The wind changed first. Not the clean wind of dawn, nor the scorched gusts trailing from firedrakes, but something colder, older. A hush swept across the battlefield, deep and unnatural, like the moment before the sky cracks open. Even the dragons faltered midair, their wings shuddering as an invisible pulse rippled outward from the Rift’s edge.
Thaelyn felt it through her sigil before she saw it. A whisper, not of sound but of sensation. Her vision blurred, the air thickened with threads of darkness, laced with dying starlight and smoke. Nyxariel shrieked high above, her cry echoing like shattering crystal through the blood-streaked clouds.
"Shadows," Thorne hissed beside her, his twin blades already drawn, his stance rigid. His eyes burned brighter than before, a crimson flare circling his pupils.
Across the eastern ridge, the sky split. Not in thunder or flame, but in silence. It peeled open like a wound, and from that chasm poured the second wave.
Wraithbound warriors, cloaked in armor woven from grave-mist and shadowstone, surged across the ridge. Their blades flickered with darkfire. Behind them came beasts not made for this world, spindled limbs, eyeless faces, barbed tails dragging through ash. Their screeches bent the air itself.
General Solas raised her voice like a battle horn. "Form lines! Fall into wings! Shields to the front!"
Brynnek bellowed to his squad. Feyra's stormwhip crackled in the air beside him, spinning arcs of lightning between her fingers. Garric flanked the southern slope with his ice-talons drawn, while Darian took the northern bank, fire blooming at his heels.
"Eyes on the Rift! They’re trying to surround the Watcher’s Stone!"
Kaeroth dove low with a snarl, Darian perched atop him like a blade ready to strike. Brynnek's Tieren reared midair, roaring defiantly as the shadow beasts leapt up toward them.
"Rowan! Left flank!” Rhys shouted, his voice lost in the darkness.
There were too many dark forces. The second wave hadn’t come to test their defenses. It had come to break them.
Nyxariel and Vornokh collided midair in a blaze of violet and black, their wings slicing through two wraithbounds in one pass. The ancient dragons fought as storm Gods returned to earth. Below them, Thorne moved like living darkness, a shadow-wreathed fury cutting a path through the oncoming tide.
Thaelyn drew from her sigil, summoning Aether light into her palm. It pulsed at first, resisting her call. But then it surged, desperate and furious, and with a scream, she unleashed a blast of radiant storm into the heart of the enemy ranks.
The ground split where it landed. Wraiths turned to ash. The beasts recoiled. But the Rift responded. The wound in the ground widened. A figure emerged. It was a robed creature with skeletal wings and silver eyes rimmed in black. He hovered above the battlefield, arms spread as if welcoming the end.
"The Queen has defied her fate long enough," he said, his voice carrying over the wind. "The bearer delays the inevitable. But you," his eyes found Thaelyn, "you are the unmaking."
Thaelyn stepped forward. "You don’t know me."
The herald tilted his head. "But I do. The Veil cracked the moment you opened the Watcher’s Sigil. The world is unraveling. He glanced over toward Thorne. “He will choose wrong. He always does."
Before Thaelyn could speak, Thorne appeared in front of her. "Then let me prove you wrong." He drove both blades into the ground. Shadow surged up around him, forming a barrier as the wraiths descended again. Behind it, Nyxariel screamed, a sound that carried across the battlefield.
The final wave had not yet come. But the second was already tearing them apart. The blood moons were still rising.
Chapter
Sixty-Five
The sky beyond the Veil was red, not with the reflection of blood moons, but with the unholy fire that crowned the tower rising from its heart. Twisted spires of stone and bone pierced the fog-drenched canopy like spears, their tips glowing with the embers of dark magic. Around the perimeter, necrotic wards pulsed with a slow rhythm, synchronized with the corrupted heartbeat of the Rift that loomed miles away.
Kaen stood at the apex of the tower. Draped in robes of molten black threaded with crimson sigils, his crown was gone, replaced by a circlet of forged shadow given to him by Morcarion, the Shadow King Sovereign. His eyes no longer burned merely with ambition; they shimmered with the fire of consumed power. At his back stood the Circle of Eight, necromancers, mages, warlords, and twisted, dead former scholars of Asgar. They were the forgotten, the scorned, the ones who had been cast out and now promised vengeance. They knelt before Kaen.
"It is time," Kaen said, his voice low and commanding.
The others bowed, though one, Artom, smiled behind her veil of bone-laced silk. She had once been a healer. Now her hands molded death like clay.
"We strike when the second moon crests the Rift," she said. "The Aether girl is not fully recovered. The Shadowborn has sealed the tear, yes, but at a cost. The world holds its breath. It will shatter easily."
Kaen's eyes drifted skyward. The Rift still glowed faintly, barely held in check. "And the Bearer has awakened. The Queen has not told them. They are unprepared."
A hunched figure at his side, cloaked in moss and ash, rasped, "Shall I loosen the Deepblood Dragons' Chain?"
Kaen shook his head slowly. "Not yet. We will unleash the Deepblood Dragons when the second signal burns. Let the sky bleed. Let them believe they still have time."
He turned to Maelor. "You will lead the next wave against the cliffs of Aeromir. Burn the Watcher’s Stone. Tear down the sigils of the old wards. Let the blood of the stormlines soak the earth."
