The walls were so clear they felt like nothing at all, just a slanted path suspended over the hollow where Skylash lay coiled in darkness.
The descent ended in a sudden stop. A wall of fused crystal rose before them, flawless enough to seem carved by a single cut. Only up close did the angles distort, scattering her reflection into jagged shards.
Serenna pressed her palm to the pane. Cold and smooth, a denial of the way down to Skylash. Her pulse hammered for what came next in these close quarters.
“Cinderax says Kaedryn and the others have arrived,” Jassyn murmured beside her, blinking his eyes back into focus. “Fenn’s portaling in Daeryn’s forces now.”
Serenna nodded, then reached for Essence again through her Starshard. Sunfire flared across her fingers, sheathing her skin in silver.
She focused on a seam where two angled sheets met, a fracture thin as a hairline crack. A blade of light lanced from her palm, slicing into the crystal.
Again, the wall didn’t shatter.
Instead, a hiss whispered from every direction, sharp as breath between teeth. Serenna jerked her arm back as the pane slid aside on its own.
The way forward opened.
And lightning screamed.
The strike erupted from below, snaking through the crystal on the hunt. A serpent of cobalt sparks, lashing too fast to track. In the blink of an eye, it spun through the walls, pursuing with a hunger Serenna could feel in her bones.
Jassyn’s hand shot past her shoulder in a blur of obsidian scales. The bolt slammed toward him in a searing flash. Sparks skittered across his arm, whirling against the protective plates in violet threads. He didn’t flinch, just twisted his wrist, hurling the lightning out of the mountain and into the sky.
Breath ragged, Jassyn’s scales rippled across his cheekbones, surfacing and sinking in restless waves.
“We need to keep moving,” he gritted out, pupils spasming between slitted and round. He stared up out of the mountain, his focus pulled toward something else.
Serenna sensed the beastblood breaking loose in him. But she couldn’t tell whether he was losing control or fighting it back by force.
“Jassyn,” she said softly. “Are you alright?”
“No.” The answer snapped out of him, bitten off. His hands trembled before curling into fists. “Just keep burning through the panels blocking our way. I need the distraction.”
“Distraction from what?”
Jassyn shifted into wings without warning before they vanished in the next breath. Gritting his teeth, his dragonsight flickered in and out. Even the scar along his cheek pulled tight with his grimace, drawn hard across bone.
Jaw locked, he yanked at the strap of his bracer, breath forcing its way through his teeth.
“Lykor.”
The name struck like thunder, his voice cracking on it. Serenna saw the war behind his eyes, the way his focus slipped, reaching for the one who wasn’t here. She knew that ache, being scattered across different fronts.
“I can’t even think straight in this form,” he said, driving a hand through his tangled curls. “Every instinct I have is screaming to fly back to Asharyn. To make sure he’s safe.”
Desperation haunted the feral edge in his voice. Barely caged. Barely the Jassyn she knew. One slip, and the beastblood would send him into the storm, make him abandon every other battle just to return to the one he couldn’t lose.
“You made the right call,” Serenna said, laying a hand on his scaled arm. Her chest tightened, as if his fear had driven straight into her ribs. “Asharyn is probably the safest place right now. And even if it isn’t… If anyone survives, it’ll be him.”
“I know.” The words sounded hollow, more shape than certainty.
Jassyn didn’t look at her, but he set his mouth in a hard line and forced himself forward.
Serenna fell into step beside him, and together they pressed deeper into the spiral.
At the next barrier, she clutched her Starshard and gathered Essence at her fingertips again, shaping it into sunfire. She leveled her hand at the pane and released it, light spearing forward in a focused strike.
Sheet after sheet, the crystal walls shifted and slid aside, the ancient mechanisms far beyond anything she understood.
