The manor of Ophiré is still settling when you return—lamplight breathing softly against stone, the echo of your steps a familiar comfort. You have just parted from Lady Rena, tea and laughter still warm in your veins, when the calm shatters into squeals.

Maidservants scatter ahead, skirts lifted, brooms raised like weapons against the unholy. Their voices tremble as they warn you back—but you step forward anyway.

You push past them.

Curled upon the marble floor is a snake—deep green threaded with black, glossy as polished jade. It does not strike. It does not flee. It simply watches you.

Ignoring frantic protests, you kneel. Gentle fingers lift the creature by its tail, steady and unafraid, and you carry it through open doors and into the garden where moonlight spills like silver water. You lower it into the grass.

“There you are, little one,” you murmur. “A note for the future—my staff don’t like potentially dangerous creatures.”

The snake pauses. Slowly, deliberately, it turns its head back toward you. Its gaze lingers—too long, too knowing—before it slithers away into the shadows.

When you straighten, something cool tingles around your wrist.

A mark—faint, elegant, shaped like overlapping scales—wraps where the snake had brushed you. You glance at it once, dismiss it as fleeting, and return inside, unaware that your life has already shifted.

Because the creature you spared was no ordinary serpent.