The Maw was fucking chaos.
Lykor’s portal spat him and Zaeryn into the sky above the Blackreach, just north of the summit where he and Jassyn had scouted. The stormfront hit the same instant, slamming like a hammer swung by the sky. Lightning raked the clouds, the air writhing in its own fury.
Trella shrieked as she caught the wind, wings flaring wide. The gale punched beneath her feathers, wrenching her sideways, every wingbeat a battle of strength to stay aloft.
Behind them, his rift sealed shut after Zaeryn and her dracovae emerged. A bolt of lightning obliterated the space a heartbeat later, vaporizing air in a flash of white.
Half-blinded by the strike, Lykor’s vision stuttered back in violent pulses. They’d arrived before Rimeclaw. Barely. The sky trembled like it already sensed the dragon’s approach.
Daeryn’s forces held the summit in a clustered ring, little more than a line of bodies against the storm. If they were still fighting, then Jassyn was still below—enduring what Lykor should’ve faced at his side.
He killed the thought before it could rise. Jassyn had given the order and no amount of bleeding over it would rewrite that truth, despite every breath after feeling borrowed.
Above the rim of the mountain, the scalebound hurled fire into the clouds while lightning answered in jagged strikes. Even from this distance, Lykor saw the defense collapsing. Razorwings swarmed the air. Druids dove through broken currents. Warriors sprinted across the summit in scattered formation.
More desperate than coordinated.
Trella released a keening shrill, slicing through the gale as a downdraft hurled her off balance. Lykor’s breath ripped free of his lungs, the wind clawing past his ears.
Aesar seized control in that instant, hips, knees, and spine locking into alignment. Lykor yielded just enough to stay upright in the saddle.
Fire and lightning combusted in front of them in a white-hot collision. Lykor gritted his teeth as Trella swooped. He cinched his scales tighter over his skin. He could survive a strike—maybe two—but Trella wouldn’t.
Zaeryn rode the sky at his flank, her dracovae a streak of rust carving the storm. Heat from her flames hissed against Lykor’s senses but he kept his eyes forward, forcing himself to trust that she’d protect what he couldn’t.
Before Lykor could orient himself, the mountain erupted. A column of molten sunfire speared from the summit’s core, ravaging the storm.
Serenna.
His gut knotted with the terrible clarity of consequence. If she lost control of that power, Jassyn would be among the first to burn.
Lightning catapulted toward the peak in relentless volleys, but still their forces held—bolts caught midair and flung back into the sky.
It wouldn’t last.
He couldn’t reach them in time.
Couldn’t shield what was already breaking.
Yet the instinct still clawed beneath his ribs—drag Jassyn out of whatever stars-scorched pit they’d cracked open. Be there if it all came crashing down.
“He doesn’t need you dying for him,”Aesar murmured in his mind.“Let them finish what they started. We’re here for Rimeclaw.”
Lykor’s knuckles blanched against the saddle. Trella banked, every wingbeat thudding through his spine. He exhaled slowly as cold rain slashed across his face.
He blinked.
Rain.
The storm Kaedryn had sworn would never break.
A chill struck his scales, slicking Trella’s wings in a silver sheen as the wind heaved sideways. Fighting for balance, she snapped her beak at the gale. Lykor leaned low and braced, fingers buried in her feathers.
The wrongness hit him first, a pressure coiling beneath his sternum. A reckoning presence.
Rimeclaw.
Squinting, he scanned the storm, searching for the dragon as ice began to descend. Razored spears, long as lances, screamed earthward. They slammed into cliffs and ravines, bursting on impact in violent sprays of glittering frost. One tore straight through a razorwing, shredding its wings before the creature spun down into the Blackreach in a screeching plunge.
