Chapter 63
Chapter
Sixty-Three
The wind screamed across the ridge line as the sun dipped beneath the horizon, leaving the battlefield drenched in molten amber and bloodied shadows.
Thunder cracked in the distant sky, not from a storm, but from dragons circling high above, their silhouettes weaving between gathering clouds that trembled with arcane pressure.
Squad Seven moved like the edge of a blade.
Thaelyn crouched low against the outcrop, her eyes narrowed against the wind.
Aether pulsed faintly beneath her skin, not in chaotic bursts as before, but as a steady heartbeat.
Controlled. Focused. Her sigil burned faintly against her shoulder beneath her leathers, lines of pale silver seeping through the seams. Behind her, Iri, Vaeryn, Rhys, and Feyra tightened formation.
Their breaths were steady, though adrenaline burned in their gazes.
"Two incoming, left flank," Vaeryn murmured, her voice barely a whisper. Earth vibrated beneath her fingertips as she pressed her palm to the stone. "Scouts. Not human."
Feyra's fingers twitched as lightning crackled across her knuckles. "Let's see if they bleed."
Rhys rolled his neck. "Or scream. I like it when they scream."
Thaelyn smirked, but her heart was a taut wire. She reached inward, brushing the bond. Nyxariel shimmered in her thoughts like a storm coiled beneath silk.
“We do not strike first without purpose,” the ancient dragon whispered. “But if they bring fire, we will answer with thunder.”
Brynnek's voice came through the communicator rune. "Team Alpha, hold until signal. Interference is thick over the ridge. We push only on the Queen's beacon."
"Copy," Thaelyn replied. She tapped the rune etched into her bracer, locking the connection.
From above, shadows stirred, Sorren's dragon, Mirra, circling high and cloaked. Sorren himself was already somewhere beyond, scouting the perimeter like a ghost through dusk. The tension was mounting. They were close.
Then it broke. A howl split the dusk, followed by the flash of a crimson bolt from the western flank. A twisted beast, half-winged, half-charred sinew, burst from the trees with an unnatural shriek. It lunged for Feyra.
"Move!" Thaelyn shouted.
Feyra ducked and sent a blast of lightning straight into the creature's face. It screamed, flailed, but another took its place.
Rhys hurled a wall of wind upward, scattering debris and forcing a second scout to veer. Iri summoned a wave of mist that shrouded their position. Thaelyn reached deeper for her Aether. It answered like a lover.
The air turned cold. Silent. Time seemed to suspend. Her palm rose, and with it, a tremor of silvery-blue force pulsed outward. The nearest beast twisted in midair, writhing in agony as it was slammed into a boulder with bone-shattering force.
"We don’t have long!" Iri called, daggers flashing. "They’ll know where we are."
Vaeryn tossed a seedpod laced with her magic. It hit the ground and exploded into thorned roots that wrapped around the leg of a third enemy. Screams echoed.
"Retreat to second position!" Brynnek's voice rang again. "Reinforcements en route. Thorne’s team is engaging west."
Thaelyn grabbed Feyra’s arm and ran. The squad moved as one. Behind them, the forest lit with fire, a signal in the sky. Vornokh roared overhead, followed by the answering cry of Nyxariel.
The first battle line had been drawn. And the real storm was coming.
Thaelyn stood on Nyxariel’s back beneath a sky that had forgotten how to breathe. The twin moons hung low and swollen, bleeding red light across the cliffs of Aeromir. The wind was wrong, too heavy, too still. It pressed against her like a held breath, waiting to break. Then it did.
A sound split the night, not thunder, not wind, but something vast and alive, tearing through the fabric of the world. It reverberated through her bones, through the dragon beneath her, through the bond that tethered them both.
The Veil has fallen, Nyxariel whispered inside her mind, voice a tempest given form. He has unbound it.
Thaelyn’s chest constricted. Below, the cliffs glowed faintly violet, the runes carved into their stone centuries ago now bleeding light. The old protections were gone. The Rift had opened its mouth, and from its depths, the dark was coming.
“Thorne,” she breathed.
His voice came faintly through the storm. “I see it.”
Across the sky, Vornokh rose like a shadow of molten night, his scales burning crimson at the edges as fire wove through his wings.
Thorne sat astride him, armor scorched and gleaming.
He looked up, met her eyes across the swirling chaos, and the bond between them pulsed like a heartbeat shared.
Then the first scream cut through the storm.
Shapes spilled from the torn horizon, winged horrors gliding between lightning strikes.
The Vraenmaws. Their translucent wings shimmered like oil, bodies flickering in and out of sight as they dove.
The air grew cold where they passed. The first struck a flight of students mid-formation; their dragons fell lifeless without wounds, eyes glassy, hearts blackened.
