The words lashed out before Jassyn could cage them, nothing like his voice at all. Lykor’s growl lived in that command, and Jassyn seized the echo, needing its steadiness more than the safety of silence.
Fenn huffed something under his breath, but warped.
He reappeared below them, snatching Cinderax out of the air as another violent gust tore past where the dragon had been. Vanishing in a blink, Fenn materialized back at Jassyn’s side, his wings strumming hard.
Cinderax hissed, claws raking against armor as he wedged himself against Fenn’s shoulder, fangs bared into the storm as if daring it to try again.
Jassyn forced his focus downward, stomach lurching as the eye stretched below him—a plunging chasm of water where the sky’s light speared into the dark sea. The Maelstrom carved through the waves, dragging itself across the ocean in a slow, inexorable crawl that tugged their flight in its wake.
Mist salted his lashes and he blinked through the burn. He hurled a coil of fire into the abyss and watched its glow sink through veils of deepening shadow until it vanished entirely, leaving only the sense of a bottomless fall waiting to claim them.
They tipped forward into the descent. The wind’s roar thinned as water replaced the storm’s fury, spinning them downward through a hollowed pillar of sea. Lightning continued to crawl through the column, each jagged pulse illuminating the constricting eye in flashes.
Shrinking fast, the surface shimmered high overhead—no longer a reachable plane of safety but a distant sheen offractured light. Depth warped the sea, shapes stirring beyond the spinning walls.
Serenna gasped as something sleek cleaved a shadow through the water before slipping out of sight. Jassyn’s spine prickled, beastblood sensing what his eyes could not. But he shoved the fear aside and led the way deeper.
The hollow narrowed as they descended, the air thickening with every wingbeat. Disturbed silt billowed upward from a few dozen paces below, rising like smoke from the ocean floor.
And there—caught in the lightning’s flicker and untouched by current or tide—a glimmer flashed in the dark.
The Heart of Stars.
The relic hung in perfect stillness, supported by nothing Jassyn could sense. Keeping distance, he halted well above it, the others slowing to hover beside him. Any closer and they might trigger something catastrophic.
“I don’t see any Starshards guarding it,” Serenna murmured, her gaze sweeping the sandy floor below. But her wing talons twitched, betraying how little she trusted the way it waited.
Jassyn’s claws trembled with the same unease, feeling as if the entire ocean hung poised to collapse in a single breath.
One of Fenn’s fangs clicked against a ring in his lip as he glanced at Cinderax, the dragon’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I rather suspect this won’t be as simple as plucking the Heart free.”
Jaw tight, Jassyn silently agreed as he looked up, the world lurching with a sickening tilt. The ocean loomed above like a vault of black glass, the sky beyond reduced to a pinprick. Vertigo spun through his skull, and he swallowed back the rush of nausea crowding his throat before steering his gaze downward.
“I have a feeling the second we touch the Heart, the ocean will come crashing down.”
Serenna shuddered, eyes catching his. “Do you think we can hold it back?”
Jassyn forced the worry from his voice. “We don’t have a choice.”
“I’ll go,” Fenn said, eyes flaring. “You two hold the sea.”
Pressure rolled off Serenna in a wave. She shoved her hands out, preparing to bend the ocean’s weight.
Jassyn stretched his awareness wide to meet hers, every nerve igniting as he braced himself against the drag of water. He gave a single nod and Fenn folded his wings and warped.
A heartbeat later he reappeared below, boots sinking into silt, Cinderax still perched watchful on his shoulders.Jassyn held his breath as Fenn’s talons closed around the Heart.
The Maelstrom seemed to still as though the ancient force had fixed its attention on them. Jassyn’s gut twisted as he glanced at Serenna and asked, “Can Fenn take all of us to the surface?”
“Maybe,” she whispered, eyes locked on Fenn and Cinderax. “If we keep a path clear. He can’t warp through water.” She hesitated. “Or swim.”
Muscles straining, Fenn heaved against the Heart, but the relic resisted. As if in protest, it flared with the colors of Fenn’s talents, filaments of light appearing and lashing out to net his claw.
Cinderax released a piercing trill. His wings snapped wide as he unleashed a gout of fire at the Heart, heat rippling outward against the walls of water. Fenn’s arm shifted to scales before the strike, absorbing the blaze without a mark.
Leathery frills flared along Cinderax’s skull as his fire deepened—gold morphing into red, red bleeding into an impossible black that ravaged the light. The relic’s bindings writhed around Fenn’s claw, but the black flame seized them, heat blistering and burning the strands away. When the finalthread of magic snapped, the Heart tore free, the force of it staggering Fenn back a step.
He glanced up, then warped to Jassyn’s side. His wings strummed the air in steady rhythm as fire faded from Cinderax’s fangs.
