Every time, her magic summoned lightning. Sparks rose from the depths below and crashed from the sky above.
But none of it breached the mountain. Not while Fenn, Cinderax, and their forces held the summit, their fire buying her time, their strength holding back the storm.
And at her side, Jassyn never wavered, but he stopped casting the lightning skyward—one stray arc could kill an ally above. Instead, he gathered the currents into a churning sphere behind them, the static humming like a second heart.
Still, fatigue crept beneath Serenna’s skin. Her arms trembled from holding precision, from containing power sharp enough to flay her if she faltered. Her lungs burned, every breath thinned by the power she called.
But there was no time for rest, only the next strike. So she continued forward, blind to everything else—whether the rangers held the Blackreach or if the ships had made landfall. She couldn’t fight their battles. Her task here had to make the rest of their risks count.
The lightning flowed faster the deeper they descended, ribbons of violet and white racing up through the crystal passages from Skylash. With every charge Jassyn caught, the orb trailing him swelled brighter, strobing across the glass as the mountain swallowed them further.
Serenna felt his strength fraying with hers. Every breath became shorter, the next bolt taking a moment longer to reach his hand.
Her vision blurred at the edges, her Well draining with the stream of sunfire she forced through her veins. The crystal panels kept unfolding beneath her strikes, spiraling them deeper into the mountain as the dragon slowly rendered into more than a flickering shape.
At the mountain’s base, the final pane shuddered beneath Serenna’s touch and peeled away. She let her magic go, breath breaking loose as numbness prickled up her wrists.
Chained before them, Skylash emerged in full—nearly Naru’s size—held in the same crystalline stillness that had once imprisoned Cinderax. Forelimbs absent, her wings pressed sleekto her flanks, her serpentine body coiled like a whip—built to outrace the wind instead of dominate it.
The descent had ended. Everything now hinged on unleashing the storm.
CHAPTER 32
LYKOR
Lykor hated everything about this assignment.
Even flying on Trella—her wings stretched wide beneath a vast, indifferent sky—felt like penance, not freedom. The wind only dragged him in useless circles above a city far from the battle where he should’ve been fighting.
Wasting time caged while the storm raged elsewhere.
A weapon abandoned in its scabbard, left to rust.
His fingers twitched against Trella’s feathers as he glared down at Asharyn’s lake, bright as poured silver and serene in a way that mocked him. Essence churned in his Well, pulsing hot beneath his skin.
If something didn’t give soon, it wouldn’t be the world that shattered.
It would be him.
I need you to return to Asharyn.
Seven fucking words. Spoken like an order, weighted like a curse.
But before that—beneath the lake when they’d freed Cinderax—there had only beenI need you.
No conditions. No distance.
And Lykor, fool that he was, had believed that version of Jassyn.
His gaze drifted south for the hundredth scorching time, eyes narrowed against the sun. From this height in the sky, he could almost see the Maw brooding on the horizon, its black peaks half devoured by a wall of cloud.
“Jassyn sent you here for a reason,”Aesar muttered from deep inside his skull.
“SO YOU KEEP REMINDING ME,”Lykor snapped back.
It didn’t matter that the decision had been tactical. Logical. Necessary.
For everyone but Lykor.
