A Witch and her Dragon 004

 Chapter 4

Sabel didn’t rise. Her body belied her raging heartbeat at the arrival of the intruder.

She knew who it was the moment the doorknob turned.

Elias lingered near the door, cloaked in silence. His eyes swept the room, cataloging every rune, every flicker of her warded candle, before returning to her face. Sabels eyes locked on to his dark ones, the hood he wore covering his face is a dark shadow.

He smiled, teeth gleaming in the dim candlelight.

“I’m aware this is unorthodox,” he said softly, stepping forward. “But I know what you carry. And I know what it’s starting to do to you.”

Her pulse ticked in her throat. “You came into my room uninvited. That alone should answer whatever question you think you have.”

“You’re not safe here,” he continued, unbothered by her coldness. Another step. “You think you are, but... the Temple has changed, Sabel. Changed while you were gone.”

“And you think slipping into my quarters like a thief proves your point?”

He stopped at the edge of the candlelight, the flame casting strange shadows on his jaw.

“You still sleep with it near you.” He said it like a challenge. “Under your pillow. Wrapped, but not sealed.”

“I don’t recall telling you that.”

A flicker in his smile. “You didn’t.”

Her fingers inched slowly toward the blade beneath her bedding.

“I’d like to help you,” Elias said, almost kindly. “There are things moving beyond this Temple’s walls. The Head Witch won't say it aloud, but she knows we’re being watched. The Blade’s awakening draws too much attention.”

“And somehow you’re the one I should trust?” she asked coolly.

His gaze darkened for a beat—less like a storm, more like a sea with no bottom.

Then—

CRACK.

A sound like the sky breaking apart ripped through the chamber.

The candle snapped sideways in its holder. Stones groaned. The floor beneath Sabel’s feet shivered.

A roar shattered the stillness—long, low, and ancient- somewhere outside the Temple walls. A dragon’s call. No illusion could mimic it. No creature dared.

Elias flinched, just slightly.

Sabel didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

His mouth twisted. “Charming,” he muttered under his breath. “You keep dangerous company, Sabel.”

He stepped back into the darkness, already fading into the room’s edges. “We’ll speak again.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

And Sabel sat perfectly still in her bed, heart pounding. What a complete jackass.

She flung back the covers, walking to the window, the cool stone freezing her uncovered toes. In the distance, she saw the hint of dragon wings in the sky. 

Azrael was near.

❧❧❧ 

The sun broke across the Temple with deceptive softness, spilling golden light across the frost-glazed courtyards and warming the stone corridors with its false promise of peace.

Sabel hadn’t slept.

She sat on the edge of her bed, one hand resting atop the silken wrap that concealed the Ebony Blade beneath her pillow. The charm she’d drawn in haste last night still pulsed faintly against the steel, but its magic was sluggish—like her. The roar from Azrael had long since faded, and the silence that followed had grown teeth.

When she stepped into the corridor, robes straight, expression unreadable, Elias was already there.

“Sleep well?” he asked mildly, as if they hadn’t last spoken in shadows, in whispers, in the breath before danger.

Sabel swept past him without a word. He didn’t follow immediately, but when she arrived at the archives—a quiet sanctuary tucked behind the southern cloisters—he was already inside, leaning against a pillar with a scroll in hand.

“You’re just in time,” he said cheerfully, rolling it shut. “There’s a fascinating account here of relic containment. I thought you might find it useful.”

She didn’t reply. He was testing her patience, waiting for her to break. He had a handsome face, but beneath the surface was something very… slimey. His long finger’s reached out and stroked her unbound hair.

“A witch of your caliber, will need some help, I’m sure I can be the one to assist.” He said, letting the lock of hair slide through his palm.

She ignored him still, walking away in a stoney silence. Her fingers storked the spines of the books - she was looking for the old one about containment - she had studied it once before years ago.

She left after fifteen minutes. Elias trailed her again—effortlessly, as though gravity simply pulled him into her wake.

In the scrying hall, he appeared by the reflecting pool. In the herbarium, he offered her tea she hadn’t asked for. And in the garden—her garden, the one she used to tend when the world was softer—he arrived with the breeze, cloaked and unhurried.

“Running from me won’t change your situation,” he said, stepping along the moss-lined path. “The Temple isn’t what it was, Sabel. You’re not safe here, not without allies. I could be that, if you’d let me.”

She turned slowly. The garden was quiet, a flock of spellthrushes flitting through the trellis, the air fragrant with damp earth and mint.

“What exactly do you want from me?” she asked, voice cool and low.

Elias took a measured breath. “Only what’s best for you. The Blade isn’t meant to be carried alone. We could seal it. Store it. Let the burden fall to someone better prepared.”

