They're still asleep when the fire wakes up.
Not the hearth fire—that's banked low, a faint orange glow behind the grate.
Not the battlefield kind either.
This one burns inside her.
Fia lies very still and listens.
Her old heartbeat is there: too quick, a little uneven, an anxious drummer trying to stay in time.
Under it, deeper, slower, something else answers.
…thump.
…thump.
Like a heavy drum buried under stone.
Every pulse sends a faint warmth through her chest, down her spine, into the hollow of her palms and the arches of her feet.
If she focuses, she can almost tell which beat belongs to which heart.
"Okay," she whispers to the ceiling. "So that wasn't just a weird fever dream."
Her voice is barely there, raw with disuse.
She turns her head.
Mira's curled in the chair by the door, chin on her chest, fingers still loosely wrapped around a rosary. A faint bruise shadows her cheek. Her lips move occasionally, like she's praying even in sleep.
Elira is half-fallen out of the other chair, boot still on, hand on her sword hilt, eyes closed but jaw clenched like she's fighting in her dreams.
Lyriel is slumped over the desk, hair a singed halo around her head, ink stain on her cheek, a stack of half-finished diagrams under her arm.
Seraphine is the closest.
She's in a simple shirt and trousers, armor dumped in a careless heap nearby, boots kicked under the bed. Her head rests on folded arms on the mattress next to Fia's hip. One of her hands is wrapped around Fia's, fingers gone slack with sleep but still holding on.
There's dried demon blood under her nails, caught in the little cuts on her knuckles.
Fia stares at the hand holding hers.
Yesterday—no, earlier today?—that hand was swinging a sword through demon necks.
Now it's wrapped around something that might not be entirely human anymore.
She swallows.
The second heartbeat speeds up a hair, like it's paying attention.
"Don't get smug," she mutters under her breath. "You literally moved in five minutes ago."
It doesn't answer.
It doesn't have to.
Her lungs feel…different.
Not healed.
The ache behind her sternum is still there, but it's a dull ache now, not the sharp, tearing pain that came with the last bleed. When she breathes in slowly, the familiar tightness is present—but there's a little more space. A fraction more give.
She pushes up on her elbows.
Her body complains, soft and distant. Muscles tremble, but not as violently as last time.
The room tilts.
Then steadies.
The second heartbeat thumps once, harder.
Heat spreads up her throat, behind her eyes, in the soft meat around her ribs.
She exhales slowly.
"I'm going to stand up," she tells the empty room. "Please do not make a spectacle of this."
She eases Seraphine's hand off hers, gently laying it back on the mattress.
Seraphine makes a faint noise but doesn't wake.
Fia swings her legs over the side of the bed.
Her feet touch cold stone.
Her toes curl.
Already that's different.
Three days ago, standing felt like violence.
Now it feels like…lifting something heavy with both hands instead of one.
Hard, but possible.
She pushes up.
Her knees tremble.
Her lungs hitch.
The second heart thumps again, firm.
Warmth flows through her thighs, into her calves, like liquid iron being poured into hollow rods.
She stands.
No hands on her.
No spells.
The room dips once, like a ship hitting a small wave.
She rides it out.
Her grip on the bedframe tightens.
Her knuckles go white.
Still—she's up.
Her laugh comes out half-shaky, half-hysterical.
"Look at me," she whispers. "Vertical and not choking."
The flame inside approves.
Heat blooms in her chest in a slow, spreading circle.
And with it, something else stirs.
A ripple under her skin, like muscle flexing in a direction it doesn't have.
Her spine feels…too long.
Her shoulder blades itch, then burn, then ache like something pressed against them.
Her fingers tingle.
Her vision sharpens for a heartbeat—colors deepening, edges crisp, the grain of the wooden door suddenly absurdly detailed.
The candle flame across the room is loud.
She can hear it.
The hiss of melting wax. The tiny, chaotic roar where heat meets air.
Her pupils constrict.
The world is too bright.
She clamps a hand over her eyes.
"Okay," she says through her teeth. "Too much. Too much."
The coil under her ribs reacts.
Not offended.
Responsive.
The heat pulls back a little, like a hand easing off her throat.
