Chapter 50
LYKOR
There was nothing of Kal left to save.
Not from a death so brutal, so final, that it left the tunnel reeking of marrow. But Lykor launched himself at the dragon anyway with Aesar’s scream still howling inside his skull.
He ripped free from the warp and slammed into the Bramblemaw’s chest. His wings flared, talons clawing its hide like a rabid beast.
Grief roared through him, a force with teeth that tore through his body until nothing remained but violence.
Lykor’s fists erupted with spikes of ice. He rammed them against obsidian scales, every blow a strike in the shape of Kal’s name. Frost shattered on impact, shards scattering across the tunnel.
He didn’t flinch. Neither did Aesar.
No divide separated them now, only a blur where two wills twisted so tightly they burned. Air tore through his bared fangs in uneven bursts. Ice splintered from his scales, punching outward from every pore.
The Bramblemaw didn’t bleed under the assault. Or even breathe like a living thing as every strike glanced off its hide.
Lykor honed his shadows into blades and struck again, driving at joints, searching for softer scales to slice. And when that fury didn’t break past the beast’s plated armor, he changed tactics and warped away down the tunnel.
The dragon turned from the few warriors who’d remained behind, dragging its titanic form forward. Its root-knotted tail scraped a trench through the stone as it advanced, less dragon than demolition.
Crystalline eyes locked on him. Unblinking.
For a breath, Lykor stood beneath the weight of that sightless gaze. The pressure of Rimeclaw’s gift pounded in his chest, and he wrenched that torrent into more ice—spikes carving into the air, long as spears and twice as sharp.
They whirled in a frenzy, a constellation of blades falling into his orbit, each point angled toward the beast. Their edges hissed through the air, shrieking like a storm about to break.
With a snarl, he flung his claws forward as the Bramblemaw began to charge. Fungus burst under its talons, the stink of loam clogging Lykor’s throat with every seismic step it took. His ice descended in a single cascade, a hailstorm of knives clattering across the dragon’s hide.
The tunnel thundered with the impact. Shallow cracks fissured across its scales. Lesser beasts would have bled rivers.
The dragon didn’t even blink.
Not when ice hammered in wave after wave.
Not when rending clashed against its armor.
Not when every attack was a silent scream flung from Lykor’s claws.
The scales held. Unyielding. As if his rage couldn’t touch the dragon at all.
The Bramblemaw pursued him and the earth convulsed with it. Roots burst from the stone, snapping around Lykor’s boots. He slashed with his shadows, disintegrating the tendrils before they could drag him down.
Stone ground against stone, the corridor squeezing tighter, reshaping itself into a cage meant to devour. Every shudder thinned the air, each quake a reminder that the beast was the terrain’s master.
Through the haze of dust, a young wraith appeared at Lykor’s side. One of Kal’s blood. Her blades burned with fire, aimed for the dragon’s eye.
She bared her fangs and warped. Reckless. Despair turned feral.
The Bramblemaw’s tail bludgeoned sideways when she reappeared, smashing her into the wall. Rock exploded on impact, her body crumpling before fire could fly or steel could bite. Blood streaked the stone and then her limp form vanished between the dragon’s jaws.
Weapons clattered to the ground—still flaming, still spinning—as the Bramblemaw crushed and swallowed like she’d never stood there at all.
Glaives raised, one of Vesryn’s rangers flew across the tunnel, shadows writhing along his wings. He didn’t make it two paces. A vine lashed from the dark, snared his ankle, and dragged him screaming into the dragon’s maw.
The crunch of bone jolted through Lykor like an echo of Kal’s death, his ribs remembering the final shatter. Debris smothered the air as the stone groaned beneath his boots, splitting and reforging itself—faster now, reshaping with intent.
Aesar surged forward, Essence whirling from their fingertips as he hurled Lykor into motion with a roar.
They warped close, limbs moving as one, ramming a spike of ice between the beast’s fangs. Shadows raced within the frost—a javelin they forced down the Bramblemaw’s throat like a hunter’s arm reaching for the heart.
Rip it out.
RIP IT OUT.
The blow drove past fang and cartilage, ice fracturing with the violence of the plunge. The Bramblemaw lurched, wings twitching as a guttural sound tore loose, choked by the frozen spear lodged in its throat.
Lykor shoved harder, Aesar screaming through him. Shadows flared inside the ice as he forced it longer, sharper, colder—his wrath forging every reaching inch.
