Chapter 43 The One Who Fell
Chapter forty-three
The One Who Fell
Sol
I don’t want to die!
Sol fell.
The world vanished in a single violent gasp of white.
The clouds devoured her, dragging her into their frozen belly, spinning her end over end until she no longer knew where the sky ended and the sea began.
Help!
Air slammed against her body so hard it felt like hands—cold, merciless hands—shoving her downward.
Faster.
Faster.
Faster.
Her stomach climbed into her throat.
Her heartbeat became a frantic, shredding stutter.
There was no spell to cast.
No hope.
No slowing the plummet.
She was falling from a height no human could survive, and the ocean waited below to be her silver-blue grave.
The wind tore the breath from her lungs. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound ripped away instantly.
Stolen by velocity.
Swallowed by the storm.
Above, Pyrran’s laughter boomed through the clouds.
He was savoring this—her panic, her helpless flailing, the way her body twisted in freefall like a broken marionette.
Monster!
Her vision blurred as tears froze to her lashes. Her dark brown skin burned, and then went numb. Her bones thrummed with the speed of her descent.
The world became a smear of white, wind, and terror.
She tried to pull her arms in. Tried to fight the spin. But the sky had no mercy, and gravity had no bargains to offer.
So this is death.
Not quiet.
Not gentle.
A roar.
A rush.
A violent, endless surrender.
Then, another sound rose through the deafening wind tearing past her ears. A roar, but not Pyrran’s cruel delight.
This one cracked open the sky.
This one was different.
Anguished.
Desperate.
Broken.
Korin.
He roared again, and the sound tore a mournful wound through the sky.
Sol’s heart twisted.
Korin was screaming for her. Shifting, probably—bones cracking, scales erupting—racing upward to catch her before she shattered against the waves.
But he was too far.
Too slow.
She could feel it in her plummeting bones. The distance was too great. The fall too fast. By the time Korin reached her, she would already be dead.
I'm sorry.
She didn't know who she was apologizing to or why anymore. Perhaps, it was to Korin for thinking he was a monster the whole time and not accepting that he was her mate. Now there would be no time to explore the possibility.
Maybe the apology was to her parents, who had found her egg and raised her as their own. They would never know what happened to her. Never know that their strange, magical daughter had died falling from the sky, killed by a dragon who refused to believe she was real.
I'm sorry I couldn't. . .
PAIN exploded in her chest.
Sharp.
Burning.
Ripping.
Sol screamed.
Ahhhh!!!
Within her core, something woke.
Lurched.
Twisted.
What is this?!
The pain spread, gnawing at her senses.
Chewing away the very essence of who she was.
“Nooooo!!!” Agony detonated down her spine—molten metal poured into her marrow—forking through every nerve ending like lightning seeking ground.
Her bones didn't just ache.
They screamed.
They shattered.
They rebuilt themselves from the inside out.
This wasn't pain—pain was a human concept, small and manageable. This was primordial rebirth, the violent awakening of something savagely colossal and ancient that had slumbered in her DNA since before her first breath, now clawing its way free through flesh that was never meant to contain it.
Shattering.
Ripping.
Splintering.
No! No! What is happening to me?!
Her screams began to sound wrong.
They sounded. . .monstrous.
Deeper.
Rougher.
More wild animal than human.
And then her body began to violently transform.
The shift ravaged her hands first.
Her fingers bulged—widths and lengths that shouldn't exist, that couldn't exist—and yet she felt every agonizing inch of their becoming.
Skin stretching.
Veins elongating.
Joints popping.
Bones reshaping with sounds like cracking ice.
Her nails shot out, darkened to sapphire blue, thickened, and then curved into wicked points that gleamed.
Claws?!
Blue as winter twilight.
Sharp as frozen daggers.
Beautiful.
Terrible.
Entirely inhuman.
The transformation surged up her arms. Her skin ballooned to epic proportions, rippled, then split—but there was no blood.
Instead, scales emerged from beneath!
Oh gods!!!!!!
Shimmering scales. Some white as bone. Others blue as the deepest ice. They erupted across her flesh in waves, layering over enlarging muscle and expanding sinew.
Sol tried to scream again, but what emerged was not a scream.
It was a roar.
The sound erupted from her throat and shattered the air around her. And it was the explosive sound of mountains collapsing and glaciers calving.
Her spine snapped backward with a sickening crack—then erupted into a grotesque elongation of vertebra multiplying, splitting, doubling, and punching outward through her flesh.
