Chapter 57
LYKOR
Lykor stood on the lake’s shore with Jassyn at his side, mud clinging to his boots. Beside them, the rift he’d torn open for Rimeclaw and Blossom sealed behind the dragons, ferrying them beyond Galaeryn’s reach before the king could drive another leash through their skulls.
Seconds.
That was how long the victory of freeing Rimeclaw lasted.
Sunfire flared high above the Drowned Spires. Galaeryn’s ascending light cinched inward, compressing until his form became a single point against the dark.
Then the sky detonated.
Light ripped outward in an expanding ring. The blazing front raced across the lake, widening as it clawed toward every horizon. The king’s portal convulsed overhead and vanished inside the eruption.
The lake’s surface flattened ahead of the blast, smooth as polished steel. Behind it, water heaved upward in boiling walls.
Night vanished. Light scoured every shadow from the shore—every soldier, every wing, every lifted blade.
Lykor’s vision went dark. Pain lanced behind his eyes and sank into his fangs. His body moved without waiting for permission.
He slammed into Jassyn and drove him down into the mud, covering him as frost exploded from his palms. Ice vaulted over them in serrated plates, each shard driven into place by the only thought left clear enough to survive the impact.
PROTECT HIM.
Aesar reached for their Well in the same instant. Violet light snapped under the ice, curving so close that Lykor felt the shield hum against his spine.
The shockwave struck.
Mud peeled from the shore in sheets and slapped the barrier, rattling Lykor’s teeth. Pressure crushed in from every side, Essence grinding against ice and violet light until his ribs shuddered with it.
This was the end.
Fear arrived too late to matter. Too late for a portal. No strategy left to spend. Only Jassyn breathing, and Lykor braced over his body as if flesh could survive a sky tearing itself apart.
His claw dug into the earth beside Jassyn’s shoulder, talons buried to keep the blast from ripping them away.
Jassyn caught his hand and Lykor held on too hard. He knew it. Didn’t care. Essence had devoured the sky, and he’d hold on until it scorched the last beat from his heart.
As radiance erased everything beyond the ice, Lykor waited for the shield to disintegrate. For magic to tear through ice and skin. The world narrowed to the scrape of their breathing, their hands locked between them.
But the burn never came. Light and pressure battered the shield without searing through it.
Lykor blinked as the brightness dwindled, bleeding out of the sky. Color returned in fragments—the mud splattered over his arms, scattered fires burning red through smoke, starlight silvering the lake.
The battle had stopped.
He expected ash. Or bodies branded into the mud.
Instead, soldiers lay sprawled across the ruined shoreline or crouched behind shattered shields, while others stood where the blast had caught them, weapons hanging useless at their sides as they stared into the night.
Wraith and druids hovered above the water, some listing low, flame flickering out around their claws. Dracovae circled overhead while riders sagged in their saddles. Armor steamed. Scales smoldered. Blood leaked from noses and ears where the pressure had struck too deep.
But they were alive.
The blast had rolled over them, leaving earth, water, and bodies shaking in its wake.
Sound returned in pieces. A dracovae’s distant screech. Armor clattering as someone collapsed to their knees. The low, broken murmur of thousands who’d watched the sky rip itself open and found themselves still standing.
Then the stars began to fall.
Thousands descended in a silent shower, crimson and turquoise, yellow and blue, each bright globe scoring a line across Lykor’s ruined sight. Some struck the lake and vanished into the water. Others caught the wind and sailed beyond the battlefield, scattering toward the dark horizon.
A violet orb spiraled past Lykor’s shield, humming with the unmistakable pulse of a talent.
Essence.
Galaeryn’s hoard spilling out of the sky.
Lykor let the ice fracture and slough into the mud. He unraveled Aesar’s shield and shoved upright, one hand locked around Jassyn until they both found their balance.
Only then did Lykor release him and search above the lake for the king. For a shape rising from the wreckage, silver eyes already hunting for more power to seize.
But only falling talents burned against the night where Galaeryn should’ve been.
Lykor trusted that absence less than a corpse.
Above them, Cinderax hovered with smoke curling from his nostrils. His frills lay flat to his skull, and for once, the ancient little bastard had nothing clever to say.
Beyond the far shore, lightning flashed behind a broken ridgeline, Skylash and Veyrix gone from the sky.
Jassyn’s hand found Lykor’s again, and Lykor hated the trembling in his own fingers more than the treacherous relief clawing through his ribs.
