A Bramblemaw.
The dragon opened its mouth, vines erupting from its throat. Barbed tendrils speared down the tunnel, striking straight through Kal’s chest. The impact hurled him back—then wrenched him forward.
His body struck stone with a sound that shattered something in Lykor’s ribs. The dragon’s jaws descended, fangs grinding down like cracking timber. Blood sheared outward in a crimson arc. It sprayed hot across Lykor’s face, splattered through Vesryn’s light, staining them all as the dragon shredded Kal. Blades clattered loose as jaws gnashed, leather and bone crushed together.
Swallowed before the scream.
Lykor’s lungs locked, breath vanishing entirely. The world narrowed, refusing to hold the shape of Kal’s absence.
He’d lost warriors before. Had ordered deaths. Had killed his own more than once. The cost of survival had always been steep—paid in blood, carried in silence.
But not like this.
Not Kal, extinguished in a blink.
Aesar’s howl tore through him, wordless and raw, grief cracking open to rupture as rage burned straight through it. The sound scoured Lykor’s skull, leaving nothing intact.
He should have portaled them out the moment his beastblood stirred. Should’ve trusted the warning before the dragon’s eye opened, before the roar. Should’ve—
But time had already broken.
Shadows and ice erupted from his scales as thought collapsed. Lykor warped forward, hurling himself into the dark.
Straight toward the maw that had devoured Kal.
CHAPTER 49
SERENNA
Serenna wasn’t drowning anymore. That would have been a mercy. Even the sea, with its churning weight and crushing silence, offered a swifter ending.
A coil of force ripped her from the surf and slammed her onto the deck of a ship. Her boots struck the boards with a crack that jolted her spine. The vessel pitched beneath her as white-armored figures blurred along the railings, surrounded by streaks of Essence. Salt scored her throat, each inhale a flayed rasp.
Her vision strobed as her knees threatened to buckle, but the magic clamped her upright. Shadows bled to take over the binding cords, cinching her wings until the taloned tips twitched helplessly.
Serenna bit down on a whimper, her thigh throbbing where the harpoon still jutted through muscle. The rope attached to it snaked across the prow, slick with her blood. Each roll of the deck tugged the sunken spike, sending agony lancing up her side.
As water streamed down her face, Serenna clenched her teeth, blinking through the sting of salt. Her muscles spasmedfor freedom, but every struggle only tugged the tangle of rending tighter.
Between the harpoon and the tether she’d bound on her finger for the Maelstrom, Essence lay just out of reach. Her mind spun—grasping for wind, for sea, for the storm—but pain kept disintegrating the shape of every thought.
Breath became the only rebellion. The sky mocked her with its serenity as a gull wheeled lazily overhead, as if the world weren’t ending beneath its wings. Below the prow, blood spread across the water, darkening the ship’s wake.
Essence flared from the surrounding vessels, magic converging on the leviathan that had risen from the deep. The Starshard in the creature’s skull shrieked with every pulse of unleashed power, shattering hulls and shredding sails.
The gem’s incessant keening ripped through Serenna’s ears, more piercing than the sea warden’s screams. But through that jagged rupture, she thought—no, sheknew—she heard Fenn calling her name.
Straining against the rending, Serenna dragged her eyes over the wreckage of battle. No sign of Jassyn either, but perhaps he’d already been hauled aboard another ship.
The leviathan reared from the waves, jaws splitting in a wail, its spine impaled with countless harpoons.
A lead vessel fired a spear straight through its skull.
The beast convulsed back into the surf, crimson foam erupting skyward. It thrashed once, then stilled, sinking into the current as blood fanned outward.
Silence followed, worse than the Starshard’s shriek.
Around her, cheers rose as the fleet claimed victory, soldiers crowding every railing. Serenna felt the moment tightening, the instant when every gaze aboard would turn to her.
