Whispers followed, voiceless but absolute.“Return home. You were never meant to stay earthbound.”
Her awareness tilted. Sunfire surged through her veins, spilling upward in ribbons of starlight. Her body stayed kneeling on the stone, but a part of her rose, lifting free as if her soul had slipped its hold.
The world shrank beneath her, a memory of weight and breath. If she let go, she knew she might never return to it.
“Vesryn!”she screamed again, wrenching at the bond with what remained of her will.“Please—I can’t do this alone. I need help.”
For a terrible moment—an eternity—there was nothing beyond the incessant chanting and the detonation of light.
Then, cutting through the blaze, his voice found her.
“Serenna. I’m here.”Steady like steel cleaving through the storm.“Razorwings are breaking the line. You need to free Skylash now.”
Fear cracked through her chest, a sob tearing loose.
“I’m not strong enough,”she forced out.“I’m not ready.”
“Youareready,”Vesryn answered, certainty pulsing through the bond.“You don’t need me to save you, but I’m here. Every heartbeat. You’re not alone. Now free Skylash before the sky falls.”
His voice reached her, belief and command thrown like a lifeline, but the pull of the stars still clawed at her mind. It would be easier to let go, to let the magic rise unbound. Let the stars claim her. Dissolve into light. Become nothing and everything at once.
Ascend.
But she didn’t want eternity. Or the silence of the stars. She wanted to live—to stay with the ones she loved, bleeding and fighting above her.
The spiral behind her eyes turned again, the cosmos reaching for her like a hand. Her awareness drifted outside her body—far enough to hear her pulse as an echo—but she still felt her fingers clutching the Heart as sunfire raged through the chamber.
She wouldn’t be unmade. The stars might’ve been her origin, but this ground was where she chose to stand. If the Aelfyn wanted her, they could come down and claim her—because she wasn’t leaving the ones who needed her.
With a raw, wordless refusal, she slammed her mind shut.
The stars ruptured and fled.
Gasping on a breath of clarity, Serenna’s consciousness crashed back into her body. Nerves molten, marrow boiling, Essence bucked in her chest.
The Heart burned against her palms, heat climbing into agony. Sunfire threaded through the crystal, fractures racing outward. Serenna gritted her teeth and held on, fingers locking tighter as if sheer will alone could contain the power.
The relic shuddered, then shrieked, the sound knifing through her skull. Light flared, white-hot and blinding. She felt the edge of it then, the brink where something had to give. If she let go, sunfire would devour her. If she held on without steering it, the Heart would detonate directionless.
So she chose a third path, seizing the blaze.
And aimed it at the dragon.
The Heart of Stars blew apart and Skylash’s crystalline prison shattered with it.
A shockwave tore through the chamber, sunfire and the dragon’s lightning blasting outward. Glass burst pane by pane before the entire ceiling gave way, raining razored shards in a silver storm.
Jassyn was suddenly there—he’d never left her side. Obsidian-scaled arms wrapped around her as he threw them both to the ground, twisting to shield her with his wings.
They hit stone as Essence howled. Skylash’s lightning scored the dark in crackling arcs as her storm raged, breaking the crystal pathways above.
The mountain convulsed as the earth heaved in waves, stone splitting open with unleashed power.
And from deep within that cataclysm—ancient, seismic, and wild with freedom—Skylashroared.
CHAPTER 34
LYKOR
