Chapter
Sixty-Seven
The scent of ash clung to the air, woven with the tang of ozone and iron. Smoke curled along the mountain ridgelines, blotting out what little remained of the twin moons' crimson glow. Thaelyn stood near the broken edge of the eastern wall, her bow still gripped in her fingers, the string trembling slightly from the last shot she'd loosed. Blood painted her arm from a shallow wound she hadn’t felt until now, and still, she didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Vornokh's roar ripped the heavens open, a sound not of war, but of anguish.
"They come again," Sorren said quietly beside her, his eyes reflecting the black storm churning beyond the cliffs.
The fourth wave rose like a tide from the shadows. Wraith-forged beasts with wings too broad and bodies too broken to belong to anything sacred. Their skin sloughed off in molten patches, their eyes burned with hollow red fire. Shadow-walkers poured from the rift lines behind them, armored in obsidian, blades weeping dark magic as they charged the last intact watchtower.
Thorne stood at the front, silent and still. The wind pulled at his dark cloak, his blades crossed behind him in twin sheaths, his pupils flickering with red light. He was the storm's eye.
Commander Dareth landed behind them atop Razorth, his armor dented, blood spattered across his jaw. "Hold the ridge," he commanded, though his voice cracked with exhaustion. "Do not letthem breach the northern path. If they reach the inner sanctum, it’s over."
"We know what’s at stake," Garric said, stepping up beside Thorne. His arm was slashed open, hastily bandaged. Behind him, Brynnek and Feyra stood with fire and earth magic coiling at their hands, battle-worn but unbroken.
The sky darkened further, unnaturally, heavily weighted with pressure. A low pulse echoed in Thaelyn’s chest.
Nyxariel.“I feel it too, little flame. The tear widens. Aether thins. They mean to end it now.”
Thaelyn looked to Thorne, but he was already moving.
"Take the right flank," he barked, and his voice was the strike of a blade against stone. "Sorren, on me. Garric, cover the rear. Thaelyn, "
She met his eyes. "Don’t hold back."
A nod. But it was everything. They launched into the fray.
Dragons roared overhead, Nyxariel and Vornokh moving in tandem, their flames scorching a path through the nightmare. But the enemy adapted. Twisted mages raised shields of black ice and counter-fire, and below, the dead surged forward, unrelenting.
Blades met flesh. Magic clashed in showers of sparks and bursts of light. Screams tore through smoke-thick air. One by one, cadets fell, their bodies carried back by dragons or burned where they stood.
Thaelyn spun, loosing arrow after arrow, the sigils on her arms glowing with silver fire. Aether shimmered behind her eyes.
Then she saw it. A figure moving between the enemy ranks, untouched, cloaked in red and black. Kaen. Not leading. Commanding. Their eyes met for a breath. The skies cracked open. The Veil tore even more. The Rift screamed. The world was set alight.
Chapter
Sixty-Eight
The sky had swallowed the sun. Clouds of ash coiled like serpents over the battlefield, smothering the horizon until even the mountains looked drowned. The air rippled with the stench of scorched earth and dying magic. All across the cliffs near Aeromir, lightning forked crimson through the haze, splitting the heavens like veins of blood.
Dragons wheeled in the smoke-stained sky, silver, red, and black, their wings slick with gore, their roars drowning the thunder. The storm paused. Every heart held its breath. Then, the world tore open.
From the far eastern ridge, where the Veil shimmered weakest, the fog split like torn silk. The ground shuddered, the air bending in on itself, and from that fracture emerged a single rider, not upon a dragon, but standing atop a chariot drawn by giants of shadow.
Kaen was no longer the prince. No longer the brother. He came cloaked in the black flame of his own making, the sigil of the Withering Flame pulsing across his chest, his armor veined with living darkness. The circlet of shadow upon his brow burned like a forge-fire star, casting his pale face in an unholy light. Men did not crown him. He was crowned by ruin.
The Triumviratestood behind him, half-hidden in the mist. Morcarion,the Shadow Sovereign, towered like a God of nothingness, his form unraveling into a hundred whispering silhouettes.Maelor,theArch Necromancer, raised his staff ofblackened bone, runes crawling down its length like serpents of light. Vaelgor, the Illusion Triumvirate, shimmered between realities, his body breaking and reforming, countless faces flickering where one should be. Kors, the Bone Mage, lumbered forward, dragging chains of vertebrae across the rock, skulls clattering and whispering in languages long extinct. Each radiated a hunger that bent the world. Each was a piece of Kaen’s damnation.
He held no sword, no scepter, only an ancient tome, bound in dragonhide and sealed with the sigil of the Rift. The book pulsed with veins of light that were not light at all. When Kaen opened it, the wind screamed.
“The Veil is a lie,” he said, his voice carrying across the plain. It was not entirely his voice.There were many. “The Watchers are gone. The throne is mine by right of flame. Kneel, and be remade. Resist, and become ash.”
The ground cracked beneath his chariot. Tendrils of dark fire spiraled upward, coiling around the corpses of the fallen. The dead rose. Armor clanged, bones snapped back into place, and hollow eyes ignited with molten light.
The Baldron,the Dead That Remember, took shape once more, whispering fragments of their lost names. Their iron-veined flesh glowed faintly as they turned toward the living, blades fused to their arms.
