoke quietly, his words meant for my mother:
“I’ll guard them. Both of them. For as long as I exist.”
promise, simple and absolute.
Alexander squirmed in his father’s lap, reaching for a butterfly that had landed nearby. The light caught his scales, turning them molten gold, leaned back against Cassius, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, watching our son discover the world with fresh wonder.
The ashes of my past life were gone, scattered and forgotten. Here, at the peak of the Abyss, surrounded by the two people who’d given me back my life-
This was my dawn. And it would never end.
THE END