Her spine stops trying to elongate.
Her skin stops itching.
Her vision dulls back down to human levels.
Her knees feel weaker again.
She sinks back onto the bed before gravity can make the choice for her.
The mattress dips with a soft whump.
Seraphine jerks awake.
Her hand shoots out on instinct, catching Fia's arm like she's expecting to find her mid-fall.
"Fia?"
Her voice is rough with sleep and panic.
Fia blinks at her.
"Hi," she says.
Seraphine's eyes take a full second to focus.
When they do, they go wide.
"You're up," she says. "You stood. I heard—are you dizzy? Are you—"
She breaks off.
Her hand is still on Fia's wrist.
Right over the Oath.
Right over the new mark.
Fia feels it the same moment Seraphine does: the doubled rhythm under skin.
The human heart, fast.
The other, slow.
Seraphine's fingers tighten.
Her gaze drops to Fia's wrist.
The Oath sigil glows faintly, intertwined with the anchor.
Around both, in the faintest suggestion of darker red, a new design curls: a tiny, coiled dragon shape, no bigger than a coin, lines so fine you'd miss them in bad light.
The room is dim.
Seraphine does not miss it.
"What," she says quietly, "is that?"
Her voice is too calm.
Fia's mouth goes dry.
"This is…a funny story," she says.
Lyriel's head jerks up at the desk.
"Did someone say 'funny story' and mean 'catastrophic magical development'?" she croaks.
Mira startles in her chair, rosary clattering to the floor.
Elira's hand is on her sword before her eyes are fully open.
"What," Elira says, blinking, "blew up?"
Fia stares at her wrist.
The tiny dragon-sigil pulses once.
"Okay," she says, exhaling. "We need to talk."
They move slower than the moment deserves.
Partly because they're all exhausted.
Partly because if they move too fast, someone's going to have a panic attack.
Seraphine helps Fia sit up properly, propping her against pillows, fussing with the blankets in the distracted way of someone who'd rather be fighting a demon than navigating this conversation.
Mira moves to the bedside, eyes already scanning Fia's face, neck, breathing.
"How do you feel?" Mira asks. "Any pain? Tightness? Blood?"
"No blood," Fia says. "Just…heat. And…extra cardiovascular activity."
Elira snorts weakly.
"Only you could make 'my heart grew another heart' sound like a scheduling conflict," she mutters.
Lyriel drags a chair closer with one foot and drops into it, quill still in hand, ink stain dark against her pallor.
She squints at Fia's wrist.
"That mark wasn't there before," she says. "I would have noticed. I've been staring at your Oath for days trying to figure out how the system glitched."
"It didn't glitch," Fia says.
Every eye turns to her.
She swallows.
"No," she says. "That's…not true. It did glitch. Earlier. When the audit happened. But…this is…separate. I think."
Seraphine takes a breath.
"Start at the beginning," she says quietly. "What happened?"
Fia stares at her own hands for a moment.
They look the same.
Slim fingers.
Scars across the knuckles.
A faint line where a healer once cut to relieve pressure.
They feel different.
Heavier.
Like they're attached to more than bones and skin now.
"When I was out," she says slowly, "after the monster army… I had a dream. Except it wasn't. Or maybe it was both."
She tells them.
About the ledge of black stone.
The rivers of molten light.
The star-heavy sky.
The rising mass of dark red scales.
The eyes like golden furnaces.
She describes Ardentis as best she can.
Mira listens with her lips pressed together.
Elira mutters something appreciative under her breath when Fia gets to "big enough that cities would fit between his shoulder blades."
Lyriel's expression shifts from skeptical to something closer to wary curiosity.
Seraphine's face doesn't move much.
Her hand on Fia's wrist tightens every time the word "offer" comes up.
"…and he asked," Fia says at last, voice quiet, "if I was ready to awaken draconic power. To sacrifice my human body. To become a dragon."
Silence.
The second heartbeat keeps going.
Slow.
Patient.
For once, nobody tries to fill the silence with a joke.
Seraphine is the one who breaks it.
"And you said?" she asks.
Fia huffs out something that might be a laugh.
