She sucked in a sharp breath as understanding flooded through her?—
But suddenly, the sky went silent.
Then black.
A hush swept over the crowd as thousands of faces turned upward in impossible unison. Serenya tilted her head back, her heart slamming against her ribs.
A black shape spread across the clouds like a mouth opening to swallow the sun. The volcanic light of Cinderhollow dimmed to nothing, leaving only the eerie glow of lava canals to illuminate faces frozen in terror.
The lullaby—the same haunting melody from the Weeping March—drifted down from above. But this time it was twisted, predatory, weaving through the air like audible poison. One by one, the citizens fell into a strange trance, their eyes going glassy and distant.
Vaelrik growled low, a sound that vibrated through the bond and straight into her bones. His hand found her wrist, anchoring her as the corrupted song tried to sink its hooks into her mind.
Then the sky ruptured.
Shadow creatures poured downward in torrents, their forms writhing and shifting as they descended like living nightmare given form. The crowd erupted into screams and chaos as people snapped out of their trance, terror overriding the lullaby’s influence.
Across the square, Serenya saw Archon Serect’s expression break for the first time—pure, raw horror replacing his political mask.
He’d thought he could control this. He’d thought he could weaponize Gloamrot for his own ends. He’d thought political shields could protect him from the consequences of his ambition.
He was catastrophically wrong.
The Shadowbinder had come to wreak his own havoc. And he’d chosen the moment of Serect’s greatest lie to reveal his true agenda.
EIGHTEEN
VAELRIK
The moment the first shadow creature struck the obsidian stone square, Vaelrik’s world narrowed to a single imperative.
Protect Serenya.
No thought. No hesitation. Just pure dragon.
His hand shot out, his fingers closing around Serenya’s waist as he hauled her behind him. The obsidian beneath their feet cracked in spiderwebs of fractured stone as more shadow creatures landed from the rift in the blackened sky. Screams erupted from every corner of Cinderhollow’s square. Citizens scattered like startled birds, their terror a living thing that fed the creatures descending from above.
But what made his curse snarl inside him wasn’t the chaos—it was the scent of Gloamrot thickening the air like poisoned honey. Above them, the sky twisted in ways no mortal realm should endure, reality bending and warping as if the Shadowbinder had torn a piece of the Gloam itself and dragged it here.
Serect allowed this to happen,Vaelrik thought with crystalline fury.
The bastard’s political hunger had blinded him to what he’d unleashed centuries ago by funding Rowen’s research. And now the Shadowbinder hadn’t sent a warning or an experiment.
He’d sent a massacre.
His dragon roared beneath his skin, demanding release. The shadowfire that had been dormant and controlled since claiming Serenya now snapped to attention like a blade drawn from its sheath. Through their strengthening mate bond, he felt her pulse spike—not with fear, but with resolve sharp as any weapon.
“Stay close,” he growled, his voice already roughening as the shift began.
The transformation tore through him like wildfire. Bones cracked and reshaped. Muscles expanded. Black scales erupted across his skin in rippling waves of obsidian armor. His roar shattered windows as his massive wings unfurled, casting shadows across the square that made the descending shadow creatures hesitate.
Kyr,he projected to his second-in-command, the telepathic link snapping into place as other Obsidian dragons shifted around the square.Form defensive lines. Get the civilians out.
On it,came Kyr’s mental reply, edged with the particular satisfaction of a soldier finally unleashed for battle.Watch your back—these things move wrong.
Vaelrik’s massive head swung toward the nearest cluster of shadow creatures, and he understood what Kyr meant immediately. These weren’t beasts or constructs. They moved with predatory intelligence, hunting with purpose rather than mere hunger. Their forms shifted and writhed as they descended, adapting to threats in real time.
His tail lashed out and his shadowfire erupted from his mouth, incinerating two creatures before they could touch the ground. The blast sent tremors through the obsidian beneath him, but it was the scent of their destruction that made hiscurse purr with dark satisfaction. Their corruption magic met his shadowfire, and the shadows simply... ceased to exist.
