Chapter 35
AMARIA
The sounds of battle crashed back in: steel on steel, screaming, the wet heavy thud of bodies hitting the ground and not getting back up. The chaos I'd blocked out while watching Kaelen break was now washing over me.
"Hold the line!" Torin's voice, to my left. I glimpsed him through the fray—blood streaming down his face, Ryla pressed against his back, the two of them fighting like they'd rehearsed this particular apocalypse.
But there was no line left to hold.
The barricade dissolved under a wave of black armor. For every Enforcer we dropped, three more stepped over the corpse. Their movements were synchronized. Relentless.
A Hound took down a rebel ten feet from me. A boy. Young. I'd shared bread with him that morning, watched him laugh at one of Maxx's terrible jokes.
I didn't see him die. Just heard the wet snap of his spine and the silence that followed.
Bile surged up and I swallowed it back. Move. Keep moving.
"Back!" Eryndor threw his weight into an Enforcer, shoving him away from my exposed side.
But the shove lacked power.
He stumbled. His boot slipped in the mud—blood and dirt churned together into something slick and hateful. His breath came in wet gasps, and the black veins crawling up his neck pulsed darker with every heartbeat.
He was slowing down. The poison from the shattered Oath-stone was seeping into the wound in his chest—draining him faster than he could fight.
I killed the Enforcer he'd pushed back. It wasn't clean. It wasn't pretty. My elbow caught his wrist on the parry—the strapped blade severing tendon—and while his sword arm failed him, my dagger found the gap between helmet and gorget. A spray of hot blood across my face.
"Eryndor—"
"I'm fine." He wasn't. We both knew it.
A flash of black to my right—Maxx, his glamours flickering and failing, barely holding together. He had Serenya tucked behind him, one arm keeping her back while the other held a dagger that was doing more deflecting than killing.
"Not to pressure you, Flameheart, but we're running out of people to save! If you've got another reality-bending miracle up your sleeve—NOW'S YOUR MOMENT!”
Fresh out of miracles. Thanks for asking.
An Enforcer broke through. Maxx shoved Serenya down and took the blade across his forearm intended for her throat. He hissed through his teeth but didn't scream. Didn't stop moving.
Serenya hit the ground hard, scry-notes scattering. Her eyes went wide—locked on the blood dripping down his arm.
"Stay behind me," Maxx growled at her.
We were drowning.
My arms were dead from the elbows down. The leather wraps on my hilts had gone slick—sweat and someone else's blood—and my grip kept slipping, fingers re-clenching every other stroke.
My breathing came in short, sharp pulls that never reached the bottom of my lungs.
The fusion had hollowed me out and the fighting was spending what was left.
My daggers felt like anchors. Every swing took effort I didn't have.
The band on my forearm was empty—last star buried in an Enforcer's throat two waves back.
I looked at the horizon.
More of them. Endless lines of black banners cresting the ridge, blotting out the sky. Reinforcements. Fresh soldiers to replace the ones we'd already bled for.
We hadn't won anything. We'd just chosen the spot where we were going to die.
This is it, I thought. This is how it ends. Not with healing. Not with hope. Just blood and mud and—
I tilted my head, inhaled. That smell again. Sulfur and char.
Then the ground started to shake. Rock was falling loose all around us. A deep vibration humming up through the stone, up my spine…not the veil…
I whipped my head toward Dreadscale.
He caught my eye. And grinned.
Then the air vanished—sucked out of the basin in one massive, violent inhale, like a tornado, towards a mass of dark clouds above us.
The pressure dropped so fast my ears popped.
Dust, ash, and loose stones flying up towards the roiling black clouds directly above us.
I gasped and my lungs burned in the sudden vacuum.
Everyone was fighting for air, fighting for breath.
My hair whipped straight up, pulling at the scalp.
A pause. In the eye of the storm. Absolute silence.
Absolute stillness. Then the suction broke—air punching back into the basin in a single, violent detonation.
A sonic BOOM shook the earth. A ROAR split the air. And a massive fucking DRAGON slammed into the middle of the battlefield. Wind my ass.
The impact took my legs out from under me. I hit the basalt ass-first. My ears went dead—just a high, white whine where sound used to be. Dust and gravel peppered my face. I got my hands under me, pushed up, blinked grit from my eyes.
And saw it.
It wasn't a beast. It was a mountain range that had decided to wake up and choose violence.
Scales the color of a starless night, each one the size of a shield, absorbing the sick light of the Rupture and giving nothing back.
