My ears ring, my chest heaves. I don’t move at first—can’t. Every part of me’s buzzing, overloaded, like my magic hasn’t caught up to the fact that it’s done. That I did it.Earth, I have Earth Threads?
Lungs heavy, limbs shaking, I take a breath and stagger forward, scanning the debris. It’s a mess—still, the white robes stand out fast. The short one’s spine is twisted at a sickening angle, limbs crumpled beneath beams. The tall one has a metal bar clean through his chest. Splintered wood pins his one good arm to the ground.
They don’t move.
Dead. Both of them.
The sight should bring relief, yet something still twists in my gut, cold and sour, because I can see their faces now. Eyes wide, black to the edges—but not unfamiliar. The shorter one—red hair, I know that face. It’s the cadet from our year. Finn fought him once during a Demonstration, he later volunteered for Serrane’s inner circle like it was a badge of honour.
But the other, the one with one arm...Heat rushes my face, but my fingers go ice-cold.What the fuck, it’s the baker? The father Strannt took, the one Talen was meant to take?—
“Lyra!”
I spin as Rowan rushes toward me, wide-eyed, pale, his boots kicking up dust.
“Shit, are you okay?” he asks as he runs inside the shack.
My chest is still heaving. I taste blood and smoke, ribs throbbing, but I’m upright.
“Yeah,” I gasp. “I think... I’m okay.”
His eyes catch on the wreckage behind me. The robes. The bodies. Then he looks back at me.
“I don’t know where they came from,” I say, fast, words tumbling now. “But Rowan—their eyes were black, hollow. Like the dragon. Like those people you saw in Ashvale....”
Rowan stares, head shaking slowly like he’s trying to force the pieces into place. Like they’ll rearrange into something that makesanyfucking sense. They don’t.
Something shifts behind him, through the window in the distance, I spot Ezzy weaving through the scrubland, heading toward us. He spots her too, shit, not now.
“We don’t have time for this.” I mutter, turning away, forcing myself to move towards the door. “We’ll figure it out later. We just need to find that Relic.”
Rowan nods, and we step outside.I turn to say something, but suddenly his eyes snap wide, fixed on something behind me.
“Lyra—”
A gust slams into my back, catching in my hair, ripping dust up off the ground. Then?—
THUMP...
The earthshudders.
A low, vibrating growl hums up through the stone.
I turn.
And everything in me drops. My heart lurches, I try to swallow, but it sticks halfway.
The dragon towers over us—close enough to feel the heat bleeding off its chest with every breath. Close enough to see themoonlight catch on its obsidian scales—a living lattice of armour shifting with each inhale.
Its nostrils flare, teeth sharp, eyesblack.
Its chest expands.
Fuck.
“MOVE!” I scream, shoving Rowan, body already in motion, legs screaming as we dive behind the half-collapsed shack. The impact hits hard—splinters, stone, dust grinding raw against skin—just as the world behind us erupts.
Flames roar past us, but the heat slams into me like a wall—liquid fire in my lungs with every inhale. Can’t see. Can’t breathe. Air thick enough to chew. I drag my arm over my face, coughing hard.
