Chapter 33
SERENNA
The base of the cavern shimmered around Serenna and Jassyn like a vein of a fractured gem, the faceted pathways sweeping upward toward the distant pinprick of sky. Encased in crystal before them, sparks crawled over the ridge of Skylash’s spine, leaping from scale to scale.
Serenna reached into her satchel with trembling fingers, the stone beneath her boots thrumming with power. The moment she drew the Heart of Stars free, the relic ignited with the colors of her talents, light shining between her knuckles.
Something brushed her awareness—a presence vast enough to steal her breath—and she nearly dropped the Heart. Centuries of fury pressed against her thoughts, a storm trapped in stillness.
“I sense her,” Serenna whispered, tearing her gaze away to meet Jassyn’s eyes. “I haven’t heard any dragon in weeks, but now…” Her pulse skipped. “She’s stirring.”
“Does she know we’re here to free her?” Jassyn asked, wiping sweat from his brow despite the chamber holding a chill.
Serenna shook her head. “I don’t know. I—”
Vesryn’s presence slammed into her mind like a falling star, the bond flaring bright. “We’re losing the summit.”
A vision detonated behind her eyes.
Fully bonded now, Serenna didn’t just see through him. She was in his body, lungs burning with smoke as Naru’s wings beat beneath the prince, riding through a sky raining fire.
The Blackreach roiled below—rangers sweeping in formation over the fleet on their dracovae, unleashing gouts of molten flame onto ships cutting across dark water. Fire charred hulls and raced up white sails, the lake itself boiling.
But the king’s forces had command over the earth and struck back—seizing the druids’ fire and turning it against them. They bent the Maw’s lightning into volleys, twisting each charge into spears that ripped upward to clash with dracovae and fliers.
Serenna caught flashes of Kaedryn’s scalebound, Lykor’s wraith, and the children of earth and starlight in flight—battered by the storm they were trying to divert.
Her stomach lurched when the sky changed pitch.
Razorwings burst through the fray—nearly as many as the dracovae—their glass-bright wings slicing through the smoke.
Vesryn’s vision whipped sideways as one plunged past like an arrow, its flight a shriek of vibrating air. The rider lay harnessed and crouched along its sleek spine, no Essence flaring around them, the razorwing carrying all the violence.
Mandibles twitching, the beast shot straight for Naru’s throat, needle legs stabbing for purchase under the feathers at his jaw. Naru struck back, beak snapping shut on empty air as the creature veered aside.
Vesryn yanked fire into his palm and flung it at the razorwing’s compound eyes point-blank.
The blast should’ve incinerated it.
But the razorwing blurred and folded midair. Wings sheathed tight to its slender body as it streaked beneath the strike.
Fire seared empty sky and its wings snapped back open. The razorwing climbed—reorienting, circling, poising for another attack. Then it dropped from sight, disappearing into the churn of smoke below.
Vesryn cursed and wheeled Naru around just in time to see the creature slam upward beneath another dracovae. It hit like a blade swinging. Six hooked limbs clamped into feathers and scales as its serrated mandibles sawed at soft flesh.
Serenna felt the jolt rip through Vesryn’s body, shock and fury lancing down the bond. Then the sky darkened as more razorwings poured out of the clouds in a rising insect whir.
The battle raged as the storm coiled and struck, the elements showing no mercy. Razorwings and dracovae alike went up in flames. The great beasts fell in burning arcs, smashing into the lake below in plumes of steam and smoke.
When Naru circled, Serenna saw the mountain’s summit. Ringing the sheared peak, Cinderax and Fenn held the sky, now joined by Daeryn’s forces on the surface. Kaedryn’s druids soared overhead, a living barricade of wings beating back the storm.
They all moved as one, desperation hammered into rhythm. With every scream of wind and crack of light, they seized the storm by its throat. They hurled the elements downward, turning lightning into weapons that rained onto the invading fleet below.
Vesryn dropped through the chaos on Naru, skimming between shrieking razorwings, dodging bursts of fire as he led a squadron of rangers straight toward the ships. Flame roared from his palms, cleaving a vessel from prow to stern in a single burning stroke.
“Whatever you’re about to do,” Vesryn said as Naru climbed back into the air, “do it now. Before we lose the sky.”
Serenna reeled—wrenched back too fast as the vision dispersed. She staggered, the echo of battle still thundering through her bones. The air felt too thin, her ears ringing while her mind caught up.
Steadying her breath, she refocused on Skylash chained in crystal and tightened her grip on the Heart of Stars. Drawing more sunfire would only summon the storm, but there was no other option. Not with the sky collapsing and her task the fulcrum on which the battle turned.
A part of her wanted to call for the prince. He was supposed to be at her side for this. But the battlefield needed him more than her doubts did.
Fingers clenched around the Heart, Serenna met Jassyn’s eyes. No words passed between them, just a nod. She could tell he’d seen Vesryn’s vision too.
