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CRACK.

A violent, sickening sound echoed inside my own chest as two of my lower ribs fractured under the shock of the hit.

A scream tore from my throat, but it came out as nothing more than a wet, strangled gasp. My vision exploded into a blinding constellation of white stars and red fire. The winded agony made every shallow breath feel like hot, razor-sharp knives stabbing straight into my chest.

I lay flat in the black mud, wrenching my boots free from where the heavy timber still rested against my ankles, gasping for air that refused to fill my lungs.

Blood filled my mouth, warm and copper-tasting, trickling down the side of my chin onto my leather collar.

The hatchling, now free, limped up the far bank of the gully. It paused at the ridge, its crushed wing trailing in the ash, and turned its head to look back down at me. It let out a soft, low click—a strange, almost solemn sound—before it vanished into the thickets of the black forest, leaving me alone in my grave.

I tried to heave myself up, to push with my hands, but my arms were weak, trembling violently from exhaustion. The brand on my shoulder throbbed with a cold, dying pulse, mocking my weakness.

Mal was gone. The squad was shattered. Caspian was miles away across a wall of dragon fire.

And I was dying in a muddy ditch, crushed by the weight of my own reckless mercy.

I closed my eyes, my breathing coming in short, agonizing wheezes, as a cold, heavy quiet settled over the gully.

The temperature did not drop in stages. It plunged to absolute zero in a single, terrifying heartbeat.

The wet, trickling sound of water in the mud froze instantly, turning to ice. The sulfurous steam venting from the volcanic fissures vanished, suppressed by an acoustic vacuum so profound that the howling wind above the canopy died completely.

The silence wasn’t empty; it was heavy. It was the absolute, suffocating quiet that precedes an execution.

I forced my heavy, tear-blurred eyelids open, dragging a shallow, agonizing breath into my crushed chest.

Thirty feet above my position, perched atop the sharp, high basalt ridge that overlooked the gully, a shadow landed.

There was no crash of falling rock. No thunderous impact. The titan arrived with the silent, terrifying weight of a falling mountain.

My heart stuttered, then stopped entirely.

It was colossal—easily three times the size of the emerald beast that had destroyed our camp. Its body stretched nearly two hundred feet across the ridge, its massive, muscled frame covered in black opalescent scales that did not simply reflect light; they drank it. Beneath the pale grey twilight, the scales shimmered with a dangerous, mesmerizing sheen. Obsidian laced with veining currents of deep, dark violet, oil-slicked emerald, and cold, celestial silver.

Long, curved horns, shaped like jagged obsidian blades swept back from its massive, broad skull, and its tail ended in a heavy, spaded whip lined with razor-sharp bony ridges.

But it was the head that made my fractured sanity snap.

As I stared up through the haze of pain and blood, my mind reeled in absolute terror.

The beast appeared to have two heads.

Twin serpentine necks rose from its colossal shoulders, crowned with identical, nightmare skulls. Both pairs of slitted, burning golden eyes were locked directly down onto my pinned, broken frame in the ditch. Both jaws were half-open, revealing rows of black, dagger-like teeth that dripped with a viscous, smoking venom.

I lay frozen in the mud, unable to look away, the sheer, crushing weight of its predatory presence pinning my soul to the earth far more effectively than the petrified tree ever could.

This is it, a cold, numb acceptance washing over me. This is the end of the line.

I braced myself for the roaring wall of fire, for the crushing bite that would end my life in a single second.

Then, as the beast shifted its weight on the basalt ledge, the pale morning light caught the creature at a precise, narrow angle.

My breath caught in my throat. I blinked, clearing the blood from my vision, and looked closer.

It didn’t have two heads.

The beast possessed only one physical head; a single, massive, opalescent skull of terrifying power.