Sabel held his gaze for a long time.

“You want me to give it to you.”

He smiled, slow and elegant. “Willingly, yes.”

The wind rustled the herbs behind her. Somewhere far above, Temple bells rang the hour—but the chime felt wrong. Too sharp. Like a warning.

Sabel brushed past him, not bothering to hide her disdain. “You mistake my weariness for weakness.”

Elias didn’t follow this time. But his voice floated behind her, calm and certain:

“We all surrender something eventually, Sabel. Let’s hope, when you do, it’s to the right hand.”

__

Days passed. Each dawn greeted Sabel with warm tea, kind voices, and a pleasant illusion of belonging. Yet beneath the Temple’s polished stone and careful ritual, she felt something hollow thrumming in the walls. A familiar itch tugged at her senses. Not magic—but misalignment.

The blade beneath her bed remained untouched. Sealed with an ever-tightening ward of her own making, it rested like a buried ember—quiet, but not dormant. No one had come to retrieve it. No official ritual had been prepared. No rites, no relics, no cleansing circle. Only silence dressed as protocol.

And Elias.

He lingered more each day.

Trailing behind her during morning devotions. Appearing across the library with books she hadn’t requested. Smiling too often. Watching too closely.

He wasn’t unkind. That was the danger of it. His presence was like a warm mist—easy to ignore until you realized how damp your bones had become.

It was on the fifth day that she noticed the ring.

He had stopped to speak to her during her return from the Sanctum archives, offering some innocuous phrase about tradition or balance—she hadn’t really listened. But when he had reached for the book under his arm, a glint of metal slipped from his robe’s inner fold and hit the floor with a soft ping.

Sabel bent to pick it up without thinking.

A seal ring. Simple. Silver band with a flat crest stamped deep. Not Temple-issue. The rune etched into the face of the ring wasn’t one she recognized—a spiral entwined with flame, surrounded by a pattern of narrow eyes.

“Your ring,” she murmured, offering it to him.

But Elias froze—only for a second. Then his smile resumed, sharp and smooth. “Ah. Thank you.”

He took it and slid it back into his pocket with practiced ease.

But the symbol was already etched into her mind.

That evening, she found a quiet corner of the Lower Hall and opened one of the few surviving copies of Sigils of the Isles, a book she hadn’t touched in decades. Her breath caught the moment her eyes landed on the page.

The same spiral. The same eyes.

Isle-born. Drekkan seal. Allegiance: Gannuk.

Her stomach turned to stone.

The next morning, she waited until the eastern corridor was clear, and followed the ringing of bells to find him.

She found Elias already waiting.

“I was wondering when you’d come.”

Sabel didn’t sit. The scrying hall was empty—too early for apprentices, too late for temple guards. High ceilings, wide shadows, and silence thick as ash.

“I gave this place the benefit of the doubt,” she said evenly. “I believed, foolishly, that I was returning to something trustworthy. But you…”

He tilted his head. “Me?”

She drew the ring from her pocket and tossed it to his feet.

“I’m done playing games.”

Elias’s smile vanished.

His eyes stayed on the ring where it rested between them, glinting faintly against the marble floor.

“You shouldn’t have taken that,” he said quietly.

“And you shouldn’t have lied.”

The silence snapped between them.

In a heartbeat, he was no longer calm.

Power rushed the room like a storm through shattered glass. He surged forward, one hand crackling with voidlight. Sabel shouted a shield into existence just before the blast struck, searing light burning her fingertips.

He moved with violent intent—no pretense now, no courtesy. He wasn’t here to talk. He was here to kill her.

The blade in her room. Her link to Azrael. Her past. She knew too much.

She stumbled back, heart pounding, magic flaring.

And then—

CRACK.

A roar split the sky with such force that the chamber windows fractured inward. Shards of glass scattered everywhere - but not one touching Sabel.

The floor shuddered. The shadows shrieked.

Elias recoiled, one hand over his heart as if something unseen had seized it. The spell on his lips dissolved to smoke.

Sabel stared past him toward the far columns, where dust shook loose from the ceiling and lanterns flickered in stunned silence.

Outside, in the distance—but not far—something massive howled.

The entire Temple heard it. Anyone on the continent would have - her ears still rang from the sound.

Elias straightened, every trace of charm long gone. His face was pale, furious. The human facade he wore faded, as his dark eyes melted into his true elven form. 

“This isn’t over,” he growled, scooping up the ring. “We will speak again.”

He vanished into the shadows, cloak trailing sparks.

Sabel didn’t move. Her hands trembled as adrenaline faded.

She had no illusions left.

The Temple had been compromised. 

It was time to leave. Once again.