Lykor shoved harder, Aesar screaming through him. Shadows flared inside the ice as he forced it longer, sharper, colder—his wrath forging every reaching inch.
Crystalline eyes flashed as the dragon’s jaws snapped shut. Ice shattered, shards crunching between its fangs, mocking the futility of their rage.
The backlash ripped through Lykor’s arm. He staggered, knees buckling before he caught himself. Disbelief hollowed him from within, a silence where triumph should have stood.
The Bramblemaw didn’t seem to register pain as more warriors and wraith charged it and fell—a stars-cursed executioner that refused to die.
Sightless eyes gleamed as it lunged, movements stiff and jerking out of time. Stone rippled beneath its talons and roots tore from the walls as the mountain contorted beneath its bulk.
Cracks opened in the stone under their boots. A ranger’s scream cut short as she disappeared, the mountain devouring her whole.
A wraith flew back from the dragon’s grappling vines, but the tunnel twisted and snared him, stone sealing shut.
Lykor warped away, air in his lungs sheared short as fangs gnashed where he’d stood a moment before. He hurled a lance of shadows at the exposed divots between the Bramblemaw’s ribs, already knowing the strike was useless.
Fire streaked through the dark. Wings ablaze, Vesryn hurtled forward like a comet. He slammed into the stone beside Lykor, the impact flinging shards of rock through the tunnel.
Between his palms, a sphere of light ignited. The glow pulsed. Intensified. Then ruptured into sunfire, blazing in his hands like a captive star.
Heat slammed into Lykor’s scales, a tidal wave that scoured the walls. Essence roared through the stone, pounding into the bones of the mountain. The radiance shuddered with each breath Vesryn took—too vast to hold, too wild to survive, too violent to belong to anything forged of this world.
“You ready to burn it?” Vesryn hissed, smoke spilling between his teeth, barely containing the light.
Lykor bared his fangs as the Bramblemaw charged. No screams echoed down the tunnel. No footfalls. Only silence. The others, gone. Devoured by the dragon. Or engulfed by the mountain itself.
“Burn it,” he snarled. “Fucking scorch it down to bone.”
Vesryn hurled the sunfire like vengeance made flesh. A white-gold torrent erupted from his palms and blazed down the throat of the tunnel. Light slammed into the Bramblemaw’s skull with the fury of an exploding sun.
The inferno carved a crescent furrow across its face, blistering scales, flaying hide like bark stripped from wood. Stone blackened and melted around them, Essence raging in the marrow of the mountain.
The dragonroared. For the first time, it recoiled. Talons scrabbled at the walls, gouging trenches in desperation, but the mountain didn’t open fast enough to let the beast flee.
Lykor stood motionless, shadows stalling at his feet, breath fracturing in his throat.
Vesryn’s sunfire poured in a blinding stream, refracting off crystalline eyes. And in that flare, Lykor sawher, a primal fear bleeding through.
This was no dragon. She was a husk, gutted of will, controlled with commands. The very fate Rimeclaw had begged to be spared from.
Obedience without consent. Silence without mercy.
Every dragon they’d faced had spoken—Skylash in hissed curses, Rimeclaw in riddles, even Cinderax cloaking youth in ancient wisdom. But this creature had no voice at all.
Because there was nothing left inside her to speak.
Lykor’s gaze locked on the base of her skull, where the stream of sunfire was scorching scales away, leaving raw flesh exposed.
His gut roiled, bile burning the back of his throat. Fury guttered, leaving only ash where battle had raged before.
They hadn’t wounded an enemy. They’d only been fighting something already enslaved.
Shame churned, revulsion crawling beneath his skin. Lykor’s claws trembled where they hung at his sides. He should help end her now, grant the mercy he’d withheld from Rimeclaw.
But deep down, he knew he couldn’t strike something already broken.
Lykor seized Vesryn by the armor and ripped a portal open, hauling them both through the rift.
The prince stumbled into snow with a curse, but Lykor didn’t slow. He dragged them into portal after portal, Essence burning wild in his veins as the realms blurred.