Crystalline eyes flashed as the dragon’s jaws snapped shut. Ice shattered, shards crunching between its fangs, mocking the futility of their rage.
The backlash ripped through Lykor’s arm. He staggered, knees buckling before he caught himself. Disbelief hollowed him from within, a silence where triumph should have stood.
The Bramblemaw didn’t seem to register pain as more warriors and wraith charged it and fell—a stars-cursed executioner that refused to die.
Sightless eyes gleamed as it lunged, movements stiff and jerking out of time. Stone rippled beneath its talons and roots tore from the walls as the mountain contorted beneath its bulk.
Cracks opened in the stone under their boots. A ranger’s scream cut short as she disappeared, the mountain devouring her whole.
A wraith flew back from the dragon’s grappling vines, but the tunnel twisted and snared him, stone sealing shut.
Lykor warped away, air in his lungs sheared short as fangs gnashed where he’d stood a moment before. He hurled a lance of shadows at the exposed divots between the Bramblemaw’s ribs, already knowing the strike was useless.
Fire streaked through the dark. Wings ablaze, Vesryn hurtled forward like a comet. He slammed into the stone beside Lykor, the impact flinging shards of rock through the tunnel.
Between his palms, a sphere of light ignited. The glow pulsed. Intensified. Then ruptured into sunfire, blazing in his hands like a captive star.
Heat slammed into Lykor’s scales, a tidal wave that scoured the walls. Essence roared through the stone, pounding into the bones of the mountain. The radiance shuddered with each breath Vesryn took—too vast to hold, too wild to survive, too violent to belong to anything forged of this world.
“You ready to burn it?” Vesryn hissed, smoke spilling between his teeth, barely containing the light.
Lykor bared his fangs as the Bramblemaw charged. No screams echoed down the tunnel. No footfalls. Only silence. The others, gone. Devoured by the dragon. Or engulfed by the mountain itself.
“Burn it,” he snarled. “Fucking scorch it down to bone.”
Vesryn hurled the sunfire like vengeance made flesh. A white-gold torrent erupted from his palms and blazed down the throat of the tunnel. Light slammed into the Bramblemaw’s skull with the fury of an exploding sun.
The inferno carved a crescent furrow across its face, blistering scales, flaying hide like bark stripped from wood. Stone blackened and melted around them, Essence raging in the marrow of the mountain.
The dragon roared. For the first time, it recoiled. Talons scrabbled at the walls, gouging trenches in desperation, but the mountain didn’t open fast enough to let the beast flee.
Lykor stood motionless, shadows stalling at his feet, breath fracturing in his throat.
Vesryn’s sunfire poured in a blinding stream, refracting off crystalline eyes. And in that flare, Lykor saw her, a primal fear bleeding through.
This was no dragon. She was a husk, gutted of will, controlled with commands. The very fate Rimeclaw had begged to be spared from.
Obedience without consent. Silence without mercy.
Every dragon they’d faced had spoken—Skylash in hissed curses, Rimeclaw in riddles, even Cinderax cloaking youth in ancient wisdom. But this creature had no voice at all.
Because there was nothing left inside her to speak.
Lykor’s gaze locked on the base of her skull, where the stream of sunfire was scorching scales away, leaving raw flesh exposed.
His gut roiled, bile burning the back of his throat. Fury guttered, leaving only ash where battle had raged before.
They hadn’t wounded an enemy. They’d only been fighting something already enslaved.
Shame churned, revulsion crawling beneath his skin. Lykor’s claws trembled where they hung at his sides. He should help end her now, grant the mercy he’d withheld from Rimeclaw.
But deep down, he knew he couldn’t strike something already broken.
Lykor seized Vesryn by the armor and ripped a portal open, hauling them both through the rift.
The prince stumbled into snow with a curse, but Lykor didn’t slow. He dragged them into portal after portal, Essence burning wild in his veins as the realms blurred.
He didn’t stop until heat returned. Until Asharyn’s towers pierced the desert sky and no scent of blood clung to the wind.
Only then did he let the prince go.
Vesryn crumpled into the sand, wings shedding fire.
He struck the ground. Then again, knuckles splitting on impact.
His breath hitched, cracking into a sound that might’ve been a sob, but no words followed.
Only choked gasps and the brutal rhythm of his fists, pounding out a grief that had nowhere left to go.
Spine locked, Lykor stood silent beside him, banishing his wings and scales. Horror perched high in his throat, lodged where his voice might’ve been if he dared to use it. He swallowed the burn of loss, of wreckage and failure. Everything they hadn’t saved.
