MARKED FOR PRETEND - Chapter 58: Chapter 58

The first morning, she did nothing.No training, no spells, no questions.
She sat by the window in Kaden’s quarters, wearing his shirt, drinking tea gone cold. The world outside moved distant, watchful but inside, time stood still.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t rage.
She remembered.
⸻
“The child will be the bridge,” her mother had whispered once, long ago. “And every bridge is meant to be walked on. Or burned.” She had never understood what that meant.
Now she did.
⸻
The second morning, she asked Bevy for a list. Not of enemies, but of those who bowed.
She wanted to know names, motives, loyalties.
“Because if I have followers,” she told Bevy, “I need to know if they’ll kneel for me… or bury me the moment I turn my back.”
⸻
The third morning, she went to the place the witch had died. The stone ring beneath the ash tree.
The place Chelsea had first been marked. She stood barefoot in the dew, the wind scraping softly through the trees. Her mark pulsed once… then again.
“I don’t want worship,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be a goddess. Or a gate. Or a prophecy.” She closed her eyes. “But I can’t be a girl anymore either.”
⸻
The magic stirred in the earth.
Not angry.
Not impatient.
Just waiting.
She opened her palms, letting it rise.
Not Nyra’s voice. Not Kaelvarin. Not anyone else’s.
Her own.
“I am Chelsea Krippa.”
“I am not your weapon.”
“But if you make me bleed again—”
“I will become your reckoning.”
⸻
In the woods, birds scattered.
In the Keep, a chandelier cracked.
In the vaults where old magic slept, something opened one eye.
And deep in the misty hills beyond Duskveil, the third faction the one who never knelt, never spoke, never swore felt the shift.
And began to march.