Zephyra refusesto listen to my command.
Every time I push her back, she repositions—not fleeing, but flanking, using her Auric Veil to identify openings, to disrupt the Herald’s magic at crucial moments, to buy me heartbeats of advantage that I spend immediately.
She fights like she lives: measured, calculated, accepting danger without flinching. Her bloodline burns through her with every use—I see it in the way her face tightens, the cost written in lines of strain—but she doesn’t stop.
Ally, my dragon recognizes. Not prey. Not weakness. Equal.
The word doesn’t feel foreign anymore.
“Your left,” she calls, and I’m already moving, blade-arm catching the Herald’s strike that would have opened my throat. “It rebuilds fastest at the joints—target the shoulders.”
I adjust my attacks. Start landing blows on the Herald’s shoulder joints instead of center mass. The crown-forged armor is thinner there, the divine magic less concentrated—vulnerabilities that mortal eyes could never detect. Cracks form. Spread.
“THE AURIC VEIL PROVIDES TACTICAL DATA.” The Herald sounds almost impressed. Almost frustrated. “THE ERROR AND THE WITCH COORDINATE. UNEXPECTED.”
“Dragons don’t coordinate.” I duck a strike, counter with an uppercut that snaps its head back. The crack in its face widens. “Except when we do.”
“INEFFICIENT ATTACHMENT. WILL BE EXPLOITED.”
The Herald feints toward me—a convincing strike that I commit to blocking—then spins with divine speed toward Zephyra.
I’m already there when it reaches her.
The blade catches me across the stomach.
Not deep—my power interrupts the cut before it can disembowel me—but deep enough. Organs sliced. Muscle severed. Blood sheets down my armor, hot against skin that’s already going cold from blood loss. My legs buckle.
The pain is… significant. Enough that my vision whites out for a moment. Enough that my knees hit stone before I can stop them.
“Tyr—”
“Stay back.” The words rasp from my throat, barely audible, more growl than speech. “Stay?—”
The Herald looms over me. Its blade rises for the killing stroke—the final cut that will end everything I’ve survived to become.
And Zephyra steps forward.
Not back. Forward. Into the space between me and death, her body blocking the Herald’s path to my throat.
“You want leverage?” Her voice shakes, but her stance doesn’t. Silver eyes blazing, hands raised, Auric Veil burning through her like visible fire—burning through her lifespan with every heartbeat. “Try me.”
No. No, get back, get away, don’t?—
The Herald tilts its head. Studies her. Studies me, bleeding out on the frozen stone.
“INTERESTING,” it says. “THE WITCH PROTECTS THE ERROR.”
“We protect each other.”
“MUTUAL ATTACHMENT. MUTUAL VULNERABILITY.” A pause, the Herald processing information that doesn’t fit its parameters. “BOTH LEVERAGE. BOTH EXPLOITABLE.”
It raises its blade.
And terror—raw, unfamiliar, utterly foreign—claws through me. Not for myself, but for the woman standing between me and death, refusing to move, refusing to run, refusing to leave me even though staying might kill her.
Not her. Please, not her.
The prayer rises unbidden. Useless. No god would hear it, and if they did, they wouldn’t care.
