Chapter 17
Oren
Ihit the ground hard enough to rattle my bones. The sand here wasn’t really sand—it was glass ground fine by fire. It hissed under me, hot enough to burn through the layers of my gear.
I rolled to my feet, every nerve alive with static. The air was thick, metallic, charged—like the moment before a storm breaks.
Nathan emerged from the smoke, coughing and smoldering. “If I ever do that again,” he rasped, “knock me out first.” Then he frowned and said in a low, threatening tone, “Don’t tell my Nexi I said that.”
“Noted,” I smirked. My voice came out raw, still buzzing from the portal. I could taste ozone, feel lightning under my skin like something alive and impatient.
Jet floated a few feet off the ground, scanning the horizon—calm, too calm. That was his tell, I’d learned that over these past few months.
Everything about this place felt wrong. The sky was bleeding light, rivers of molten gold running through black peaks, and the ground beneath us vibrated as if it were breathing.
And underneath it all—a sound.
A rhythm.
A heartbeat.
I closed my eyes and listened.
Zeke.
Zane.
The bond was unspoken; it was a pulse running through the wild—wolves howling somewhere far off, the sharp cry of a hawk echoing through fire and stone. “They’re here,” I said. “North ridge. And something’s with them.”
Jet turned sharply toward the glowing horizon. “You feel it too?”
“Hard not to,” I muttered.
No sooner than the words left my mouth, a shockwave of power slammed through us—half flame, half frost, pure chaos. The horizon erupted in white-blue light that froze the air itself, then shattered it in fire.
I barely threw my shield up in time, electricity bursting from my hands to deflect the wave. Nathan braced beside me, flames coiling like armor. Jet didn’t move—he just absorbed it. The energy hit him and vanished, snuffed out like smoke.
When the wind finally died, the landscape was… changed.
The volcanoes had quieted. The sand had fused into black glass. And far off, two Draxon shapes loomed against the red sky—vast and glowing, one wreathed in fire, the other in frost.
Zane and Zeke.
“What the fuck?” Nathan breathed. “They actually—”
“Awakened something,” I finished for him. My voice dropped lower. “And not just themselves.”
Because above the twins, shadows moved—enormous, slow, deliberate. The air vibrated under the weight of their presence. Eyes opened in the clouds.
Ancient.
Hungry.
“Ancestors,” Jet said quietly, almost to himself.
A crack of thunder answered him—except there were no clouds left to make it—just the beating of colossal wings.
Nathan’s kestrel squawked loudly in warning as it landed on his shoulder. I contacted the other animals that came through and warned them to lie low until we came to retrieve them. There were monsters in this world that would consider them prey.
I lifted off the ground slightly, letting the lightning hum through me. My skin tingled, my bones humming with power I couldn’t contain. “We need to move before we’re seen.”
Nathan smirked. “Too late.” The crazy bastard stroked the kestrel and seemed to anticipate the fight to come.
The air split open behind us—a roar that held such power it felt like the very foundation of Aurathia trembled.
I turned just in time to see a shape dive from the haze—a Draxon, smaller but fast, its scales reflecting the firelight like molten mirrors. No way this was the one that had made that sound.
It must be a hunter.
“Contact,” I hissed. “We’ve got company.”
Jet rose higher beside me, eyes narrowing. “Maybe we need to see how well these things handle our abilities.”
Nathan’s smirk grew into a grin. “As my precious Nexi would say, let’s get western on their ass!”
The beast roared again, shaking the air. I vanished—pure instinct—slipping into invisibility as the storm built inside my chest.
Apparently, this land ran on fire and fury.
Good thing I brought both.
The beast landed hard—claws sinking into molten glass, wings folding with a hiss. Its eyes were molten amber, too sharp to be anything but intelligent. The ground around it steamed where its breath touched.
“Big bastard,” Nathan muttered under his breath, sounding hopeful. “You think it’s hostile?”
“Everything here’s hostile,” I murmured back, floating a few feet above the ground, trying to get a clean angle. “Question is, how intelligent is he?”
I reached out with my ability, lightning threading silently through the air—a net of static to read its movements. What came back wasn’t instinct. It was thought.
“Trespassers. Unforged flame. The air reeks of Aurathions.” The voice wasn’t sound—it was pressure in my skull, old and heavy. The creature tilted its head as if scenting us through the air. Its gaze passed right over where I hovered.
Jet stayed still, levitating a foot off the ground, calm as always. Taking to this new ability as if he’d always had it. Nathan crouched behind a glass outcrop, fire flickering low, his body coiled for attack, Dale sticking close to him.
“We’re not your enemy,” I said carefully, sending the thought back, slow and deliberate. “We came for our brothers.”
The Draxon’s head turned sharply toward my invisible position. Its nostrils flared. “Brothers? No kin of mine would hide like a coward.”
Lightning rippled across my skin—involuntarily. And my shadows writhed on the ground. “Copy that,” I muttered. “I’m going to fuck him up.”
I barely finished the sentence before the air detonated—a blast of heat and shock that sent sand and shards of glass whipping past. The Draxon inhaled, chest expanding, a glow building in its throat.
It was about to breathe fire.
“Jet!” I shouted, even though I knew he’d already read the signs.
He raised one hand. And the fire stopped.
Not slowed—stopped—frozen mid-exhale, suspended between the creature’s fangs like liquid amber.
The Draxon blinked, confused.
Growled.
Tried again.
Nothing.
