Far below, near the ruins of the ancient Watchtower ofAeromir, his final army waited. There, the Deepblood dragons strained against their chains, colossal, skeletal forms wreathed in necrotic smoke, their eyes hollow pits of flame. They were his creation, the first dragons. Others had tried to create them, and their attemptshad been twisted over centuries of experimentation and spell craft. The silver scales of their ancestors were now blackened, veined with red corrosion.
Kaen approached the largest,Vraekhul, the first he had ever bound. He laid a gloved hand on its decayed snout. Its breath was hot and wet with blood. “Fly,” Kaen whispered in the old tongue, the language of chained skies. “Open the gates,” Kaen said. Vraekhul screamed, wings cracking open with a sound like thunder shattering stone, and launched into the air. Dozens more followed, a storm of corrupted dragons that blotted out the moons.
The sorcerers began their work, forming a circle around the last standing stone of Aeromir’s shattered threshold. With hands dripping with the blood of the dead and breath drawn from dead air, they chanted. The ancient wards, sealed long ago to keep darkness out, shuddered against their song.
Lyssara’s voice trembled with dark awe. “You command the end, my Lord.”
Kaen turned toward her, eyes burning like twin stars devoured by eclipse. Kaen said nothing. His gaze lifted to the sky, where the second blood moon now began to rise. Crimson light spilled like ink across the clouds, bathing the jagged cliffs in the hue of sacrifice.
He moved down the slope of scorched stone, his black cloak trailing behind him like a shadow unmoored. At his signal, the war-bands unfurled their banners, sigils of ash, bone, and shattered flame. The largest among them, Morcarion, raised a curved blade to the heavens and roared. The ranks picked up the sound, a guttural thunder that shattered the stillness of the night.
Below, near the forgotten Watchtower ruins, the final army waited, dragons corrupted by necromancy, their eyes glowing a sickly red, wings shrouded in webbed darkness. They had been bred in silence, carved from captured eggs, twisted by time and spell.
Kaen turned back to his army. “Go,” he growled, fire blooming behind his teeth. “Claim the sky.” Like an avalanche of flame and steel, his legions surged forward.
High above, the blood moons crowned the heavens, bearing witness to the beginning of the end.
The world held its breath beneath twin moons dripping in red. Kaen stood upon the ridge overlooking the ancient cliffs of Aeromir, where the ruins of a forgotten kingdom lay buried beneath centuries of dust and silence. Once, this place had been a cradle of light. Now it was a tomb, and he was its final heir.
The wind carried the scent of ash and iron, hot as breath drawn from a forge. Beneath his boots, the cracked stone of the old path glowed faintly with veins of molten red, the bones of the earth bleeding in anticipation.
He raised the tome bound in dragon hide and sealed with the sigil of the Rift. The book pulsed like a heart in his hand, veins of light writhing across its surface. When he opened it, the air screamed.
The circle of sorcerers began their chant. Hands slick with ichor, they traced runes into the dirt, their voices layering into an ancient hymn of unmaking. The Veil, stretched thin over Aeromir for centuries, shuddered. The symbols carved by Aether long ago, those that had kept the darkness sealed beyond the mortal realm, began to unravel.
The first sound was a moan. Then a crack. Then the earth split open. The Veiltore like skin. Through that tear, another world looked back, vast, black, endless. The Rift’s glow spilled forth, casting the land in violet and scarlet flame. Aeromir, hidden and unreachable for generations, was now exposed.
Kaen spread his arms, his voice rising above the wind. “Open the gates.” The words were command and prophecy, both. From the fracture, the first wave emerged.
The Vraenmaws came first, bat-like horrors of glass and shadow, their translucent wings refracting moonlight into blades. They shrieked as they flew, devouring the breath of men and dragons alike, leaving corpses without wounds, eyes turned to white glass.
Then came the Korvathi, towering bone giants whose ruinedskulls burned with green light. Their whips of vertebrae carved through armor and spell. Each time one fell, its shattered ribs crawled back together, reforming anew.
The Umbrali followed, the Shadow-Taken, once-human silhouettes that wore the faces of their victims. They moved like smoke, whispering memories stolen from the dying. Soldiers screamed their own names as they forgot them.
The Aethrakyn soared after, Rift Serpents made of molten glass and black flame, devouring light and magic in equal measure. Spells fizzled in their presence. Walls melted.
Then the Veilhounds howled, skeletal wolves with ribs like glowing cages. They hunted magic, not flesh, drawn to Thaelyn’s Aether across the battlefield like predators scenting divinity.
The Baldron, armored revenants with molten veins, marched through the dead ranks, dragging the corpses upright as new soldiers. Bells from distant towers tolled once before shattering.
And at last came the Kyragoths, the Harbingers of Dread, molten giants wrapped in banners of flayed skin. When they moved, the mountains trembled. Their eyes were the dying embers of cities consumed by shadow, their bodies echoing with the screams of those trapped within.
Kaen stood before it all, the culmination of centuries of forbidden lore and bloodline ambition. He was the heir of kings, the betrayer of kingdoms, the son who had traded light for a crown carved from oblivion.
He looked once more toward the horizon, where he knew Thorne would stand beside the girl who had undone him. “Brother,” he whispered, almost gently. “Do you see it now? This is what power truly is.”
He turned, raising the tome high. “Go,” he commanded, and fire bloomed behind his teeth. “Claim the sky.”
The legions surged forward, an avalanche of flame, bone, and shadow.
Above, the twin blood moons flared, reflecting in Kaen’s eyes like twin flames of damnation.
Behind him, the Rift howled. Before him, Aeromir burned. Andas the first screams rose to the heavens, Kaen closed his eyes. For a heartbeat, just one, the prince whispered,Forgive me.Then he opened them again, and the war began.
The sky broke open, not with rain, but with fire. Thaelyn could still feel the echo of Thorne’s scream reverberating through her bones, even after the bond went silent. The sound had carved itself into her. Into Nyxariel, into the storm itself. When her dragon roared, the air shattered. Lightning fell like a blade.
The wind howled, torn from the mountains, and across the ridge below, Kaen’s creatures poured out of the Rift like spilled ink across a map. The Vraenmaws came first, translucent-winged devourers, their fanged mouths slick with light. They swooped through the clouds in shrieking packs, phasing in and out of existence as they dived for the dragons.
