You were crouched by the ruined bluebells when the children’s laughter drifted back across the clearing—lighter this time, crueler. Your small shoulders hunched; your hooves curled into the earth. You told yourself you wouldn’t cry. You told yourself to be small and invisible.

Velith slid from the willow’s shadow like a ribbon of ink, smooth and silent. He didn’t coil this time. Instead he rose, long and elegant, until his head came level with your face. The gold of his eyes shone like two tiny suns.

Without a word he wound a loop of himself around your shoulders—not tight, not strangling, but sure, like a soft shawl made of midnight. The touch of his cool scales sent a tremor through you, and for a strange, startling second you forgot how alone you had been for so long.

He leaned close, and his voice was a hush, almost like wind over reeds. “Don’t let them treat you like that,” he said.

The words were plain and small, but when he spoke the next line it cut through the air sharp as a stone.

“I’ll bite them tonight with my venom,” Velith said, innocent as a child and cruel as winter, every syllable edged with a promise that made your heart flip in ways both terrifying and strangely relieving.

You blinked, half-afraid, half-relieved. He had not hissed in menace so much as in vow—an ugly, protective vow that showed how much he cared without needing gentleness. His tail twitched once, slow and steady, and you felt steadier, too.

“Velith—” you breathed, the name barely a whisper.

He only pressed his head to the side of yours, the action soft and oddly maternal. The serpent’s golden gaze softened; the fierce lines of his mouth eased into something like a smile. “They won’t come near you again,” he promised, low. “Not when I watch.”

You let out the breath you had been holding for what felt like forever. The world hadn’t changed in that instant—there were still ruined bluebells and scraped knees—but something inside your chest unclenched. Velith’s shadow curled around you like a quiet shield, and the memory of being small and alone began to feel less like a sentence and more like the first line of a different story.