Chapter 31
SERENNA
Serenna flew toward the Cracking Maw’s highest mountain, its shattered summit bleeding lightning from the storm-gray clouds. Wind clawed at her wings, each stroke a battle against the sky’s unyielding wall.
The flight across the broken range had stretched on. As the air thinned, the battering currents had morphed from lift to resistance. Wingbeats growing heavy, Serenna gritted her teeth and flew through the burn, every muscle in her back throbbing.
Mist clung to her scales and armor, dampening her vision in a stinging haze. She blinked hard, sweeping her inner eyelids sideways to clear the blur.
Fenn and Jassyn held formation beside her—all of them tethered—their wings steady as they flew beneath the lightning. Ahead, Cinderax cleaved through the lower clouds, racing toward the monolith crowned in fury.
The Blackreach stretched wide below, a bottomless mirror waiting to swallow the world. Lightning reflected across its surface, but no thunder followed—only the hush of a storm holding its breath to strike.
They banked toward the towering mountain, its summit sheared flat like a broken fang. Serenna’s gaze caught on an unnatural sheen, a flawless disc of crystal spanning the plateau. Beneath the quartz-like surface, lightning pulsed through the faceted glass, an imprisoned storm.
A narrow ledge of stone ringed the crystal, barely wide enough to stand on. Cinderax dropped first, a flash of scale spiraling down. He landed in a whisper of claws, talons scraping as he slid to a halt.
Breath sharp in her throat, Serenna followed, wings tucked tight to her spine. As her boots struck, wind slammed into her, snatching at the leathery membranes. Stumbling, she shifted, shedding her wings before they dragged her over the edge.
By the time she steadied herself, Jassyn and Fenn had touched down, their scales and wings disappearing. On the rim’s narrow edge, the four of them stood, balanced between glass and sky.
Fenn turned slowly, eyes flaring as he focused on the lake below. “File my fangs,” he swore, pointing across the water. “They’re nearly in the Maw already. Ten ships. Maybe more. Sailing fast from the west.”
Serenna’s heart lurched. She followed his line of sight, squinting at the horizon, but saw nothing beyond lightning skittering across the surface.
“The rangers?” she asked, unable to sense the prince while tethered.
“They shouldn’t be far,” Jassyn said, adjusting his bracers. “We have to trust that they’ll slow the fleet. But it won’t be enough if those razorwings arrive.”
Serenna nodded and followed Cinderax closer to the crystalline disc. Multifaceted like a gem, each pane sparked as lightning fractured through the layers, the pulses climbing the lattice beneath their feet.
All breath abandoned her chest when her eyes landed on a shape coiled at the base of the mountain hundreds of feet below.
Skylash.
Serenna could barely make out obsidian scales glinting where lightning raced across the dragon’s frame.
Cinderax lifted his head toward the clouds, leathery frills tugged by the wind. “I sent word to Kaedryn that her legion can enter the Maw,” he rumbled. “This is the moment. We strike now.”
Light speared upward without warning, too fast to dodge.
Serenna flinched, but instinct moved faster than thought. Her hand snapped out as the bolt erupted through a crack in the surface.
Jassyn’s hand shot forward beside hers. The current split between them, forking in a burst of heat and static.
Sparks coiled up Serenna’s arm before she flung the charge skyward. Jassyn’s current followed hers, the twin charges vanishing into the clouds in a blinding flash.
“You were right,” Serenna said, vision still burning as she met Jassyn’s eyes. “The Maw’s storm is bleeding from her. After all this time…”
Whatever questions and wonder tried to rise withered as movement caught her eye. Sails breached the horizon, close enough now for her to make out.
One ship. Then another. A line of them growing, drawing closer.
They were out of time.
Serenna’s hands shook as she drew her Starshard from beneath her armor. She hesitated before asking Cinderax, “Is channeling sunfire the best way to break through the crystal?”
“It’s more than crystal,” the dragon said, prowling further onto the platform.
“This is ancient Aelfyn architecture—woven and corrupted into a prison.” Light warped beneath his talons as he peered into the storm.
“But wield your starlight with intent—as you did with the eggs—and a way below may open.”
Serenna moved beside him, dread winding tighter around her ribs. She saw no path down, only layer upon layer of angled glass, lightning writhing through the panes.
And at the nexus of it all, Skylash waited.
Serenna’s pulse stuttered. She’d done this before—more than once—but Kaedryn had stood ready to intervene if she lost control. And in the Bramblemaw den, Vesryn had hauled her back into her body before the sunfire devoured her.