A massive tail burst from her newly large tailbone, whipping violently through the air with enough force to slice clouds apart. Razor-edged spines erupted along its length, crystallizing into lethal blue-white glittering daggers that dripped with frost.
Her face—oh gods—her face.
The bones beneath her skin cracked and splintered, reconstructing themselves with the sound of a thousand icicles shattering at once.
Her jaw didn't just push forward—it erupted, tearing through flesh as it elongated into a savage, predatory snout.
Her human teeth ripped free from bleeding gums, each one a small death as fangs slammed in place, growing with such violent speed they scraped against each other, crystalline daggers that could shred steel.
Her skull fractured with the sound of thunder, brain pulsing exposed for a horrific instant before new bone encased it, horns drilling out from her temples in spirals of pale blue crystal that sang like glass being tortured.
And through it all. . .
falling,
falling,
always falling.
Power ignited—and kept igniting. This wasn't the polite whisper of her ice magic or the tame frost that once kissed her fingertips.
This was something older. Hungrier. It tasted like the heart of a glacier, like the silence before an avalanche, like the first killing frost of winter.
It flooded her cells until she couldn't tell where she ended and the cold began.
She was not human.
She had never been human.
She was a dragon.
The realization struck her with the force of a physical blow. All those years of hiding and believing she was broken, wrong, Lowly. . .
She had been a goddess in chains.
And now the chains had shattered.
Her massive back exploded with sensation as something massive tore free from her shoulder blades. Not pain—not exactly—but pressure, release, expansion.
Wings!
Her wings burst outward with a thunderous crack, ripping through the atmosphere like divine blades.
They tore open, vast beyond comprehension—translucent membranes of ice-blue stretched taut between jagged white bones that could puncture mountains.
Frost erupted along their edges in violent crystalline bursts, not merely shimmering but blazing with cold fire.
The wings began to flap and didn't just catch the air—they seized it, dominated it, commanded the very heavens to bend to her will.
And Sol didn't just stop falling.
She conquered gravity itself.
The sensation was unlike anything she had ever experienced. One moment she was plummeting toward death, and the next. . .she was floating.
Sideways.
Ohhhhhh!!!
Her massive new body hung in the air at an awkward angle, wings beating unevenly, tail thrashing for balance she didn't know how to find. She wasn't flying so much as. . .flailing.
Marvelously.
What. . .how do I. . .get control?
Her wings flapped again—too hard on the left, too soft on the right—and she spun in a dizzy circle, the world wheeling around her in a blur of blue, white, and gold.
This is impossible. This is insane. This is. . .glorious.
The thought came unbidden, rising from somewhere deep in her new dragon heart. Because it was glorious. The power thrumming through her veins. The strength coiled in her muscles. The way the wind bent around her wings like a lover's caress. She understood now. Why Korin called himself a god.
From above, Pyrran's voice split the sky. "She really is a dragon!"
No mockery now.
No laughter.
Just hunger.
But, Sol didn't care.
She was too busy trying not to tumble out of the sky.
Her wings beat frantically, each stroke sending her lurching in a different direction.
Left.
Right.
Up.
Down.
She had no idea how to control this body. It was too big, too powerful, too everything. Every movement felt exaggerated. Every twitch of a muscle sent her careening through the air.
How do dragons do this?!
She tried to straighten out, to level her wings the way she had seen Korin do. But her body refused to cooperate. Instead of gliding forward, she pitched backward, her tail whipping over her head as she somersaulted through the clouds.
No! No! Wrong direction!
She roared in frustration—and sound didn’t come. Instead it was a massive symphony of ice and fury. A stream of frost shot out from her jaws in a glittering spray, crystallizing the clouds around her into delicate frozen sculptures that shattered in her wake.
Beautiful. Terrifying. Mine.
Something was changing inside her. Not just her body—her mind. Her thoughts were sharper now. Clearer. More focused. The terror was still there, but it was being swallowed by instinct.
Spread your wings. Feel the current. Let the wind carry you.
Sol listened.
She stopped fighting her body and started feeling it instead. The way the air moved beneath her wings. The way her tail could shift to change her direction. The way her claws could tuck or extend to affect her speed.
And slowly—painfully, awkwardly, gloriously—she began to fly.
Not well.
Not gracefully.
She wobbled, dipped, and nearly crashed into a passing cloud. But she was moving forward. She was staying in the air.