"What do you think?" she says. "I asked for terms."
Lyriel's mouth twitches despite herself.
"Of course you did," she mutters.
"I got him to admit I could keep human form," Fia says. "That I wouldn't wake up as a building-sized flamethrower tomorrow and squash the palace by rolling over wrong. He said it would be…a seed. A second self. Something I could…grow into. Or not."
Mira frowns.
"'Grow into'?" she repeats. "That sounds dangerously vague."
"That's because it is," Fia says. "He was very honest about that. He didn't sugarcoat the…side effects. Or the cost. Or the fact that this would make everything in me louder. Including the parts I don't like."
Seraphine's thumb strokes once over her wrist.
"And then?" she asks.
Fia looks at her.
"I said yes," she says.
The words hang there.
Simple.
Devastating.
Mira inhales sharply.
Elira's brows shoot up.
Lyriel's pen snaps in half between her fingers.
Seraphine's hand on Fia's wrist stays very, very still.
"Of course you did," Lyriel says, voice thin.
Fia flinches.
"You're angry," she says.
Lyriel shakes her head, dropping the ruined quill.
"I'm exhausted," she says. "The anger can wait. Right now I need to know what that means."
She leans forward, eyes bright despite the shadows under them.
"Do you feel different?" she asks. "Beyond the…extra pulsation?"
"Yes," Fia says.
She closes her eyes.
"Everything is…louder," she says. "Not in a screaming way. More like there's…more of me. Like I've been walking around with my soul wrapped too tight and someone loosened the bandages."
She touches her chest, fingers splayed.
"My lungs hurt less," she says. "They still hurt. But it's…background now. And when I stood up, it felt like…someone else was helping. Like there was another set of muscles I couldn't see, bracing the ones I have."
"That tracks," Lyriel murmurs. "If there's a second…structure…forming around your core, it would start supporting circulation, distribution, maybe even absorbing some of the stress your heart's been under."
Mira looks like she's caught between relief and dread.
"Is it healing you?" she asks.
Fia shrugs helplessly.
"In some ways," she says. "Ardentis said it would. That dragon bodies don't…fail the way human ones do. That this would…sidestep some of the damage. But it's not a full transformation. Not yet. Right now it just feels like I swallowed a forge and it's trying very hard not to set my ribs on fire."
Elira leans back, running a hand through her hair.
"So you made a deal with an ancient dragon god while you were in a coma," she says. "To get a new body. But only eventually. And in the meantime you're…what? Halfway to 'oh gods please don't eat me'?"
Fia scowls.
"I'm not going to eat anyone," she says. "Probably."
Mira makes a tiny strangled noise.
Fia winces.
"Bad joke," she mutters. "Sorry."
Seraphine still hasn't said anything more.
Her eyes are searching Fia's face like she's trying to memorize the before in case there's an after she doesn't recognize.
"What about the system?" she asks finally. "Did he say anything about…that?"
Fia nods.
"He hates it," she says simply. "Not in the 'let's break all its toys for fun' way. In the 'I'm tired of watching it turn people into content' way. He said dragonfire is older. Less impressed by scripts."
Lyriel's fingers twitch.
"I felt something," she mutters. "When the audit hit. A…pressure. A hand on the system's leash. I thought it was just some higher-order fail-safe."
"It might be," Fia says. "He said he wasn't the one who spoke. Just…adjacent. An ally of convenience."
Mira tilts her head.
"And you…trust him?" she asks.
Fia thinks about it.
The molten rivers.
The offer.
The fact that he told her he could undo it—before reminding her that even that undoing would hurt.
"No," she says. "Not fully. I don't think you can trust something that old and that powerful like you trust a person. But I trust that he hates the same things I do. And I trust that he meant it when he said I'd still be me."
Her hand shakes.
She grips the blanket.
"I couldn't keep…bleeding like before," she says quietly. "Every time we survived something, it felt like I lost a piece of myself to pay for it. And you all…you proved you can hold the line without me. That was the point. But I still…"
She trails off.
Mira's eyes soften.
"You still don't want to die at twenty," Mira finishes quietly.
Fia nods, throat tight.
