The High Elder is in her meditation chamber. The door is locked, but a pulse of combined magic—my water pressure, her lightning strike—shatters the mechanism. We push inside.
She’s sitting on her platform, blind eyes tracking us with unnerving accuracy. “Sentinel Blackwater. AmbassadorStormwright.” Her voice is calm, as if expecting us. “You’ve changed.”
“High Elder.” I bow deeply, pulling Zara down with me. “We came to?—”
“I know why you came.” She tilts her head, listening to something only she can hear. “The water tells me. Your blood sings differently now. Lightning and depth, merged at the source. You’ve become what we’ve feared for generations.”
“And what we needed,” Zara says quietly.
The High Elder’s lips quirk into something that might be a smile. “Yes. That too.” She rises, water swirling around her feet in patterns that might be language. “Caspian moves on the dam as we speak. His ritual is already begun. When the structure fails—and it will fail, his hydrokinesis is strong enough—the valley will flood. Every settlement. Every farm. Every Sky-dweller nest between here and the coast.”
“How long?” I ask.
“Hours. Perhaps less.” She moves toward us, blind but unerring. “You must stop him. But not with force alone. You must show him—show all of them—that what you’ve become isn’t an ending. It’s a beginning.”
“How?” Zara’s frustration bleeds through the bond. “He won’t listen. He’s too consumed by grief?—”
“Then don’t speak to his grief. Speak to his hope.” The High Elder reaches out, her ancient hand finding Zara’s face. “You’re the first Storm Eagle to complete a bond with a Deep Runner in three hundred years. The first to survive the transformation. The first to prove that integration doesn’t destroy—it multiplies.” Her fingers trace the changed feathers. “You’re walking proof that we can evolve. That we can be more than our isolation allows.”
She turns to me. “And you, Torin Blackwater. You chose love over duty. Sky over deep. Life over the slow death of tradition.”Her hand finds my chest, resting over my heart. “Your sister would be proud. Mira always wanted to see the sky. Now you carry it with you.”
The mention of Mira’s name cracks something open in my chest. Through the bond, Zara feels it—my grief, my guilt, my desperate hope that I’m honoring her memory instead of betraying it.
“Go,” the High Elder says. “Stop Caspian. Save the valley. Show the Deep Runners what we can become if we’re brave enough to change.” She steps back. “And when you return—if you return—we’ll begin the real work. Building bridges. Opening borders. Teaching old water-dwellers that the sky isn’t poison. It’s possibility.”
“Thank you, High Elder.” Zara bows again, deeper this time. Respect given freely.
“Thank me by surviving.” The Elder moves back to her platform. “The storm is coming. Be the storm that changes everything.”
We turn to leave, but her voice stops us at the door.
“One more thing, Sentinel. When you face Caspian—remember that grief makes monsters of us all. Show him mercy if you can. Not for his sake. For yours.”
I nod, though she can’t see it. Can sense it through the water, probably.
We run.
The Citadel entranceopens onto the subterranean lake. Dawn light filters through the hole far above, turning the water silver-gold. Beautiful. Deceptive. Hiding the genocide being planned beneath its serene surface.
Zara spreads her wings—fully healed, transformed, powerful. Storm-gray feathers catch the light, and I see her exactly as I did that first day. Falling from the sky. Impossible. Perfect.
Except now she’s mine. And I’m hers. And together we’re something that shouldn’t exist but does.
“The dam is two hours upstream,” I tell her. “If I swim fast?—”
“And if I fly?” She tests her wings, generating lift that seems stronger than before. “Faster?”
“Much faster.” I shift fully, dropping to all fours as my body transforms into my otter-sleek water form. But it’s different now. Electricity crackles along my scales, golden veins pulsing with her lightning. I’m faster like this. Stronger. More than I was.
Zara grins—fierce and wild and exactly the storm I fell in love with. “Can you keep up?”
I bare my teeth in what might be a smile. “Try me.”
She launches into the air, wings catching thermals I can’t see but feel through the bond. She circles once, lightning dancing along her feathers, then arrows toward the distant opening.
I dive into the water and swim.
The lake is vast, but I’m faster than I’ve ever been. Electricity pulses with each stroke, propelling me forward in ways hydrokinesis alone never could. The water parts for me like I’m cutting through silk instead of liquid. Through the bond, I feel Zara above—her joy at flying, her determination, her absolute faith that we can do this.