Its flames simply refused to exist in Jet’s presence.
“Well,” Nathan said, stepping out of cover. “That’s going to come in handy.”
Jet’s eyes glowed faintly—not with power, but with control. “Yes, it will.”
The Draxon snarled, pacing in frustration—until the sky itself answered.
A cry, deep and rolling, split the air. Then two shadows dropped from the red clouds—vast, glowing shapes that made the hunter recoil.
When they landed, the shockwave nearly threw me out of the air.
Zeke and Zane.
Their forms towered over the hunter, wings still steaming from the cold and fire that bled off them. The frost steaming from Zeke’s scales made the ground hiss and crack, while Zane’s molten glow pulsed in rhythm with Nyberie’s heartbeat.
The smaller Draxon lowered its head instantly—not in submission, or fear, but in recognition of their dominance.
Zeke’s voice echoed like thunder inside every skull on the plain. “Stand down. They’re ours.”
The hunter hesitated—then backed away, folding its wings.
Nathan let out a slow whistle. “What the actual fuck. We’re only behind them for a few minutes, and they become king of the Draxon.”
Zane’s human form stepped forward from within the fading glow of his Draxon form, eyes still molten. “That’s what real men do.” He fluttered his lashes at Nathan. “What the fuck?” He yelled as a glob of birdshit dropped from the sky onto his head.
Dale screeched from high above, and it almost sounded like laughter.
“I’m going to fry that fucking chicken of yours,” Zane growled as he wiped the mess from his hair.
“You do, and I’ll clip your balls off and add them to my collection.” Nathan made a snipping motion with his hand.
I dropped the invisibility, static snapping off my shoulders. “That’s enough, you two.” I glanced in Zeke’s direction. “Maybe next time, inform the welcoming party of our arrival.”
Zeke smiled faintly—cold mist spilling from his breath. “Nyberie doesn’t welcome anyone. At least as far as we can tell.”
“Yeah?” Nathan said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Well, it almost ate us…and not in a good way.”
The hunter rumbled low—almost a laugh—before spreading its wings and vanishing into the haze.
Zane clapped me on the shoulder, the heat radiating through the leather of my jacket. “You did good, exalted leader. They don’t let just anyone talk and live.”
I smirked, shadows dancing between my fingers. “I guess Shitstorm doesn’t fit me now that I’ve charmed a Draxon.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” His smile turned melancholy. “We’ll let Reverie decide that.”
Jet finally lowered to the ground, still unreadable, but I could see it—the faint hum of energy around him, the silence where Nyberie’s magic refused to exist.
And the Draxon? They felt it.
Every single one of them turned their gaze toward him.
Curious.
Cautious.
Because even in a world of monsters, something is unsettling about a man who can silence them all.
I couldn’t wait until the Dark Faction tasted his ability for themselves.
We were trying to get our bearings and decide on our course of action when the wind shifted. A shadow moved through the crackling light—massive, deliberate, ancient.
The elder Draxon. The one that had roared earlier.
He was larger than any I’d ever seen, scales glinting like tempered steel, eyes molten gold, and older than time. He landed between us and the portal, the ground shattering beneath his weight.
“You trespass on sacred ground,” he said, voice so deep it made the air vibrate.
Zane’s Draxon stirred within him, his tone low and reverent. “Elder.”
The ancient creature’s gaze swept across us. “You rip open what was meant to stay sealed. Why?”
Zeke stepped forward, frost curling from his skin. “Because our Nexus was captured and brought here by the Dark Faction.”
At that, the elder stilled. His eyes glowed brighter. “The Nexus… Reverie…” He inhaled deeply, the sound like a gale wind moving through a canyon. Then his wings unfurled, casting us in shadow. “She stirs.”
My pulse spiked. “Reverie?”
His gaze flicked to me—seeing too much, knowing too much. “Her call reaches even here, though she knows it not. She wakes in what is now known as Bellona.”
Nathan looked almost feral. “You can feel her?”
The elder’s talons flexed. “We all can. She is Aurathia.”
I couldn’t catch my breath. I knew what this meant. Everything that I had believed about my Nexus was true.
The elder slammed his claw into the ground, runes lining his wings blazing beneath us in a spiral of light. “Then go, Faction of the Queen,” he intoned. “Find her. Restore what was broken. We will be waiting for your signal.”
There was no time to find out what he meant. The ground vanished beneath our feet.
Light. Sound. Nothing.
When I could breathe again, the world had changed.
We lay sprawled across a cracked plain beneath a copper sky. The air buzzed with energy, and I could almost feel Reverie’s heartbeat. My body hummed with it—an ache that wasn’t pain but pure joy.
Zeke was the first to speak, voice low. “It’s… her.”
I froze. Then felt it too—a pulse.
Warmth flooded through the bond, faint but steady. The emptiness that had haunted us since she was taken snapped, replaced by something fierce and alive.
Jet’s breath hitched. “It’s back. The bond.”
Nathan pressed a hand to his chest, eyes wide. “I can feel her.”
Zane looked toward the distant city of Bellona, with the giant Colosseum stark against the sky. “No,” he said. “She’s more than alive. She’s calling to us.”
The air shimmered as her pulse echoed through us again, bright and unyielding.
I clenched my fists, fire flickering at my fingertips. “Then we find her.”
The five of us turned toward Bellona—toward the coliseum, where our Nexus waited.
And for the first time since this nightmare began, I was able to draw a full breath.