Kaen was not finished. He turned his gaze to the storm, and the storm obeyed. From the Rift itself came the first scream, the sound of reality splitting open. A roar thundered from the depths, deeper than sound, older than words. It was not heard so much as felt, reverberating through bone and marrow. The sky cracked. The stars went out.
Then the world screamed. From the wound in the earth, the Vraenmaws, bat-like predators, came first, hundreds of them. Their glassy wings sliced the air as they poured upward in a shimmering storm, jaws splitting open as liquefied shadow dripped from their teeth. They shrieked with hunger, the sound of a thousand stolen breaths.
“Feed,” Vaelgor whispered, his body flickering in and out ofexistence. “Feast on their terror. Let the sky forget its light.” The creatures took flight, vanishing into the cloud cover, invisible death gliding toward the northern skies.
Next came the Korvathi.The earth split wider, bones rising in columns, fusing into monstrous forms, human torsos grafted to draconic spines, runes glowing with sickly green flame. They dragged their whips of vertebrae across the stone, the sound a symphony of agony.
Kors raised both hands, his voice echoing with dark delight. “Rise, my Reforged! Let your marrow sing!” The Korvathi obeyed, their hollow eyes gleaming.
From the black mist came the Umbrali, the Shadow-Taken, hollow men with shifting faces, their whispers crawling into Kaen’s mind like worms. They wore the faces of those he had killed. His father. His brother. Even Thaelyn. He did not flinch.
“Go,” he commanded. “Erase them. All who remember me as anything less than what I am.” The Umbrali bowed, their forms scattering into nothingness, dissolving into the fog like fading dreams.
Then the Aethrakyn erupted from the clouds, serpents of molten glass and smoke, their wings screeching against the sky, their bodies blotting out the moon. Their breath corroded the air, raining down ash that sizzled through stone.
Morcarion’s laughter was low and cold. “Behold, my lord. Dragons corrupted by your will.”
“They were never mine,” Kaen said, eyes gleaming. “But they will be.”
Then came the Veilhounds.Their howls cut through the night like razors, glowing ribs flashing in the dark. They bounded across the plain in packs, sniffing out magic on the wind, the scent of dragons and Aether pulling them north.
Kaen watched them run, a cold satisfaction curving his lips. “Find her. Find the girl who carries the storm.” The hounds vanished into the horizon, chains clinking faintly like broken bells.
Morcarion turned to Kaen, his shadow form bending close. “You command what even we once feared. But know this, control is an illusion. The darkness serves only itself.”
Kaen met his gaze. “Then let it think it serves me until it’s too late.”
He turned back to the Rift. The legions spread before him, blotting out the earth, the sky, the horizon. Each creature bowed as one, their voices merging into a single, deafening roar that shook the heavens.
Kaen lifted his blade, black steel veined with crimson light, and pointed north.
“To Asgar,” he said. “Burn their halls. Break their dragons. And bring me the Aether heir alive.”
The earth split wide as the legions began their march. The sky fractured into shards of crimson and black, lightning lancing across the stormfront like veins of fire.
Lightning split the sky. The twin blood moons burned overhead, red and violet, their light warping the air into ribbons. Across the horizon, dragons screamed. The battlefield erupted.
General Solas yelled for formation. Vornokh burst through the storm, wings cutting the wind like blades of black flame, his roar shaking the heavens. Nyxariel rose beside him, silver and terrible, eyes bright with starlight.
Thaelyn stood upon Nyxariel’s back, the wind tearing at her hair, her veins alight with Aether. Thorne rode Vornokh below her, their dragons circling each other in mirrored motion.
When Kaen’s chariot rose higher on its pillars of fire, the bond between them burned like a brand.
Thorne reached for her through the link.Don’t break focus.
Her pulse hammered.He’s not Kaen anymore.
Thorne’s voice came back, steady but raw.Then we kill the part that’s not him.
Kaen spread his arms wide. The tome before him flared open, pages fluttering in a wind that came from nowhere. His eyes, now red as fire itself, met theirs across the torn sky. He smiled. And the world burned.
Chapter
Sixty-Nine
The roar of wind tore past her ears, Nyxariel’s massive wings slicing through the blood-streaked sky. Crimson moons loomed high above like twin harbingers, watching and judging. The scent of char and ash clung to everything, thick as grief, raw as the fear pounding in her chest. Below, Aeromir’s ancient stone groaned, trembling beneath the war drums of approaching darkness.
But it wasn’t the tremors or the dark legions pouring from the Rift that churned Thaelyn’s soul; it was the silence.