As Vesryn broke beside him, fists bloodied, shoulders shaking, Lykor held for both of them.
Motion tugged his gaze toward the city square. Druids and magus wove like threads stitching a frayed tapestry, steadying the freed and tending the wounded.
Families collided. Shouts broke into sobs as bodies collapsed into waiting arms. Scattered laughter spilled between the tears as if the survivors didn’t trust they’d lived through the darkness.
Lykor felt none of it.
The reunions dissolved into noise, joy bending around him like wind skimming stone. Detached, he stood just outside the swell of return as blood that wasn’t his own crusted along his jaw. Ice still clung to his claws, thawing in rivulets that hissed into the sand.
Kal had died to make this happen. So had others.
As Vesryn continued to shatter his fists on the ground, Lykor folded inward. He reached for Aesar but found only a void. He sensed Aesar buried somewhere beyond reach, retreated so deep that even Lykor’s thoughts rang hollow.
As he blinked against the desert light, his gaze snagged on those who stood at the edges of the square, unmoving and untouched by the reunion’s tide.
Elderly with trembling hands. Children with wide, vacant eyes. Survivors who hadn’t yet stepped back into their bodies.
Some flinched at cries of joy as if struck by the sound. Others only stared, lips parted and waiting, as if someone might notice them.
But no one did.
It shouldn’t have mattered. Their grief wasn’t his to carry. But something in Lykor splintered anyway, watching those who still believed someone might call their name. He stood, no longer certain whether the ache in his chest belonged to their loss or his own.
Of course, Bhreena was among those who had someone to hold. Relief blazed across her face as she clutched a young girl. Their cries and disbelieving joy rose together, haunting in the aftermath bought in blood that hadn’t been their own.
As Lykor watched her cling to what she’d salvaged, he darkly wondered if whatever hope she’d clawed back from the wreckage had been worth the cost.
Worth Kal’s broken body, crushed between a dragon’s maw.
Something flickered at the edge of Lykor’s awareness. Distant. But a familiar presence. His eyes snapped toward the horizon before the first druid stilled.
The city didn’t fall silent all at once. But slowly, one by one, heads turned in an eerie cascade of motion, every gaze lifting to the same patch of sky.
Lykor moved first.
His wings reappeared, snapping open as he launched upward in punishing strokes. Air fractured across his face and Asharyn dropped away beneath his boots.
Pressure pounded behind his eyes—a silent, blinding signal so raw it tasted like desperation itself.
Cinderax.
Flying high above, the dragon spiraled. Wings faltering, his body buckled in a broken fall.
Instinct bent Lykor’s path before understanding caught up. He warped through the sky, vanishing into the distance to reappear in a burst of displaced wind.
He caught Cinderax against his chest, wings hammering as he fought to steady them both on a rising draft.
Smoke curled from the dragon’s nostrils as he shook in Lykor’s grip, exhaustion rolling off him in ragged waves that Lykor nearly felt as if it were his own.
A low growl rattled from deep in Cinderax’s chest, his breath steaming around the Heart of Stars clutched between his jaws.
Lykor stilled.
The Heart of Stars, fogging with every broken exhale.
His pulse lurched as he raked his gaze across the stretch of sky. Pivoting hard, his heart thundered louder with every beat as he scanned for the others.
But the horizon shimmered with cruel indifference where Jassyn should’ve flown. Clear. Cloudless.
Lykor’s chest seized, breath locking so tight it refused to return.
They weren’t coming.
A colder thought crept beneath the rising dread. Jassyn might already be gone. Like Kal.
Numb, Lykor descended. Wind peeled past him as he dropped toward Asharyn, cradling the limp dragon. He landed in the courtyard, a plume of dust spiraling outward.
The jolt knocked Cinderax’s jaw slack. The Heart of Stars tumbled free, striking the sand with a muted thud.
Lykor’s knees hit the ground. Trembling, he lowered Cinderax.
Around them, druids had begun to gather. He didn’t see them. Only the collapsed dragon.
Cupping his hands, he summoned a shallow pool of water, barely enough to wet the cracked edges of the Cinderax’s snout.
His words came broken. Hoarse. But he had to know. “The others?”
Cinderax didn’t open his eyes as he drank, heaving breaths shuddering his wings. In a voice so faint it barely brushed Lykor’s mind, he answered.
“They were taken.”