35. Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Five
Eldrake
I didn’t wake up.
I fell—hard and helpless—into a dream that wasn’t mine, that wasn’t a dream at all.
I stood in a corridor of stone I didn’t recognize, but my lungs did. My skin did. The stink of blood and damp rot clung to the walls, heavy as chains. The air hummed with pressure. Torches burned green with Riftlight, shadows twisting wrong, as if they belonged to something else entirely.
Cells. A dungeon.
I wasn’t really there. I felt it immediately—like I was pressed beneath glass, only allowed to watch. A memory, a vision.
And Eva… Gods. Eva was there.
She sat chained in the far corner, her wrist shackled to the wall, her body folded in on itself like armor.
A Vyrmin stood guard outside her door, claws flexing against the stone, its eyes never leaving her.
Dried blood streaked from her lip to her collarbone.
She trembled—not from cold, but from something deeper.
They weren’t just breaking her body. They were crushing her magic, pressing it down until it had nowhere to go.
She looked smaller than I remembered. Dimmed, but not extinguished. She wasn’t breaking. But she was wearing out.
Across the hall, in the next cell, movement caught my eye—Fen and Felix. Both chained, both awake, watching helplessly. Fen’s hands fisted around her bonds; Felix’s jaw was set like iron. They were close. Too close. And still, none of them could reach one another.
“Eva!” I tried to call, but my voice had no place here. I was just a ghost, a passenger.
She stirred. Slowly, her head lifted, eyes half-lidded. And then—“Drake?”
My heart lurched. She couldn’t see me. She couldn’t possibly know. And yet—our bond thrummed to life, thin as thread but stretching across the distance like a heartbeat. Her pain pulsed against my ribs as if it were my own.
“I’m here,” I swore, though I knew she couldn’t hear.
Her lips parted again, forming my name, soft and raw. She raised her hand—weak, trembling—toward the space where the bars cut shadows across the floor.
I lifted mine in answer, and though it passed through smoke and stone, the bond pulled tight between us. For a moment, I swore I felt her skin against mine.
The air shimmered. Not magic. Not vision. Something else. Ours.
She felt me. I knew it.
And I—Gods help me—I would tear the world apart to reach her.
The vision began to unravel. The torchlight fractured, shadows melting into nothing. Eva blurred, fading back into the dark.
“No!” My roar broke against the silence. “Not yet!”
But already I was falling. The last thing I saw was her mouth shaping my name again and again, a prayer with no answer—while the Rift between us pulsed, alive, hungry, unbreakable.
I woke gasping, every nerve in my body on fire. My throat was raw. My vision swam. Pain exploded in every direction—my spine, my limbs, my ribs.
I tried to move.
“Stop,” Avod said. His voice was firm and steady, a hand pressing gently to my chest. “You’re going to tear yourself in half.”
“She’s alive,” I croaked. “Vyper has her. A dungeon. Underground.” Avod hesitated. That alone made my stomach bottom out. Avod’s brows pulled tight, but I kept going, my voice breaking. “She’s not alone. I saw Fen. Felix too. Same cells. Shackled.”
That name stopped him. Fen.
For a heartbeat, Avod didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. His gaze slipped from mine to the fire, to the shadows crowding the cave walls.
“You’re sure?” His voice was low, strained.
“I’d stake my life on it.”
Silence stretched between us, the fire snapping in the space where words should have been.
When he finally spoke, his voice was raw.
“She’s always been trouble. Always pushed too hard, talked too much, fought too dirty.
” He swallowed hard, his jaw tight. “Fen and Felix didn’t return from their mission.
” His eyes met mine. “We suspected they were taken, too.” The words hit like a second blow.
Eva. Fen. Felix. Trapped inside that place, suffering.
I scanned the cave—small, firelit, stone walls curving in and stalactites like teeth. My armor lay stripped in pieces across the floor. Cloths soaked with sweat and blood. My limbs twitched with aftershock. My skin itched like it hadn’t fully settled back into place.
“Where are we?”
“You blacked out,” Avod said. “Almost fully shifted. It took an hour to get you down. Your skin was glowing like a bonfire, and your eyes were…” He didn’t finish. “I dragged your heavy ass in here and hoped you’d wake up.”
He tossed me a waterskin. I drank until my ribs hurt.
“I saw her,” I whispered. “I felt her pain. I couldn’t reach her.”
“She’ll feel you again,” he said. “When you get to her.”
