I don’t think. Don’t plan. Just react—throwing shadow-flame upward in a desperate arc, not expecting it to do anything against a creature made of darkness.
The fire cuts through it like a blade through silk.
The dragon screams—a sound that reverberates in my bones, wrong and hollow. My shadow-flame tears through its darkness,unraveling the magic that holds it together. It dissolves mid-dive, shadow bleeding into smoke, and I’m left standing in the courtyard with my hands on fire and my heart pounding out of my chest.
I did that. My fire did that.
No time to process. Another dragon swoops low, its claws raking toward my head. I duck, roll, come up throwing fire. This time I’m more deliberate—targeting the construct’s core, the place where the shadow magic coalesces into something solid. The dragon shrieks and dissolves.
A third attacks from behind. I spin, shadow-flame flaring?—
And stop.
Because between me and the attacker, something massive has materialized from the shadows themselves.
I’ve seen dragons before.Bronze and gold and red, scales catching sunlight, power written in every line of their bodies.
I’ve never seen anything like this.
Zyphon’s shifted form is darkness given shape. Obsidian scales veined with glowing violet, pulsing with an inner light that seems to breathe. Wings that spread wide and blot out the sky, absorbing light rather than reflecting it. He’s smaller than Drayke’s bronze form, built for speed rather than brute force, but no less terrifying for it.
His eyes burn. Ancient. Knowing. Fixed on the shadow dragon with predatory focus.
He tears the attacker apart with claws that trail darkness. The shadow dragon doesn’t even have time to scream before it’s nothing but smoke and memory.
Those burning eyes turn to me.
Something in my chest clenches. Recognition, bone-deep and inexplicable. I’ve seen this form before. I know the way he holds himself, the pattern of the violet veins, the precise angle of his wings. The knowledge lives in my body even though my mind can’t place it.
He makes a sound—low, rumbling, questioning. Checking that I’m unharmed.
I nod. Don’t trust my voice.
He turns back to the battle. And somehow, impossibly, I find myself turning with him.
We fight.
Not together, exactly—I’m on the ground, he’s in the air, and we’re not coordinating in any conscious way. But our powers know each other. Recognize each other. Move in patterns that feel rehearsed even though we’ve never done this before.
My shadow-flame covers his flanks when he engages a cluster of enemies. His darkness amplifies my strikes, making the fire burn hotter, cut deeper. When a shadow dragon dives for my blind spot, his tail sweeps it aside before I even register the threat. When one gets behind him, my blast of fire turns it to ash before it can sink its claws into his scales.
It’s instinctive. Wordless. Two halves of a broken whole, fighting as one.
A shadow dragon swoops low, its claws extended toward me. I duck, roll, come up with fire already forming in my hands—but Zyphon is there first, his massive jaws closing around the creature’s neck. He shakes once, hard, and the dragon dissolves into smoke.
Our eyes meet. For a heartbeat, everything else falls away—the chaos, the screaming, the thunder of wings and the roar of fire. There’s just him and me, and the strange, undeniable rightness of fighting at his side.
Then another wave of attackers descends, and the moment shatters.
I should be terrified. Should be questioning how I know exactly where he’s going to be, how my fire anticipates his movements, how we slot together with the ease of partners who’ve trained for years instead of days.
I don’t have time to question anything. The shadow dragons keep coming.
The courtyard becomes a war zone.
Drayke’s bronze form dominates the sky above the fortress, fire pouring from his jaws in streams of molten gold. He fights with controlled fury—every movement precise, every strike calculated. Shadow dragons break against him and burn.
Rurik is chaos incarnate, his red-gold scales flickering with constant flame. He laughs as he fights—actually laughs, the sound echoing across the battlefield. Shadow dragons flee from him as much as attack him, their darkness no match for fire that burns with the intensity of a sun.
