Chapter 55
SERENNA
Essence erased the world.
Radiance burned through Serenna’s vision and burrowed behind her eyes. Pressure followed, hurling her backward through the air. Her wings snapped wide as the joints wrenched, pain spearing down the flight muscles along her spine.
Vesryn caught her wrist before the recoil spun her from the sky, his alarm cutting sharp through the bond. On her other side, Fenn snatched Vasharax against his chest, halting the hatchling’s fall.
Serenna fought for air as her wings caught again, stroke by brutal stroke, while Vesryn and Fenn recovered with her.
On the platform Blossom had abandoned, fresh ranks of soldiers stood in rigid lines, armor flashing white in the blinding flood. Their formation parted the blaze into a corridor.
Someone walked through it.
Galaeryn.
Even a hundred paces away, Serenna recognized the king by that terrible gravity of his presence, by the way the battlefield bowed around him. He crossed the platform without haste, his outline burning bright with rivers of Essence.
The opening they’d spent the battle buying.
Serenna banked toward the platform, Vesryn and Fenn close at her sides, Vasharax now flapping between them. Below, druids and wraith swept over the army, fire and shadows tearing through formations while dracovae wheeled higher, radiant wings drawing volleys of arrows and Essence into the sky.
Across the lake, twenty cloaked Starshard circles held around the Drowned Spires, silent above the king and invisible so long as the cloaking held.
Serenna cleared the shore for open water, passing over Blossom as the dragon thundered after fleeing shamans. Farther out, Rimeclaw thrashed in a churn of spray, jaws gnashing against a tangle of vines.
Frost tore across the lake toward the Tidecrasher, sealing the waves into a road of ice. Lykor warped down the frozen span in bursts with Jassyn at his side, a Heart of Stars blazing in Jassyn’s fist.
Cinderax broke from the ranks of druid fliers and arrowed toward them, wingbeats quickening as he dropped.
The shoreline fell away behind Serenna as Lykor and Jassyn reached Rimeclaw.
Ahead, the first soldier on the platform collapsed.
As Galaeryn passed between the rows, knees buckled one after another, armor striking crystal as Essence tore from their chests in radiant globes. Fingers lengthened into claws, limbs contorting out of shape as the soldiers convulsed into wraith.
One light joined another in Galaeryn’s orbit. Then another. He never broke stride as the power of his own soldiers gathered around him in a crown of stolen stars.
One soldier crumpled across his path, limbs still jerking through the transformation. Galaeryn stepped over him without lowering his gaze.
Lightning raked across the horizon. The flashes stripped the darkness from the lake, exposing twenty circles around the Drowned Spires before their cloaking swallowed them again. But Galaeryn didn’t so much as glance upward.
Beyond the far shore, Skylash soared over the hills in a crippled spiral, one wing buckling before she wrenched it back open.
Veyrix streaked after her so fast the air cracked around him. The shockwave flattened the grass below him and shook loose stones down the slopes. His crystalline eyes never left the mate the king had turned into prey.
Another surge of Essence from the spires jolted through Serenna’s bones. She tore her attention back to the platform as it drew nearer.
At last, Galaeryn stood within reach of the circles that had waited through the battle to strike. Serenna closed her hand around the Starshard at her throat and hauled on the prismatic current racing through her, Vesryn, and Fenn.
“Now!”
Fenn’s fire pulsed outward, a red ring cutting across the sky. Vesryn’s flames chased after it, carrying the signal through smoke and starlight.
One by one, the hidden circles flickered into sight above the water. Essence leapt from palm to palm, gem to gem, until the air vibrated against Serenna’s teeth.
She beat her wings harder toward the platform, Vesryn and Fenn keeping pace, Vasharax tucked between them. Their circle pressed inward, and the others followed, tightening around the Drowned Spires in a radiant noose.
Essence kindled through the links. Within the circles carrying hatchlings, small jaws opened, spilling flame, lightning, and frost. The children of earth and starlight bent each elemental gift into the current until the gathered power stung Serenna’s eyes.
Their last advantage lay in power the king didn’t possess—sunfire woven with elemental magic his hands could neither shape nor summon. One strike, all together.
Below, Galaeryn halted and tipped his face toward the rings overhead, their reflections trembling across the faceted crystal at his feet.
Serenna clenched her Starshard harder as she hauled on everything left inside her Well. Heat seared her palm and rippled outward, catching Vesryn and Fenn in the current.
Their Starshards flared.
Power climbed through Serenna’s veins like the first star splitting darkness, a wound of light seared into the void. Her wings spread wide against the igniting sunfire, membranes shuddering with the effort of keeping it controlled.
Across the lake, Essence ruptured through twenty circles, every strike waiting on Serenna’s signal.
One fired too soon.
The bolt speared down and missed Galaeryn by half the platform, shattering against the crystal’s outer edge.
Glass exploded skyward, shards flashing through the dark. Water punched through the fracture, boiling under the impact as soldiers were thrown from the platform.
Galaeryn didn’t flinch.
“Wait!” Serenna shouted.
Too late.
Another circle fired.
Then another.
Panic tore through their ranks. Vesryn’s telepathy surged beside her, his command to hold reverberating through the bond while one ring after another discharged their power. Sunfire descended in erratic strikes, each one alone where twenty had been meant to land as one.
The king lifted a hand. A lance of sunfire split around his palm, its colors bending toward him until the light vanished against his skin.
Serenna’s chest seized.
Three more strikes were already falling. Light crashed over Galaeryn’s shoulders, burying him in the blaze.