“By the Rift,” Thorne growled. “They’re pulling the breath from them.”
“Not if I stop them.” Thaelyn’s pulse flared, and Aether shimmered beneath her skin like starlight under glass.
Nyxariel twisted upward, her roar shaking the air.
The sound sent ripples of magic through the storm, disrupting the nearest Vraenmaw.
It solidified mid-air, a creature of glass and smoke, and Thaelyn struck.
A pulse of violet light leapt from her palm, burning through its body until it shattered into a rain of black ash.
But for every one that fell, three more came. Then the ground split open below.
From the cracked plains beyond the cliffs, skeletal giants rose, the Korvathi, their skulls etched with glowing runes, dragging whips of vertebrae that screamed through the air. They swung them at the dragons, and where they struck, magic burned like acid.
Nyxariel dodged, wings sweeping wide. “Their marrow holds corruption. Burn them with pure flame.”
“I’m trying!” Thaelyn shouted, gripping the harness as a whip snapped past. She thrust her hand forward, and Aether collided with the air in a burst of light that scorched the nearest Korvath clean through. The giant collapsed, but then its ribs began to crawl, knitting themselves back together.
“They reforge,” she hissed.
Thorne’s voice came through the bond, hard and steady. “You can’t outfight what’s already dead. Draw them toward the sea cliffs. We can use the storm.”
She turned Nyxariel sharply, the dragon diving through smoke and shadow. Behind her, lightning arced crimson through the clouds, and silhouetted against it were more horrors.
The Umbrali drifted through the air like smoke given shape, faces flickering between those of the dead and the living. One wore her mother’s face: another, her own.
Her breath caught. “No.”
They reached for her, hands whispering against the wind. When one touched Nyxariel’s wing, memory vanished, her mind went blank, and her name was gone.
“Thaelyn.” Thorne’s voice slammed through the haze. “Hold on. Don’t let them in.”
Her vision steadied. Nyxariel roared, spinning in place, her tail whipping through the mist. The Umbrali screamed as their forms unraveled, burned apart by dragonfire.
But below, more were coming. A flood of movement churned from the canyon, shadow-beasts and wolves with ribs aglow, the Veilhounds, their jaws dripping black ichor. They raced the wind, their howls vibrating through Thaelyn’s bones. She could feel them scenting her.
“They’re tracking me,” she whispered.
“Because of your Aether,” Thorne replied. “They smell it like blood.”
“Then I’ll give them something to choke on.”
She raised both hands, Aether flaring like lightning through her veins.
Nyxariel arched her wings and dove, power spiraling outward.
The impact struck the cliffside with the fury of a storm.
The nearest hounds disintegrated, their bones turning to vapor, but more poured from the Rift below. Endless. Unstoppable.
And above them all, the sky broke open. The Aethrakyn descended, massive serpents of molten glass, their wings screeching with each beat. Lightning shattered against their hides. They exhaled clouds of acidic mist that melted armor, dragons, and stone.
Vornokh met them head-on, a pillar of black fire engulfing the lead serpent. It shrieked and coiled around him, the two ancient beasts locked in a spiral of destruction.
“Thorne!”
Stay high, stormheart. His voice was ragged but alive. We’ll hold the line. You guard the others.
She wanted to argue, to dive after him, but Nyxariel’s voice thundered in her mind. He fights where the fire belongs. Ours is the storm.
Then something shifted. A presence, cold, immense, familiar, rose through the chaos. The Rift’s power rippled outward, bending the air, making even dragons falter midflight.
Kaen had arrived. His chariot of shadow rose from the torn earth, drawn by giant specters that moved like smoke over water. The black flame around his brow burned brighter than the moons. His armor pulsed with the same red veins that laced the Rift itself. And when he spoke, the world stopped.
“The Veil is undone,” his voice carried, vast and terrible. “The age of dragons is over. Kneel, and live in the new dawn.”
“Never,” Thaelyn hissed.
Nyxariel’s roar answered him, a sound so ancient and pure that the Rift itself quaked. The storm surged back in her favor, Aether lightning spiraling from her wings. For a heartbeat, the light pushed Kaen’s shadow back.
But then he raised the tome of the Rift, its pages bleeding crimson light. The creatures screamed as one, Vraenmaws, Korvathi, Veilhounds, all, and the wind itself obeyed him.
Thaelyn braced as Nyxariel bucked midair, wings thrashing. Across the bond, she felt Thorne’s pain, the burning in his chest, the pulse of their connection flaring too bright to bear.
Stay with me, she whispered. Please.
Always.
The sky shattered. The Rift opened fully, splitting the world into red and black. And beneath the scream of thunder and monsters, Thaelyn understood the truth: This was not the beginning of war. It was the end of everything that had come before.