Chapter 35
SERENNA
Serenna burst from the summit’s fractured crown, wings shuddering with exhaustion as she hurled herself into the unraveling sky. Jassyn rose beside her, both of them surging above the mountain’s rim as blades of ice screamed down.
Daeryn’s forces had abandoned the peak, scattering through portals that collapsed one by one. She didn’t know where Fenn had flown, his presence still muted through the bond. But she sensed Vesryn above the Blackreach, skimming over the burning waters.
Rain slashed sideways, soaking her armor and scales until heat and numbness bled together.
Serenna thought she caught a glimpse of Cinderax—possibly with Kaedryn—before he vanished through a rift.
Two magus followed fast in flight, clutching a wounded wraith between them as they fled the unchained storm.
Vengeance on wings, Skylash tore through the sky, lightning wreathed along her spine. Obsidian scales flashed violet with every twist, amethyst wings shearing through sleet and frost.
Before they’d taken flight, Vesryn had warned that Rimeclaw had entered the Maw. Seeing the titan now stole the breath from Serenna’s lungs. His vast wings beat the air like glaciers breaking, each stroke slow and heavy.
But he was no match for Skylash’s speed.
Lightning raked from her jaws in serrated arcs, retribution made flesh, forged to punish anything that dared reach for her. She struck Rimeclaw’s flank midair, the impact reverberating through the Maw.
Ice shattered outward, lancing across the sky. But none touched her.
Sparks streamed from Skylash’s wings as she raced through the clouds, her storm splintering Rimeclaw’s frost before his magic could find her. She spiraled in a blinding arc, body blurring into light, diving like a star with reckoning at its core.
Not toward Rimeclaw.
Toward the fleet.
Lightning erupted from her throat, scything across the lake in a thousand spears of light. Hulls burst apart. Masts buckled. The waters below ignited, fire climbing the rain as the shockwave punched upward.
Skylash’s roar cleaved the clouds and Serenna could only watch as an ancient force rose to reclaim her throne in the sky.
Essence began flickering in tentative halos around those still fighting. The lightning no longer seemed to punish magic. It obeyed its queen.
Even though the dragon hadn’t spoken—hadn’t so much as acknowledged those who’d freed her—Serenna dared to hope Skylash might turn the tide. For one heartbeat, the storm seemed to steady, its fury bending toward the enemy ships.
Then the lightning turned.
The next strike didn’t spare their forces. It devoured them.
Druids. Wraith. Rangers. A scattering of bodies obliterated in an assault of sparks.
Skylash twisted through the sky in a streak of radiant fury, lancing through their ranks. She made no distinction. Her storm claimed them all, like a wildfire loosed upon a forest already burning.
Serenna’s breath caught as a dracovae plummeted, wings aflame, trailing smoke and blood. Skylash struck, tearing rider and beast apart.
Throat raw, Serenna stared at the carnage unfolding. A wraith warped too late, vanishing in a flash of sparks.
“What have we done?” she whispered.
They’d unchained something that didn’t understand the difference between liberation and annihilation.
“This isn’t a battle,” Jassyn said, scanning the chaos below. “It’s a slaughter. We need to get everyone out.”
The air fractured with screams and lightning. From their vantage above the mountain, no place stood untouched by Skylash. Not the water, the skies, or the jagged slopes cradling the Maw.
Serenna felt Vesryn’s presence somewhere under her wings, where the rangers had once held the line against the fleet. That order was now abandoned, precision drowned beneath the storm as they flew for survival, not victory.
“But we freed her,” Serenna said, the protest fragile, thinned to a breath.
“I don’t think we can reason with her,” Jassyn answered, worry tight in his words. “Cinderax would have tried.”
A bolt of light split the air beside them, close enough to sear the edges of sound. Serenna flung out her hand, scattering sparks before their wings were scorched. Her pulse hammered, each beat trembling between terror and resolve.
“We can’t lose her,” she said, purpose rising. Not after everything they’d risked.
With a feral roar, Skylash wheeled to strike Rimeclaw once more. Lightning crawled down her spine, coiling across her neck until every spark converged into a single bladed arc.
She dove like a javelin and slammed into Rimeclaw’s wing with a sound so brutal, so wrong, that Serenna flinched as though the tear had ripped through her own.
Rimeclaw writhed, jaws snapping for Skylash’s throat. But she clung fast, just beyond his reach. The claws on her wings hooked deep, raking trenches through the membrane. Then her fangs struck—puncturing sinew, spraying blood into the rain.