"I don't want to live forever," she says. "I don't want to be some eternal dragon goddess watching everyone I love crumble. I just…want a chance. A real one. Not a gamble where every battle is me rolling dice with my own lungs."
Silence.
Seraphine closes her eyes.
When she opens them again, they're wet.
"I'm not angry," she says at last.
Her voice is rough.
Fia blinks.
"You're…not?" she says.
"Not at you," Seraphine says. "At the world, yes. At the system, definitely. At whatever series of tragedies led to you meeting an ancient dragon in a not-dream and deciding his offer was your best chance at not dying young? Absolutely."
She lifts Fia's hand, thumb brushing over the new mark.
"But you made a choice," she says. "A considered one. You didn't throw yourself into a volcano because it would make a good story. You asked questions. You set terms. You left yourself room to…back out, if you need to."
She leans in, forehead resting lightly against Fia's.
"I told you in that bed," Seraphine whispers, "I'm with you in this. In all of it. Sick, healthy, human, dragon, something in between. I don't have to like the risk to…respect the choice."
Fia's eyes sting.
She lets her forehead rest there.
"For the record," Seraphine adds, "if you do grow wings and horns, I reserve the right to complain about how much space you take up in the bed."
Elira snorts.
"There it is," she mutters. "The important part."
Mira lets out a shaky laugh that sounds suspiciously like she's been holding back tears.
Lyriel exhales, long and slow.
"All right," Lyriel says. "Dragon seed. Second heartbeat. Potential future apocalypse form. We can work with that."
"'Apocalypse form' is a bit dramatic," Fia protests.
Lyriel raises a brow.
"You called yourself the Final Calamity," she says. "I'm just updating the branding."
Fia drops her head back against the pillow.
"Great," she mutters. "What now? I start hoarding gold and hissing at knights who get too close to my stuff?"
"Yes," Elira says. "But we'll call it 'rehabilitation' and charge admission."
Mira shakes her head, smiling faintly.
"Now," Mira says, "you do nothing without supervision for at least a day."
Fia opens her mouth.
Mira holds up a finger.
"Nothing," she says. "No uncontrolled flares. No trying to light the candle from across the room. No 'just a little magic to see how it feels.' I want to see how your lungs respond to simply existing with this…coil…before you start throwing fire again."
Fia closes her mouth.
"…fine," she mutters. "But I get to glare dramatically."
"You already do," Elira says. "We're very proud."
Lyriel taps her lip, thinking.
"I want to run tests," she says. "Nothing invasive. Just…measurements. How your mana behaves now. What your aura looks like. Whether holy wards react differently. That sort of thing."
"Later," Mira says firmly. "Let her heart settle first. Both of them."
Seraphine's hand doesn't leave Fia's wrist.
She studies the new mark.
"We keep this quiet," Seraphine says. "For now."
Fia blinks.
"You're not going to tell the council they have a semi-ascended dragon princess on retainer?" she says. "Shocking."
"If they hear the word 'dragon,' they'll try to build you a cult," Lyriel says dryly. "Or a cage. Or both."
"And then we'd have to kill them," Elira says. "And I'm too tired for a coup this week."
Mira snorts.
"So," Seraphine says, ignoring them, "we say this: the Final Calamity is recovering. Her condition has…stabilized, partially thanks to certain interventions during the system audit. She is to be left alone until the healers clear her."
Her gaze flicks to Fia.
"You are not a weapon," she says quietly. "You are not a resource. You are not a convenient dragon battery. If anyone forgets that, they answer to me."
"And me," Elira adds.
"And me," Mira says.
Lyriel sighs.
"And tragically, me," she says. "Someone has to explain the metaphysics when they start panicking."
Fia looks between them.
Her chest hurts.
Not from illness.
From something that feels frighteningly close to hope.
"What if…" she starts, then trails off.
"What if?" Seraphine prompts.
"What if the system notices?" Fia whispers. "What if it doesn't like that I let something older move in?"
Lyriel tilts her head, eyes unfocusing briefly like she's listening for distant static.
"It's still under suspension," she says. "And whatever yanked its chain last time can do it again."