More volleys plunged into the glare, widening fractures through the platform while Galaeryn remained lost inside their light.
For an instant, there was only sunfire where the king had stood.
Then the light collapsed inward.
Every attack still pounding the platform bent toward Galaeryn, unraveling in burning threads. Strand by strand, he gathered the wreckage of their strike, funneling the current into his chest.
The king’s mouth curved as he flicked his wrist toward the spiral galaxy burning across the sky, its crowded stars shining impossibly close.
Pressure ruptured outward, splitting the night without a sound. Above the Drowned Spires, a portal ripped open across the stars, blotting them out one by one. The expanse spread beyond the platform, dwarfing the glass towers until the sky disappeared into a lightless void.
The lake fell away as the rift seized her, the portal’s vastness exerting a gravity of its own. Serenna shot skyward as it pulled her, stomach lurching from the sudden ascent. Her wings swept wide against the drag, pain tearing through her shoulders as the portal hauled her higher.
Vesryn rose beside her in the same violent rush, wings flaring to hold himself back. Fenn pitched after them, Vasharax locked against his chest.
All around the Drowned Spires, their circles reeled toward the portal. Sunfire lashed between outstretched hands in broken arcs, each connection dying as wielders were dragged apart.
Serenna fought the rift to haul herself lower, searching the broken rings for any chance to salvage their forces into a unified strike.
Blue Essence erupted from the king’s palm, a bolt of force streaking toward her, Vesryn, and Fenn.
It crossed the distance before Serenna could twist clear, punching into her chest and spinning her backward as lake and stars wheeled into a senseless blur. Vesryn’s curse cut through the rush of air. Serenna’s wings swept wide, catching a current sideways as she wrenched herself upright.
Fenn’s terror tore through the bond.
Vasharax had been ripped from his arms, maroon wings thrashing as a cord of force cinched around her ribs and launched her toward the portal. Fire streamed from her jaws as her talons scythed empty air. Her roar cracked across the lake, high and furious.
Fenn warped.
He reappeared just below Vasharax’s path, one claw outstretched, close enough for her spiraling fire to expose the desperation flaring in his eyes.
A second pulse of force slammed into Vasharax, blasting her past Fenn’s grasp in a streak of flame.
Fenn warped again, higher this time, casting out a net of Essence as he reached. His claws snapped shut through Vasharax’s trailing fire as she crossed the portal and disappeared.
Serenna’s wings faltered.
Vasharax had burned in her awareness, bright as a coal smoldering in the dark. Then that little flame vanished, leaving a silence sharp enough to cut the air from Serenna’s lungs.
Memory struck without warning. Vasharax in Asharyn’s nursery, tumbling over Fenn’s boots, chasing orbs of fire through the sand, all snapping fangs and fearless claws.
But now the dragon was gone.
The rift stole back the distance Serenna had fought to keep. Vesryn caught her around the waist and pulled her hard against him, his arm locking tight enough to bruise.
Fenn burst back beside them, fist still clenched. Slowly, he opened it.
Embers clung to his palm, the last of Vasharax’s fire curling into smoke between his talons.
A lance of force streaked from Galaeryn toward another ring, a Tidecrasher hatchling huddled at its heart. The wielders closed around the dragon, a shield sweeping over them.
The king’s power struck, shattering the ward into flecks of violet light.
The hatchling screeched, frost erupting from its jaws as Galaeryn flung it through the portal.
A Stormstrike vanished next. An Emberhart followed before Serenna could drag air into her lungs. Galaeryn barely moved, only angling his aim from one hatchling to another as blue light flashed and they disappeared into the portal.
By the time Serenna found her voice, eight dragons were gone.
“Fenn.” His name broke from her lips, choked with the tears she couldn’t afford. “Get the hatchlings out.”
She sensed Vesryn’s telepathy barreling outward at the same time, carrying the order ahead of Fenn through every surviving circle.
Fenn shook his head. “I shouldn’t leave your side.”
Serenna touched his arm. If the stars were merciful enough to leave them alive until dawn, grief could claim her then. Right now, the hatchlings needed him more than she did.
“Vasharax is gone.” The words scraped her throat raw on their way out. “You’re fast enough to save the rest.”
Fenn’s gaze dropped to her fingers locked around his wrist. Slowly, he turned his palm beneath hers and caught her hand. His grip tightened once before he let her go.
He warped, cold rushing into the space he left behind, and reappeared at the closest circle. As he seized a shrieking hatchling from its center, he opened a portal beside the startled wielders, thrusting the dragon through before Galaeryn’s next snare could close.
Serenna tracked him through the bond as he crossed the sky, his presence slipping in and out of her awareness—there, gone, there again.
Across the lake, channelers scattered beneath the king’s assault, some fleeing, some falling, others opening desperate portals for the hatchlings as Fenn raced to them.
A wave of pressure rippled over the platform, sharp enough to prickle across Serenna’s skin.
Her attention snapped back to the king as his boots started to lift from the ground. He rose slowly, though nothing carried him, as if the world simply let him go.
Light writhed underneath his skin, gathering at his fingertips and along the crown above his silver hair. Essence streamed around him in widening rings, drawn into his orbit like wayward stars.
His outline dissolved into radiance.
Ayla’s warning reverberated through Serenna. He’ll call them here. Or go to them. Galaeryn didn’t need every dragon through the portal before he crossed. If the way remained open, the Aelfyn could enter their world and claim the rest themselves.
No dragon left in any realm would be beyond their reach.
Serenna’s blood turned to ice as the king began to ascend.