Rimeclaw’s bellow echoed like thunder. Nearly the full span of his wing collapsed, flayed leather thrashing against the wind.
The sky ruptured with him, frost detonating outward in waves that turned the air to hail and ice. Dragged down by the weight of his shredded flesh, he spiraled, blood and mist trailing in his wake.
But above him, Skylash rose. Wrath incarnate, lightning wreathed her scales in burning veins of light. The sky bent around her as she exhaled. The bolt she loosed crashed into Rimeclaw’s ribs like judgment handed down from the storm itself.
Serenna gasped as Rimeclaw buckled and spun, rain and blood fanning in violent arcs. He fought to steady himself, vast wings flaring despite the wound, his colossal body twisting against the sky in defiance to stay aloft.
Torn wing hanging tattered, he drew breath like a bellows. For a moment, he tried to hover—an ancient titan stumbling through the clouds, wounded yet too proud to fall.
“If the king’s watching through his eyes,” Jassyn said beside her, wiping rain away from his face, “maybe he’s realized Skylash won’t be subdued so easily.”
Before Serenna could answer, a voice rumbled through her skull—low and guttural, cold as grave frost.
“I cannot leash thunder for the tyrant’s throne,” Rimeclaw snarled.
She knew that voice. She’d heard it once before, the first time a dragon had spoken to her through a Heart.
With a labored beat of his good wing, the dragon began to rise. Blood streamed behind him as he turned away, retreating rather than striking.
“But the chains rattle, and he calls me back across the sea,” Rimeclaw growled, each word heavy with resignation as he began limping into the clouds. “Punishment waits…and still I have no choice but to go.”
Serenna’s throat tightened as he vanished. For all his grandeur and might, he was only another weapon sheathed on command. And if the king could summon him from across the sea, what hope did any of them have of staying free?
Skylash veered from his defeated departure without a glance, her roar sundering the uncontested sky.
Sparks streaked from her wings as she wheeled back toward the fleet.
Lightning flashed toward the king’s ships, the druids, the rangers—all those left scattered in the Maw.
Their forces attempted to flee her wrath, but not everyone could portal out.
Heart pounding, Serenna turned to Jassyn, the sky flickering around them in fractured pulses. Rain dripped off her armor and wings, the chill sinking deep even as her muscles burned from flight.
Only one path remained—to reach Skylash before she destroyed them all. Serenna saw no other choice, even if it felt like stepping off the edge of the world with no promise of wings to catch her—only the terrible certainty that if she didn’t try to fly, they would all fall.
Survival was no longer enough. They needed Skylash’s power, a storm that raged for their cause.
“I need to reorganize those of us left and help the injured,” Jassyn said, his gaze sweeping the lake. Ships burned and bodies clung to debris in the water, dracovae circling low to haul their wounded forces from the wreckage.
The remaining wraith had plunged into the chaos, rallying what fragments of their squads still held. Druids regrouped in pockets along the ridge as the broken fleet turned its attention skyward. The king’s forces hurled ropes of force toward Skylash, trying in vain to snare the storm.
“I’ll buy you time to get them out,” Serenna said, voice hoarse, the claws on her wing tips clenching. “I’ll…try to speak with her.”
Jassyn blinked, rain tracing the silver line of his scar. For a heartbeat he hesitated, as though he might tell her no or take the burden himself. Instead, he nodded, no argument rising to his tongue.
Somehow, that trust weighed heavier than refusal—proof that he believed she could reach the dragon.
“You’ve already done the impossible once today,” he said softly. “Just stay alive long enough to do it again.”
Then he was gone, wings folding as he dove toward the havoc raging below—where Vesryn flew above capsizing ships and Skylash hunted anything that moved through the Maw.
A flicker of motion broke through the curtain of rain, a dark shape slicing across the Blackreach. Lykor. An obsidian streak racing the wind. Toward Jassyn.
Of course he was here. The worry in Serenna’s chest eased by a breath—Jassyn wouldn’t face the chaos alone.
But one still remained unaccounted for.
Her gaze dragged across the scattered battles, but she saw no sign of Fenn and still didn’t feel his presence through the bond.
He’s safe, Serenna told herself, though the sky screamed otherwise as lightning flashed with every beat of the dragon’s wings. He was helping evacuate the wounded—he had to be.
Gathering her courage, Serenna hovered and reached outward to still the wind and silence the storm around her. Rain slowed to a drifting veil, sparks coiling without striking.
She drew a long breath, the air heavy with charge and consequence. Then she fixed her gaze on Skylash and flew.