If she faltered now, it wouldn’t just be her that burned. But there wasn’t time to wait for the prince to arrive.
Serenna glanced toward Fenn and Jassyn.
Fenn met her eyes and rolled his shoulders, fire sparking around his talons. “We’ve got you, she-elf,” he said as scales rippled into place across his arms. “We’ll keep the sky off your back while you call your magics.”
As Fenn launched flares of fire into the sky to signal Vesryn and the rangers, Jassyn gave a single nod. He grimaced as obsidian plates swept down his throat. “I’ll handle the lightning from below. You focus on the crystal.”
With an unsteady exhale, Serenna tugged the golden ring from her finger. Silence persisted with no bonds rushing back to meet her—not while Fenn and Vesryn still wore their tethers. Slipping the metal into her satchel, she brushed the Heart of Stars, ensuring it remained tucked safe inside.
She drew a slow breath. Then another. On the third, scales rippled across her skin, forging armor.
Gripping her Starshard, Serenna reached into the stillness where Essence waited. Magic surged up to meet her as she threw open the floodgates of her Well.
Silver light flared from the gem at her throat, unspooling in widening arcs. Illumination curled down her shoulders, twining her arms in molten threads. She pulled harder, drawing every strand of power into a single, focused current.
Sunfire rushed to her fingertips, a blaze unfurling from her palms.
Above, the storm shuddered awake. Clouds roiled, pressure coiling tight.
The first bolt came screaming from the sky’s throat.
Cinderax took wing and unleashed a roar—high and wild, more shriek than a dragon’s bellow. Fire spiraled from his jaws, colliding with the lightning. The impact burst into a corona of sparks, hissing outward in a flash of light.
Fenn was already sprinting across the summit to intercept the following strike. His wings snapped open just before he warped skyward, reappearing in a whirl of fire. His claws flashed, hurling a gout of flame into the path of the next bolt. Lightning hit, detonating into smoke.
The crystal beneath Serenna’s boots answered with a fury of its own, sparks racing up from the depths in pursuit.
She barely blinked before Jassyn yanked the charge the rest of the way to his waiting palm. Sparks scattered across his scales as he wrenched the current aside and flung it over the ledge into the lake below.
Serenna caged the sunfire beneath her skin, narrowing the blaze before it could spiral loose. Essence slammed against its confinement, heat surging up her arms until her muscles locked.
Every heartbeat became a battle as the illumination fought to tear free. She gripped tighter. Forced the magic down. Refused to let it consume what she still meant to save.
High above, she sensed lightning and fire warring. Fenn and Cinderax blurred in the sky, steering away strike after strike.
Beside her, Jassyn didn’t waver. Lightning spun faster from the mountain’s depths. He caught every bolt, wrenching the currents aside before they could touch her.
Steadying her breath, Serenna raised her blazing palm, shaping the sunfire tight around her fingers while the others held the storm at bay. She chose her mark—a crystal facet just beyond her boots, its edges glinting like a broken star.
And struck.
A chisel of light flew from her fingertips, honed by ruthless control rather than brute force. She poured only a sliver of her strength into it, refusing to burn too bright, too soon.
The surface didn’t crack as she expected. Instead, the crystal drank in the sunfire, radiance sinking through facets in molten rivulets like metal poured into a mold.
Beneath her, something stirred.
A low, seismic groan rippled through the summit, followed by glass screeching against glass. The floor lurched. Serenna and Jassyn staggered as panels deep below began to turn, massive sheets grinding into new alignment.
Sparks scattered in fractured prisms as the summit split open, crystal sinking inward to reveal a spiraling descent carved straight into the mountain’s core.
A warning jolted through her. No longer bound to fixed channels, lightning hissed through the reconfigured grid, drawn like a predator scenting the first drop of blood.
A pane on the surface flared white-hot.
Then ruptured.
Lightning geysered upward, shrieking in a column of light.
Cinderax plunged from the sky in a streak of scale, unleashing a torrent of flame to meet the strike. The bolt slammed into the blaze, erupting in a burst of sparks.
Serenna blinked through the afterglow, pulse still racing as she extinguished Essence. She spared one more glance at Fenn flying above—wings slicing, talons lit with fire—then gathered her courage and stepped toward the fractured passage now gaping wide.
Jassyn moved with her, amber eyes slitted and wild, shoulders braced, palms already lifted to catch the next strike.