Chapter 516: Go back ho?…
The silence that fell among all those presences was almost as deafening as the roar that would precede a cataclysm. The air trembled around Stella. Each figure around her carried a monstrous aura—so burning like active volcanoes, others as cold as death creeping in forgotten battles. She knew nothing of what those people were capable of, nor did she even know who they were…
But none of that mattered now.
Because she only wanted to know about Samira; these people with her didn’t matter…
The sister Stella had sworn to protect since they were old enough to conjure sparks. The sister who had run away. The sister who now looked at her with eyes so different that for a mont, Stella thought she was no longer her.
Samira was different. Her hair—once orange and vibrant as daylight—was now completely white, almost the color of snow. Her eyes did not shine with joy or anger, but with restrained judgnt. She wore new clothes, nothing formal, nothing noble. She was like a wandering warrior who had crossed hell and returned with her own demons as allies.
Stella tried to speak, but her throat still burned with the remnants of Scarlet’s magical block. Only a hoarse noise ca out of her mouth.
Samira did not move. She did not run to embrace her, nor did she smile or show surprise. She just kept that sharp gaze, like a blade resting on her skin.
“You ca too soon,” Samira said at last. Her voice was deeper. Less innocent. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon. I thought my dear sister, who always cared so much about the family, wouldn’t co after the failure. How many years have passed? Ten? Funny, now that I’m well, you show up.”
“You…” Stella tried to force the words out, clearing her throat. “Are you okay?”
Samira raised an eyebrow. “I was abandoned by my family, forced to live in soone else’s shadow for several years until I couldn’t take the comparisons anymore. What do you think? Well, I’m doing very well now.”
Stella took a deep breath, trying to keep her voice steady. “I ca… to take you ho.”
The silence that followed was not one of surprise—it was one of disbelief.
Samira tilted her head slightly, as if the sentence had been spoken in another language. “Take… ho?” The word “ho” ca out of her mouth like sothing strange, bitter.
Stella nodded, staring at her firmly. “You disappeared. Everyone is looking for you. You need to go back. People need to understand what happened.”
Samira didn’t answer right away.
For a mont, she just stood there, looking at Stella as if she were a child trying to repair a broken bridge with words. A muscle twitched in her jaw.
“Ten years.”
Samira’s voice ca out low, laden with sothing dense, heavy.
“Ten years have passed. And only now has soone decided to look for ? Only now… have you rembered that I exist?”
Her face darkened. Not just with anger—but with hurt. From everything that had been trapped during the years she had shouted into the void and no one had answered.
She looked to the side.
“Strax.”
The half-dragon looked up, attentive. But he didn’t speak — he just listened.
Samira closed her eyes for a mont, her breathing shaky, as if she were holding herself back from exploding. When she spoke again, her voice was tense, choked up:
“Can I… be selfish? Just for a mont?” She clenched her fists. “Can I think only of myself, what I feel, what I want — without having to explain myself to anyone?!”
Strax crossed his arms and let out a hoarse laugh.
“Since when do you need my permission for that?”
He walked slowly to her side, with that crooked smile that only Strax could maintain even in the face of chaos.
“You’ve always been selfish, Samira. You’ve always done what you wanted. You’ve always jumped off the cliff and thought about the consequences later.”
He stopped beside her, placing a huge, warm hand on her shoulder.
“And that’s why I like you so much.”
The air around Samira seed to tremble.
She was still staring at Stella, her gaze burning like embers. The expression was no longer one of pain or doubt—it was sothing more primitive. Sothing buried under years of silence, isolation, and abandonnt. Sothing that roared inside her, hungry to be heard.
“You want to take ho…” Samira murmured, and this ti, there was no echo of sadness—only contained fury. “You want to get out of here… after everything. After they left .”
The heat in the air rose abruptly, suffocating. The ground around them cracked with dry pops, as if sothing ancient was awakening beneath the skin of the world.
Strax rely took a step back, not interfering.
Yennifer moved away with a hiss between her teeth, already anticipating what was to co.
“Samira…” Monica began to speak, but was interrupted by a low, guttural roar—a sound that did not co from a woman’s throat, but from the depths of an ancient creature.
Samira’s skin began to glow, marked by incandescent red lines that spread across her body like living cracks. The stones beneath her feet lted. The air rippled around her like a furnace about to explode.
Stella took an instinctive step back. “Samira… what are you doing?”
But it was too late.
In a single fluid, destructive movent, Samira’s body was enveloped in a wave of scarlet fire. The world turned red. The flas rose like walls around her—not consuming, but revealing.
And then, with a crash that shook the rubble and cracked the columns of the square, the creature erged.
Where once there had been a woman, now there was a dragon.
Not an ordinary beast, but a scarlet colossus, its scales gleaming like freshly cut rubies. Its wings spread with a thunderous roar, sending wind and ash flying in all directions. Its horns curved backward like black blades, and its eyes—oh, its eyes—were beacons of living fury.
The dragon was Samira. And Samira was fury.
Stella fell to her knees, her body frozen by the impact of its presence. Never, in all her years of training, had she faced anything so overwhelming. The ground shook beneath the monster’s claws. The heat was unbearable, as if the sun itself had descended to judge.
And then, the roar.
It wasn’t just a sound. It was a direct attack on the soul. An ancient thunder that carried generations of pain, abandonnt, and savagery. The cry of one who had been alone for too long. The cry of a creature that no longer recognized the place from whence it ca.
The roar filled the world.
Stella didn’t even have ti to react.
The invisible impact hit her like a wall. Her body was thrown backward, her eardrums bursting, her vision shaking. She tried to scream, but there was no air. There was no voice. Everything was replaced by the sound—that sound.
And then… darkness.
Her body fell lifeless onto the rubble, her cloak still fluttering in the hot wind.
The dragon watched her from above, its eyes burning with rage and grief.
Cristine sighed, arms crossed. “It was just a conversation…”
Strax looked at Stella’s unconscious body and then at his sister’s colossal form.
“Did you really have to roar in her face?”
Samira, still in dragon form, let out a hot puff of air through her nostrils. And slowly, her form began to dissolve in flas, returning to her human silhouette, naked among the ashes, her skin sweaty and her eyes downcast.
“Yes,” she replied in a low, firm voice, now walking over to Stella. “I needed her to know what I’ve beco.”
She knelt beside her sister’s unconscious body, lightly touching her face with the warm palm of her hand.
“Maybe now she’ll understand… that I’ll never be who I was again.”
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