“Form the line!” Commander Dareth’s voice cut through the chaos, rough as gravel. His blade flashed, deflecting a glancing strike from one of the shadowbeasts. “Hold your ground!”
Nyxariel banked hard left, her scales glowing with stormlight. Thaelyn leaned low over her neck, the wind whipping her braid across her face. “There are too many.”
“Then burn them all,”Nyxariel growled and dove.
They hit the first Vraenmaw head-on. The creature shrieked, its glassy body refracting the lightning into crimson shards. Thaelyn drew her bow, arrow strung with pure Aether, and fired. The shaft burst mid-flight, blinding light erupting. The beast solidified for one heartbeat before Nyxariel’s claws ripped it apart.
Another came from behind, fast, silent. Its wings sliced the air. Before Thaelyn could turn, Vaeryn swung her glaive from her dragon’s back, cleaving the creature’s jaw clean. Both halves dissolved into smoke.
Across the ridge, Brynnek fought on foot, his arm bleeding,Tieren’s flame rolling over the ground in molten arcs. Three Korvathilumbered toward him, skeletal monstrosities with rune-etched bones and whips of spine in their hands. One lash caught his shoulder; the vertebrae hissed against his armor, slicing through the pauldron. Brynnek gritted his teeth, grabbed the whip mid-air, and yanked. The creature stumbled forward, and he drove his sword up beneath its ribcage. The bones exploded in green flame.
From the sky above, the Aethrakyn shrieked, smoke-bodied serpents coiling through the air, wings made of razor ash. One dove toward the dragons, its breath a storm of acid mist. The air hissed.
“Left flank!” Garric shouted, water magic flaring around his hands. He summoned a wave from thin air, the surge colliding with the serpent’s breath and neutralizing the acid in a hiss of steam. The explosion knocked him backward off his saddle, tumbling into the mud below.
Thaelyn’s heart seized. “Garric!”
Nyxariel dove again.Hold fast.
They hit the ground hard beside him. Garric groaned, rolling over, blood at his temple, but still breathing. One of the Baldron,the armored dead with molten veins, lurched toward him. Its eyes burned amber, its rusted blade fused to its arm. “I remember this place,” it rasped. “I remember dying here.”
Thaelyn stepped between them, hands trembling, Aether surging through her veins. “Then die again.” She thrust both palms forward. The blast of power wasn’t clean; it never was when she lost control, but it struck true. The dark beast burst into light, its molten veins cracking, its body turning to ash in the wind. The backlash threw her backward into Garric’s arms.
He caught her, teeth gritted. “You just keep showing off.”
“Let’s get to the others,” she gasped.
Overhead, Nyxariel wheeled through the air, slamming into an Aethrakyn mid-flight. The impact exploded in stormlight. The Rift serpent screamed as Nyxariel’s claws tore through its glassy hide. Lightning followed, pure and blinding, striking the creature through its heart of shadow. It split apart, raining shards of blackened glass.
But for every monster they felled, three more took its place. Atthe center of the chaos, Kaen’s army pressed forward. The Umbrali slipped through the smoke, once-human shadows with faces that changed each time she blinked. They whispered as they came. “Thaelyn. Thaelyn, give it to us.”
Their voices slithered through her mind, clawing at her memories. For a moment, she saw her father’s face. Her mother’s. Thorne’s eyes. Then everything went white.
“Stay with me!” Aerisya’s voice cut through the static. Her sword flashed as she struck through one of the Umbrali, its body collapsing into fog. “They’ll twist your mind if you let them!”
Thaelyn’s head pounded. She turned, eyes narrowing. “Then they can try.” She reached deep, past the fear, past the pain, into the place the Queen had taught her to anchor. The place that hurts to touch. Aether answered. The runes beneath her feet lit up, humming in resonance with Nyxariel’s heart above. The air thickened, electric. The Rift itself seemed to hesitate. And then she unleashed it. The world exploded in light.
Every creature within the blast radius screamed, high, inhuman sounds swallowed by the roar of the storm. The Korvathi crumbled, bones shattering into ash. The Veilhounds fled, their chain-rattled forms dissolving into smoke. The sky itself trembled.
When the light faded, this part of the battlefield was a graveyard of molten glass and shadowed corpses. Only the living and the dying remained. But above, beyond the smoke, some of Kaen’s creatures still wheeled, Vraenmaws, shrieking as they retreated toward the Rift, their silhouettes vanishing into the crimson clouds.
Thaelyn dropped to her knees. Her body shook from the draining of her power, sweat and tears indistinguishable. The Aether inside her burned like wildfire, alive and screaming. She lifted her eyes just in time to see Queen Elyria descend the hill, her silver robes darkened with soot. She moved through the carnage like a ghost, her gaze sweeping over the fallen.
Kaen’s laughter rolled across the sky like thunder that refused to die.
Chapter
Sixty-Three
The wind screamed across the ridge line as the sun dipped beneath the horizon, leaving the battlefield drenched in molten amber and bloodied shadows. Thunder cracked in the distant sky, not from a storm, but from dragons circling high above, their silhouettes weaving between gathering clouds that trembled with arcane pressure. Squad Seven moved like the edge of a blade.
Thaelyn crouched low against the outcrop, her eyes narrowed against the wind. Aether pulsed faintly beneath her skin, not in chaotic bursts as before, but as a steady heartbeat. Controlled. Focused. Her sigil burned faintly against her shoulder beneath her leathers, lines of pale silver seeping through the seams. Behind her, Iri, Vaeryn, Rhys, and Feyra tightened formation. Their breaths were steady, though adrenaline burned in their gazes.
"Two incoming, left flank," Vaeryn murmured, her voice barely a whisper. Earth vibrated beneath her fingertips as she pressed her palm to the stone. "Scouts. Not human."
Feyra's fingers twitched as lightning crackled across her knuckles. "Let's see if they bleed."
Rhys rolled his neck. "Or scream. I like it when they scream."