Wings that didn't just span the basin—they eclipsed it. One talon, enormous and hooked like a scythe, crushed a boulder into gravel just inches from where the King’s vanguard stood frozen.
Steam hissed from nostrils wide as caverns. The ground beneath it groaned, the rock actually buckled under the sheer, impossible weight of the thing.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Not the Enforcers. Not the rebels. Even the Hounds had gone still, their hackles raised, whining deep in their throats. They were predators, yes. But this?
This was a god.
Dreadscale was already moving.
He sprinted toward the beast, a blur of dark leather and intent. The dragon lowered its giant head, gold-flecked eyes narrowing as they locked onto him. It didn't snap. It lowered a wing, the joint creating a ramp of bone and scale.
Dreadscale vaulted.
He gripped the spiked ridge along the dragon’s neck, swung himself up, and locked his legs behind the massive crest of horns.
His tattoos ignited.
A searing white resonance that traced every line of ink on his body and matched the sudden, thrumming glow in the dragon’s body.
Soul-bound.
The King’s voice cracked the silence. "Open fire! Bring it down!"
The spell broke. Hundreds of archers drew. Hundreds of bolts of void-iron and ash-wood screamed into the sky, a black cloud arcing toward the beast.
Dreadscale smiled again, relaxed in his perch atop his dragon throne.
The dragon’s jaw unhinged. A furnace door opening. There was no intake of breath. No warning. Just a column of fire—not orange, not red, but a blinding, violet-white plasma.
It erased the volley in mid-air. Wood and iron didn't just burn; they vanished. Evaporated into mist before they could scratch a single scale. The blast punched through the cloud of arrows and continued downward, turning the world to negative space.
It hit the vanguard.
There were no screams. There wasn't time.
Metal didn't melt; it vaporized. The front line of the King's army simply ceased to exist. The heat hit us a second later, a physical wall that shoved me back against Eryndor’s chest, singeing the air from my lungs.
The dragon swept its head. A scythe of violet fire carving a line of utter destruction through the ranks.
The King's army—the disciplined, terrifying force that had hunted us for days—broke.
Panic. Absolute, primal terror.
Soldiers dropped their weapons and ran. Horses reared, throwing their riders, trampling men in their desperation to get away from the apex predator.
Dreadscale didn't let up.
The dragon launched itself into the air, the downbeat of its wings hitting the basin like a concussive blast, knocking a dozen soldiers flat.
It banked hard, circling back, a shadow of death raining fire from above.
He was laying down a persistent wall of flame that severed the main road.
He was sealing the perimeter, holding back the flood of reinforcements so we could finish this.
Maxx was suddenly beside me—blood on his cheek, a loyalist's blade still dripping in his hand. He looked between the dragon and Eryndor with a smirk, and slapped him on his back.
"Good luck competing with that, Soulbinder."
Eryndor didn't dignify that with a look. He pivoted, his blade taking the legs out from under a fleeing officer.
But the move cost him.
He faltered on the recovery, his boot slipping in the mud. His hand flew to his wound for a split second—a reflex of pain he couldn't hide—before he forced himself upright.
"Focus, Shadow-thief," he gritted out, his voice tight and breathless. "Or I’ll let the next one hit you."
I laughed, but the sound died in my mouth when I saw the sheen of cold sweat on his forehead.
A crack of shattering glamour snapped my head left.
Maxx.
A hulking guard bore down on him—too big, too armored, and moving with grim purpose.
Maxx braced. But the guard didn't slow. Didn't even look at him.
He swung a heavy, plated fist past Maxx—toward Serenya.
She was huddled behind a glyph-ward, scry-notes clutched in her hands.
Maxx threw himself between them.
The blow caught him across the shoulder. I heard the crack from ten feet away. He staggered, face contorted, but stayed on his feet.
"Now you're indebted to me, priestess," he gasped, swaying like a drunkard. Then winked.
Serenya raised an eyebrow in challenge.
Her hand went to her mirrored token. Her lips moved—Old Tongue, barely a whisper.
The air around the guard warped.
His armor groaned. Twisted. The plates that had protected him suddenly constricted, crushing inward, binding his arms to his sides. The metal remembering how it was made. Reversing order. He roared, thrashing, but the metal held him like a fist.
Serenya met Maxx's stunned gaze.
"Debt paid," she said, smirking triumphantly.
For a moment, Maxx just stared. Then he burst out laughing.