The Wild Hunt came in a tide of death and bone, riders blurring together, blades carving slaughter through her ranks. With an enraged scream, a beam of Alora’s light struck the front flank, flashing like a shard of dawn. Sparks cut across the army of the damned, burning all flesh beneath.
Hadeon surged ahead at her signal, Wrath Court steel slamming into the first riders like a living battering ram.
And the two armies clashed.
Fire caught along the hills as siege torches overturned, trees igniting in sudden blooms of flame. Smoke rolled thick and choking, stinging her eyes, turning the battlefield into a red-lit nightmare of screams and silhouettes. Wherever the Hunt passed, mortal and demon fell screaming, souls ripped free in pale spirals that vanished shrieking into the dark behind them.
Alora moved where the line faltered, her magic singing through the air as she cut riders from their mounts, white fire ripping them apart mid-charge.
Deimos flitted in and out of shadow, screams marking his path. A wall of thorns cut along the ridge in violent bursts ofgreen and gold as Zinnia and the fae led an attack on the left flank. Calla led the right, her chakram flashing silver-red.
The demon warpath streamed around Alora in a merciless stream. There was no sense of time, or how long they viciously fought. She eliminated waves of Vorak’s forces.
Yet the Hunt did not slow.
For every rider felled, two more tore through the smoke. The ground had turned to mud beneath a constant stream of blood. It trembled, the air itself twisting as if the world recoiled. And the tide of the battle changed. The Pride faction collapsed beneath an onslaught of darkness and smoke, and screams rose up from Paladin ranks.
Then resistance turned into desperation and fear.
A shock of panic cut through her senses when a division of the Wild Hunt veered toward Argyle.
“No…” Alora breathed.
The city gates loomed in the distance, banners burning above stone walls already blackened by smoke. Horns blared in frantic warning. The beacons on the battlement blazed with Lady Solara’s sunlight and beams of light shot down in a searing path. But there were too many.
The Hunt surged forward, a river of death pouring toward her people. Minotaurs formed brutal walls of Moonstone shields and muscle, bracing at the gates.
And they were cut down in seconds.
The Hunt tore through them without slowing, bodies crushed and scattered beneath hooves and shadow-blades. Then the Hunt soared over the walls. Screams followed as Argyle soldiers were hurled from the battlements to their deaths.
“Hold!” Alora’s chest tightened, horror clawing up her spine as she ran to them. “Hold the gates!”
If that host breached the castle?—
The bond splintered.
It was not pain as she knew it, but rupture. An agony so vast it stole the breath from Alora’s lungs and drove her to her knees. Fire and shadow tore through her chest, a sensation of wings breaking, of something ancient and vital splitting apart.
Rune’s presence flared once in her mind, then faltered, slipping through her grasp like smoke through open fingers.
Alora whipped her head up.
From the eye of the churning clouds, a massive black shape fell, wings folding in on themselves as the dragon plummeted in a trail of ash and blood.
Alora’s scream tore from her soul.“RUNE!”
CHAPTER 68
Rune
Rune had lost hold of the world.
Vorak’s claws cleaved through his chest, hellfire searing scale and flesh. His wings tore beneath the force. Ash swallowed the crimson sky as he plunged through the smoke.
Alora’s scream rang through his bones.
His impact split the earth, shockwaves rolling across the land. Rune drew in ragged gasps. His beast form had taken the brunt of the crash. But he had no strength to hold it anymore. His vision swam, every sound distant, muffled, as though he were trapped deep beneath water.