I stared at the fire. The guilt was loud. Ugly. “Every second I’m here, she’s in pain.”
“You move now, and you collapse again.”
“I’d rather die than waste time.”
“Well, I’d rather not drag your smoking corpse through another ten miles of wilderness.” That pulled a dry huff from my chest. It almost hurt more than the shifting.
He looked at me. “You bonded.” It wasn’t a question.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.
“She’s going to be alright,” he said quietly. “Because you won’t stop. Neither will I.” I nodded, barely. “I can’t believe you love Fen .”
“ Shut up, ” He laughed and kicked some dust in my direction.
The fire cracked. My body trembled with leftover power. My skin still buzzed with Rift energy. But the worst of it had passed. Avod was right. He always was. I looked at him—my brother, my anchor—the one who never let me fall alone.
Tomorrow, we’d run again. But tonight, I let myself breathe. Just once. For her.
We had been riding for days, and I still wasn’t close enough to kill him.
The biting wind howled through the jagged cliffs as Avod and I pressed forward.
Each step felt heavier than the last, the weight of my armor and the inferno inside me nearly unbearable.
The terrain had grown brutal—scarred and unnatural, as though something ancient had clawed its way through the land long ago.
The stench of sulfur clung to the air like rot.
It was him. I could feel it. Vyper’s scent. His filth.
“Drake,” Avod called from behind me, his voice strained but steady. “Tracks. Fresh.”
I joined him, kneeling beside the clawed footprints etched deep into the frozen soil. They were wider than before—rushed. Fleeing.
“They’re running,” I said darkly. “They should be.” We followed the trail into a canyon where the trees had long since blackened and died. The air thinned, brittle with frost. My Rift pulsed under my skin. I was nearing my limit, but I wouldn’t stop. Not until I saw her again.
The first attack came without warning.
A guttural roar echoed through the canyon, and from the shadows, a Vyrmin leaped from the ridge above, claws extended.
I pivoted and drove my blade straight into its chest. Its body convulsed, black ichor spurting across the rocks.
Two more lunged from the shadows behind it.
Avod was already moving, his hammer colliding with bone and muscle in a blur of force.
“Left!” I shouted.
He was already moving, his war hammer crashing into the skull of one beast, its head caving in with a sickening crunch. He spun, blocking the swipe of another’s claws with the haft of his weapon before driving his knee into its chest.
I turned my focus back to the wounded Vyrmin, finishing it with a fiery slash that split it from throat to belly. The flames leaped from my blade as if alive, fueled by the raw, unrelenting fury coursing through me.
But the fight wasn’t over.
They kept coming—half a dozen more—twisted, screaming, ravenous. My fury boiled over.
My blade flared. My skin burned. The Dragon surged forward.
Unlike last time, it didn’t take me by surprise.
I welcomed it. The shift came like a breath—scales bloomed across my arms, my jaw extended into a snarl.
My spine cracked, talons lengthened. Heat erupted from my core. Controlled this time. Focused.
I met them in a blur of teeth and flame. A Vyrmin lunged. I caught it in both claws and hurled it into the others. I opened my mouth and unleashed a fire that danced along the canyon walls, illuminating the carnage. They screamed. I didn’t stop.
When the last shriek died and the air filled with smoke and silence, I stood in the center of the scorched path, breathing hard. The world slowly crept back to itself. My claws faded. My bones reset. The flame within me guttered low but not out.
I staggered slightly. Avod approached, giving me a long, deliberate once-over. “Well,” he said, casually slinging his hammer across his back, “You’re still standing; that’s good.”
“It’s the second time,” I muttered, wiping blood from my jaw. “The shift is getting stronger. I’m holding onto it longer.”
“And thank the Gods you’re learning how to aim your fire,” he gestured toward a simmering log that had just about turned to cinder. “You almost roasted me.”
“You were in my way,” I said with a shrug.
“I was behind you. And still, my left boot melted.”
I huffed something between a cough and a laugh. “Sorry.”
He shook his head, eyeing the carnage. “You’re a walking natural disaster, you know that?”
“I know.”
Avod’s grin faded into something steadier. “Whatever’s waiting for us up ahead—whatever he’s doing to her—we’re ready. He won’t see us coming.”
My jaw tensed. “Oh, he’ll see me. But it’ll be the last thing he sees.”
I turned back to the trail, the smoldering ruins of Vyper’s beasts behind us. My vision narrowed again, not from rage—but purpose.
Eva was close.
And so was vengeance.