Tess built a small fire using branches from the treeline below the snow.
It took three trips down and back to gather enough wood, but Gabriel still hadn’t moved by the time she returned with the third armload.
She arranged the branches in a pile and used her flint to coax flames to life. The fire seemed pitiful compared to what had erupted from Gabriel’s body, but it provided warmth against the mountain cold.
She sat and watched him breathe.
His chest rose and fell with steady rhythm. No sign of distress. No indication he was in pain. He just looked like he was sleeping.
Except for the circle of scorched stone around him. Except for the silver-white markings that spiralled across his exposed skin, visible where his clothing had burned away.
Tess pulled her cloak tighter and fed another branch to the fire.
The sun climbed higher. Hours passed.
Gabriel finally stirred as afternoon shadows began to stretch across the ravine.
His eyes opened slowly. Red irises with slit pupils stared up at the sky without comprehension for several heartbeats.
Then awareness returned.
He sat up abruptly, his hand going to his chest. To where his mana core sat.
"Easy," Tess said. "You’ve been out for hours."
Gabriel’s head turned toward her. His movements were sharper than before. Like his body was responding faster than he expected.
"The heart," he said. His voice was rougher, deeper than it had been.
"You ate it. Then you..." Tess gestured at the scorched circle around them. "Exploded. Fire everywhere. I barely made it behind cover."
Gabriel looked down at his hands. Turned them over, examining them. They looked the same as always. Human hands. Just attached to arms that were slightly more muscular than before.
He pushed himself to his feet.
Tess stood as well, watching him carefully. Ready to move if he lost control again.
But Gabriel just stood there, staring at his hands, his arms, his body. Processing the changes.
"How do you feel?" Tess asked.
Gabriel flexed his fingers. "Different. Stronger." He looked at her. "The voice is gone."
"Gone?"
"The one that’s been screaming in my head for months. Demanding I complete the trial." Gabriel’s jaw tightened. "It’s silent now."
He took a step. Then another. Testing his balance, his coordination. Everything felt slightly off. Like his body had been rebuilt with different proportions, and his mind hadn’t caught up yet.
"You look human," Tess said. "I thought... after the fire, after everything, I thought you’d be more..."
"Monstrous?"
"Different."
Gabriel looked down at himself. At the torn clothing, the exposed skin showing no scales or claws or anything inhuman. Just slightly denser muscle and the silver-white markings spiralling across his chest and arms.
"I am different," he said quietly. "I can feel it. Everything is sharper. Clearer. My senses, my strength, even my thoughts." He clenched his fist. "The red smoke I had before. It’s not smoke anymore."
He held out his hand palm-up.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then fire appeared.
Not red smoke. Not crimson fog. Actual flames, golden-red, dancing across his palm without burning him.
Tess took an involuntary step back.
Gabriel stared at the fire. At something he could create at will now.
He closed his fist, and the flames vanished.
"The awakening is complete," he said. "Whatever Ariya started four years ago, the wyvern’s heart finished it."
"And the visions? When you were transforming, you were screaming. Saying things I couldn’t understand."
Gabriel was quiet for a long moment. "I saw them. The Dracamerians. My ancestors." His voice was hollow. "I saw them die. All of them. The Seven Archangels walked through fields of bodies and made sure none survived."
"Why?"
"Because Drusgard killed the Creator." Gabriel’s hand moved unconsciously to his chest, to where the markings now spiralled. "The Eighth Divine fought the Creator and won. So the other seven cast him out and exterminated everyone who’d served him."
"An entire race murdered as punishment for their god’s crime."
Tess absorbed that in silence. "That’s what the Church has been hiding? That the gods they worship committed genocide?"
"Yes."
"And you’re..."
"The last of them." Gabriel looked at his hands again. At hands that looked human but carried the blood of a murdered people. "Or close enough. The blood’s been diluted over generations. But it’s still there."
He turned toward the wyvern’s corpse. It had burned down to charred bone and ash, barely recognisable as what it had been.
"We should go," Gabriel said. "The fire will have been visible for miles. The Church will send someone to investigate."
"Can you walk? You were unconscious for hours."
Gabriel took a few more steps, testing his legs. They held. "I’m fine. Better than fine."
He gathered his pack, checking the contents. The book was still there, unharmed despite everything. His swords lay nearby.
"I’ll need new weapons," he said.
"We’ll recover in Thornstud." Tess kicked dirt over the fire, extinguishing it. "Assuming the town is still standing."
Gabriel looked east, toward where Thornstud lay beyond the mountains. Where they’d agreed to resupply before meeting the others in Kelmar.
Where someone would be waiting if they’d felt the awakening complete.
"We move fast," he said. "Stay off the main roads. Get what we need and leave before anyone notices us."
"Who do you think will be looking?"
Gabriel met her eyes. His red irises pulsed with dark black pupils in the centre that caught the afternoon light.
"I don’t know yet," he admitted. "But the Church will gather everyone when they find out."
They began the descent as the sun touched the western peaks.
Behind them, ash from the wyvern’s corpse scattered in the wind, carrying across the Spine mountains like snow.
The trial was complete.
The awakening was finished.
And somewhere far below, the Church would be mobilising as soon as they found out.
They would of felt the burst of power. Felt something ancient and forbidden complete itself.
Felt a Dracamerian awaken for the first time in a thousand years.
The hunt would begin soon.
But Gabriel was done running.