With a slow inhale, she drew her scales more firmly into place, locking them like living armor. Reaching for Essence, she guided her power through the Starshard at her throat, coaxing sunfire carefully toward the Heart of Stars.
The Heart didn’t wait.
It pounced, yanking Essence through her in a breathless torrent.
Serenna flinched as the pull spiked, magic racing beyond what she channeled. She gasped as the Starshard flared once, then the power tore past the gem as if it weren’t there at all.
For one suspended heartbeat she felt herself opening—nothing but a conduit without boundary, power ripping through her before she could brace.
Sunfire erupted, a genesis clawing through the vessel of her body like a star forcing its way into form. The Heart seared against her hands, its light coursing through her.
Serenna’s knees slammed into stone, though the impact barely registered as power screamed through her. Radiant and unmoored, Essence burned her in a river of power that flayed as it flowed. The world collapsed into light and vibration, until only the blaze remained.
She couldn’t hold it.
She couldn’t contain it.
This was the Bramblemaw den all over again. The same unraveling. The same terror.
Somewhere inside the tempest, Serenna blindly reached, fumbling through the flood of sunfire. Her voice barely rose above the roaring in her skull, but she forced a desperate thought down the bond.
“Vesryn—”
His name dispersed, shattered by panic.
No answer followed as the mounting pressure of something ancient rose inside her.
Then the stars descended. Spiraling and familiar, the same pattern that had reached for her in the den, beckoning as if they’d never truly let her go.
Not again, Serenna pleaded, the thought fraying as it formed.
Whispers followed, voiceless but absolute. “Return home. You were never meant to stay earthbound.”
Her awareness tilted. Sunfire surged through her veins, spilling upward in ribbons of starlight. Her body stayed kneeling on the stone, but a part of her rose, lifting free as if her soul had slipped its hold.
The world shrank beneath her, a memory of weight and breath. If she let go, she knew she might never return to it.
“Vesryn!” she screamed again, wrenching at the bond with what remained of her will. “Please—I can’t do this alone. I need help.”
For a terrible moment—an eternity—there was nothing beyond the incessant chanting and the detonation of light.
Then, cutting through the blaze, his voice found her.
“Serenna. I’m here.” Steady like steel cleaving through the storm. “Razorwings are breaking the line. You need to free Skylash now.”
Fear cracked through her chest, a sob tearing loose.
“I’m not strong enough,” she forced out. “I’m not ready.”
“You are ready,” Vesryn answered, certainty pulsing through the bond. “You don’t need me to save you, but I’m here. Every heartbeat. You’re not alone. Now free Skylash before the sky falls.”
His voice reached her, belief and command thrown like a lifeline, but the pull of the stars still clawed at her mind. It would be easier to let go, to let the magic rise unbound. Let the stars claim her. Dissolve into light. Become nothing and everything at once.
Ascend.
But she didn’t want eternity. Or the silence of the stars. She wanted to live—to stay with the ones she loved, bleeding and fighting above her.
The spiral behind her eyes turned again, the cosmos reaching for her like a hand. Her awareness drifted outside her body—far enough to hear her pulse as an echo—but she still felt her fingers clutching the Heart as sunfire raged through the chamber.
She wouldn’t be unmade. The stars might’ve been her origin, but this ground was where she chose to stand. If the Aelfyn wanted her, they could come down and claim her—because she wasn’t leaving the ones who needed her.
With a raw, wordless refusal, she slammed her mind shut.
The stars ruptured and fled.
Gasping on a breath of clarity, Serenna’s consciousness crashed back into her body. Nerves molten, marrow boiling, Essence bucked in her chest.
The Heart burned against her palms, heat climbing into agony. Sunfire threaded through the crystal, fractures racing outward. Serenna gritted her teeth and held on, fingers locking tighter as if sheer will alone could contain the power.
The relic shuddered, then shrieked, the sound knifing through her skull. Light flared, white-hot and blinding. She felt the edge of it then, the brink where something had to give. If she let go, sunfire would devour her. If she held on without steering it, the Heart would detonate directionless.
So she chose a third path, seizing the blaze.
And aimed it at the dragon.
The Heart of Stars blew apart and Skylash’s crystalline prison shattered with it.
A shockwave tore through the chamber, sunfire and the dragon’s lightning blasting outward. Glass burst pane by pane before the entire ceiling gave way, raining razored shards in a silver storm.
Jassyn was suddenly there—he’d never left her side. Obsidian-scaled arms wrapped around her as he threw them both to the ground, twisting to shield her with his wings.
They hit stone as Essence howled. Skylash’s lightning scored the dark in crackling arcs as her storm raged, breaking the crystal pathways above.
The mountain convulsed as the earth heaved in waves, stone splitting open with unleashed power.
And from deep within that cataclysm—ancient, seismic, and wild with freedom—Skylash roared.