Zander exhaled hard beside me. “Well then,” he muttered. “Let’s see what it’s been waiting for.” He motioned our squad and dragons to follow.
The moment we stepped through the monolith’s tunnel, the world dissolved into smoke.
Mist. Thick, heavy, and laced with the scent of memory. It clung to my skin, curling around my neck like a noose, and I felt Kaelith’s presence tighten in my mind as the tunnel behind us sealed with a soundless finality.
Gone was the black sand. The jungle. The sky.
We stood in a dreamscape. That was the only word for it.
Shifting terrain stretched around us. Fractured plains of glass that reflected not just our images but our memories. Above us, the sky swirled with violet lightning and drifting constellations that blinked and bled, like they couldn’t decide what they wanted to be.
Hein growled low in his throat, his tail sweeping protectively behind Zander. Kaelith’s wings flared once, and the gleam in her eyes wasn’t just from the strange starlight above. It was a warning.
“What is this place?” Riven asked, her voice small in the vastness.
“A trial,” Remy answered quietly. “To test our intentions.”
The dreamscape responded to that at once; scenes shimmered around us. Ferrula gasped as a vision of Diria burning appeared on one shard of glass. Cordelle reached out toward a fractured image of his childhood, then his dragon as a hatchling. And I… I saw myself.
But not now.
Me, as a child, blood on my knuckles, standing over a boy twice my size who’d called Solei a gutter whore.
What are you willing to fight for, child of storm and bone?the dream whispered, not in words, but in magic, pressing against my mind like wind against a sail.And what are you willing to lose?
Kaelith snarled and surged forward, her scales glowing with radiant violet heat. She pushed at the mist with raw force, but it wasn’t enough.
Hein followed, stepping beside her, and for a moment the two dragons stood united, their wings stretching wide. I felt their bond thrum with power and Kaelith reaching through me, drawing from our shared magic, pouring it into the storm they were creating.
Light and dark. Flame and sky.
Their combined power shattered the dreamscape like glass under a war hammer.
Reality buckled, then righted itself, and we fell out the other side.
I hit the ground hard, the earth warm beneath me, the scent of salt and moss in the air. We were in the sanctuary now—real, solid, tangible. I saw it in the massive arching trees, the ancient runes carved into cliffside walls, the glimmer of healing pools that stretched into the distance.
But I couldn’t move.
Kaelith was at my side instantly, but I couldn’t hear her in my mind anymore. She’d drained too much from me.
My vision darkened at the edges as I felt arms catch me—Zander. His voice sounded distant, water rushing in my ears.
“She gave too much,” someone said. Maybe Riven.
Then nothing.
ChapterThirty-Six
Iblinked, my lashes heavy with grit, the world swimming into focus like it had been underwater and was only just surfacing.
Zander’s arms were wrapped around me, his chest solid at my back as he helped me sit upright. My head lolled slightly until his hand steadied my chin.
“What happened?” My voice rasped like wind through stone.
“Kaelith’s magic is still unstable. Maybe worse because of where we are,” Zander murmured, his breath brushing my temple. “She… unintentionally siphoned too much from you.”
I winced as I sat straighter. My limbs ached like I’d been through a war and back. Maybe I had. “Okay,” I managed, blinking hard. “But what did she do?”