Shock had rendered Jassyn’s face bloodless, leaving the amber of his eyes unnaturally bright. His gaze swept the fliers still holding the sky, as if scanning for the next wound that would need his hands.
Then Jassyn went still, his focus sharpening with dragonsight.
“Fenn,” he breathed.
A dark shape broke through the rain of light above the lake, dropping too fast.
Fenn plummeted with Vesryn locked against him, wings half-spread and shuddering under the prince’s weight. Vesryn hung limp in his arms, his own wings trailing loose behind him, head fallen back at an angle that made Aesar go deathly still inside Lykor’s skull.
Fenn warped.
He emerged lower, streaking toward another body tumbling through the drifting power.
Serenna.
She fell toward the lake, already too close to the water, her wings open and catching no lift as she turned slowly through the broken stars.
Lykor’s next breath jammed in his lungs as Fenn vanished again.
He reappeared beneath her, barely a span above the water. One arm braced Vesryn against his chest. The other shot upward, talons catching Serenna’s armor as her weight slammed into his shoulder.
His wings wrenched wide under the impact as he pulled her against him, Vesryn on one side, Serenna on the other.
Too much weight. Too little sky.
Fenn dropped, warping again before the lake could claim them.
He crashed on the far shore hard enough to bury his knees in the mud, water exploding around all three of them. Serenna sagged across one arm as Vesryn started to slide from the other. Fenn hauled them tighter, his wings dragging through the earth as he fought to hold them both.
Jassyn inhaled sharply, and Lykor decided whatever remained of the war could wait. Even if Galaeryn’s soldiers remembered their weapons with no king left to aim them, Fenn knelt alone in the mud with Lykor’s people motionless under his wings.
He tore open a portal.
“Come on,” he snapped, hauling Jassyn with him before despair made them useless.
Mud swallowed Lykor’s boots on the other side. Fenn knelt ahead of them, wings mantled over Vesryn and Serenna.
Around them, the king’s fallen talents drifted through the fog, bright globes trailing shards of color through the gray. One crimson orb veered toward Jassyn’s shoulder.
Lykor moved to strike Galaeryn’s stolen power aside.
Jassyn caught it first. “Mending.”
Lykor’s lip curled, but the talent had already flared in Jassyn’s palm. Essence branched through his skin as he used its power to augment his own. His knees dipped under the strain, but Lykor caught him by the arm and helped him forward.
Fenn’s wings vanished as a sound broke from him, ruined before it could form a word. He folded over the still bodies, one claw trembling against Serenna’s throat. The other found Vesryn’s, talons barely grazing skin as he hunted for a pulse.
Lykor knew he wouldn’t find one.
“No,” Fenn growled, the word low and rough. “You don’t get to do this.”
Jassyn stumbled the last few paces and dropped to the ground beside him. He placed one hand over Serenna’s chest, the other over Vesryn’s. Crimson light spilled from his fingers, weaving in lattices across their bodies.
Roots burst through the ground, climbing over their armor. Leaves unfurled in a rush of green as Jassyn dragged the earth’s living pulse up through stem and vine and into their flesh.
Neither Serenna nor Vesryn stirred.
Jassyn’s jaw clenched.
Wind struck hard enough to drive pressure into Lykor’s ears. The current whipped around Jassyn’s hands, and poured down Serenna’s throat.
Her chest rose, and Fenn’s talons twitched at her neck, hope flaring in his irises so violently it looked like pain.
Her ribs fell again.
Jassyn sent a current into Vesryn, forcing air between the prince’s parted lips. His chest rose through leaves and crimson light, then sank with the retreating air and didn’t move.
Jassyn shook his head, vicious enough to toss curls across his face.
The vines responded in a frenzy, racing over Serenna’s leathers, tunneling under torn armor and winding along the slack joints of her wings. Tendrils climbed over Vesryn’s shoulders and curled into the hollow beneath his jaw.
Mending light branched over them both in multiplying arrays, spilling across limp wings to knit rents in their membranes. Essence and earth sutured scorched flesh where scales had receded, repaired ruptured vessels, and sent blood coursing through limbs already cooling.
Their bodies obeyed everything except life.
Lykor made himself cross the last few paces. Every step landed heavy. Too loud. Too alive.
He lowered himself next to them, while Jassyn’s magic continued to work through flesh that refused to stir. Serenna and Vesryn remained still under his hands, close enough to touch, but already somewhere out of reach.
Aesar appeared beside Vesryn, a silhouette as pale as smoke. He knelt beside the prince, a drifting talent passing through him in a brief scatter of light.
Only Lykor saw Aesar reach for his twin.