The Empires Serpents

The story begins when a shaken messenger boy appears at the docks with a serpent’s tooth and black eyes, followed by a linen-wrapped envoy who silently delivers an ouroboros talisman and a scorched map fragment pointing Scarlet inland to the marsh and the Temple of Ashroot. Strongy is already failing from serpent venom that makes him mutter in an ancient tongue, forcing the crew to sail that night. In the marsh they meet the masked Nadari and their matriarch, who lead Scarlet into a luminous cavern housing a fossilized “serpent’s
echo.” She reveals that the venom that marked Strongy was never meant to kill him—it was a summons meant to draw Scarlet to the Serpent’s domain because his tattoo has begun to change. She warns that the Serpent Queen the Nadari once served became immortal and hungry.

Scarlet, Araya, Strongy, and Skimpy cross the obsidian Serpent Gate into a living city of bioluminescent canopies, breathing stone, and masked citizens moving in spirals. The place itself feels alive, re-arranging around them. Strongy begins sleep-writing prophecies: “The throne sleeps. The sea stirs. The gold burns. The mark returns.” When Scarlet touches the inked walls, he sees a vision of Mydran, their imperial adversary, already in motion. Araya produces a shimmering scale given by what the serpent fears, and the Empire itself sends a living serpent to summon them with a single hissed word: Now.

In the star-roofed throne room, the Serpent Queen demands “equivalence.” Scarlet’s mark bound itself before the rites were complete; to keep the bond from unraveling and killing all tied to him, he must belong—serve—or the venom will return to everyone marked by his path. Araya admits the original ritual was incomplete. The Queen warns that if Scarlet leaves without her blessing, the curse will reawaken in all who have been touched: the boy in Port Sable, the healer’s daughter in Blacktree, even Scarlet’s father. Scarlet undergoes an inner trial in a mirror maze that shows dozens of possible Scarlet fates. At its heart, an immense stone serpent interrogates him. The mark is a punishment, and only by giving his truth— grief, not vengeance—will it yield the cure. When he opens that wound, a single drop of green light descends into his palm: the antidote.

Scarlet accepts the Queen’s terms and agrees to serve long enough to settle the balance. The mark sleeps, Strongy lives, but the binding is real and serpents never truly sleep. Around the edges of this apparent victory, the rot of the Empire shows. Strongy recounts visions of children taken, hands painted gold, tongues removed—one child bearing Scarlet’s eyes. Araya brings him to a pool with a vial of living sand and says, “We’re out of time.” The Serpent Empire is not merely sacred; it is predatory.

They leave the jungle carrying the cure and a heavier fate. The jungle whispers as they march toward new fronts, and Mydran’s stronghold smokes on the ridge. Back at the Isles, Leorah has held her people together with brittle diplomacy, but Mydran’s “protection and stabilization” papers are masks for annexation. Imperial ships crowd the horizon, and the envoy returns not with paper, but with steel. Scarlet refuses to call the Queen’s power; he will not be hers forever. He rallies the townsfolk from the bell tower, reframing the mark as a bond between protectors. The people respond, posting a new crest: shell, flame, and serpent lifting instead of devouring. Araya produces a map to the Veiled Shore, where the original bond was created, pointing to a new destination beyond both Isles and Empire.

As Mydran’s boats crash onto the sand, Scarlet burns the Queen’s sealed scroll and chooses freedom over borrowed power. The sea holds its breath, then the first screams rise from the shore. The prophecy is no longer sleeping. It is awake.