"Also," Elira says, "if a system wants to fight a dragon, I'd pay to watch that."
Mira smiles tiredly.
"I think," Mira says softly, "that for once, you are not the only one carrying the risk. If the system tries to push you again… it will have to go through more than your lungs."
Fia stares at her wrist.
The tiny dragon mark pulses once, in time with the deeper beat.
She thinks of Ardentis' voice:
You are not 'chosen.' You are not 'destined.' You are a girl who was offered teeth and said 'yes, but on my terms.'
"'Rise of Flame Calamity Fia,'" she mutters under her breath. "That's what the system would probably call this."
Elira groans.
"Too long," she says. "I'm voting for 'Scary Little Dragon.'"
"Absolutely not," Fia says.
"'Our Fia,'" Mira suggests.
Seraphine smiles faintly.
"I like that one," she says.
Lyriel rolls her eyes, but her mouth softens.
"Fine," she says. "Internally, we keep using the old designation. Externally…we don't use one. Let the world guess."
She stands slowly, joints protesting.
"I'm going to go tell the high priest the demons are dead and that he owes me a new set of ward-maps," she says. "And not mention that my favorite patient decided to start a side career in dragonhood."
Mira rises too, stretching, wincing at the crackle in her spine.
"I'll get fresh tea," she says. "And broth. And tell the healers you're awake."
Elira heads for the door, grabbing her sword and slinging it over her shoulder.
"I'm going to wash off demon goo," she says. "Then I'll be back to glare at you if you so much as try to ignite a dust mote."
The door closes behind them one by one.
Seraphine stays.
Her fingers are still around Fia's wrist, thumb resting over the new mark.
For a moment, the room is quiet again.
Just the crackle of the hearth.
The faint hum of wards.
Two heartbeats in one chest.
Seraphine leans in.
"Flame Calamity," she murmurs. "Dragon seed. Future headache."
Fia snorts softly.
"That's me," she says.
Seraphine's smile is small and tired and real.
"I don't know what this will do to you," she says. "To us. To the kingdom. I'm…scared, if I'm honest. Of losing pieces of you to something bigger and older than I can fight with a sword."
She lifts Fia's hand and presses a kiss to the back of it, just above the coiled dragon.
"But I'm more scared of losing you to blood loss in a corridor," she says. "If this gives you a better chance of living long enough to complain about my tax reforms, then…we'll learn to live with your horns."
Fia's throat goes tight.
"I'll try not to set the curtains on fire," she says.
"Appreciated," Seraphine says.
She shifts, carefully, and sits on the edge of the bed, easing an arm behind Fia's shoulders to help her lean against her.
Fia lets herself sink into the warmth.
Her lungs pull in air.
It hurts.
Less than before.
Under the ache, the deeper heart beats.
Not rushing.
Not demanding.
Just…there.
Waiting.
Not a destiny.
Not an order.
A possibility.
Outside, somewhere in the distance, the city is already telling new stories: of a battle won without the Final Calamity's fire, of a demon army broken by human hands.
Inside this room, something quieter rises.
Not the roaring blaze of a battlefield miracle.
A slow, banked flame under bone, learning how to exist in a body that has been asked to burn too often.
She closes her eyes.
For the first time since she woke, she lets herself feel it fully.
The heat.
The second rhythm.
The sense that her insides are being rearranged very carefully by something that knows exactly how much pressure a ribcage can take.
It scares her.
It also feels…right.
"Hey," she whispers, too soft for anyone but herself—and maybe something listening in the molten rivers below reality. "If we're doing this, we're doing it my way. No eating villagers. No hoarding princesses without consent. Got it?"
The second heartbeat thumps once.
Wry.
Amused.
She smiles, despite everything.
"Rise of Flame Calamity Fia," she murmurs. "Fine. But we're also keeping 'Fia who steals your tea and falls asleep on your shoulder.'"
Seraphine's hand spreads warm against her side.
"You can be both," Seraphine says, not knowing the whole conversation but catching enough.
Fia leans her head against Seraphine's shoulder.
Two hearts beat in her chest.
Outside, the world has no idea yet.
Inside, the rise has already begun.