The world unraveled.
Astris fell.
Wind tore at her, its scream louder than the battle's roar. The Hulda Cleft yawned below, its prismatic veins of veilglass glinting like a thousand shattered mirrors. Her stomach lurched, the sensation less like falling and more like the earth itself had dissolved, leaving her suspended between seconds. She tasted vapor and blood, smelled the acrid tang of Vyrinth's molten breath fading above. Her fingers brushed empty air—alive, alive, still alive—until Zaiden's hand clamped around her wrist, yanking her into the furnace heat of his grip.
"I've got you!" he shouted, voice fraying at the edges.
For a heartbeat, they hung there, a pendulum swaying over the abyss. Astris's pulse thundered in her ears, her free hand scrabbling against his armored chest. His wolf pendant dug into her cheek, its silver cold against her skin. Celestaviel's betrothal token. Irony's last laugh.
Then the griffon struck.
Vyrinth's roar split the sky as the beast's talons raked her flank, molten scales shearing away in a shower of embers. The dragon banked violently, her wingtip grazing a cliffside, and they were thrust from her saddle.
Zaiden's grip slipped.
They fell.
Air became a weapon. It stole Astris's breath, whipped tears from her eyes, and filled her ears with a hollow, keening wail—the sound of the Spire's growl reflected through the cleft's veilglass. Zaiden twisted, shielding her body with his own as the chasm rushed up to meet them. His arms locked around her, a vise of muscle and desperation.
"Hold on!" he barked, though there was nothing to hold but each other.
Astris's vision blurred at the edges, the world reduced to fractured impressions: Zaiden's scarred jaw clenched, his dragon-forged pauldron gleaming dully, the storm-lit silhouette of a wyvern diving toward them. Its rider—one of the masked figures—raised a hand, fingers curled into a sigil that made the air shiver.
A magic circle ignited beneath them, its edges crackling with void amber's necrotic light. The glyphs were unfamiliar, a language of slashed lines and spirals that pulsed like a living wound.
"Zaiden—!" Astris choked.
He didn't answer, his gaze locked on the figure. Recognition flared in his eyes—a scarred cheek glimpsed through a broken mask—before the circle's light engulfed them.
The world remade itself in ice and thunder.
*****
The scream tore from Cassis's throat before she could stop it—a raw, guttural sound that drowned the roar of the storm. Valor shuddered beneath her, the wyvern's silver wings faltering mid-beat as if the cry had lanced her too. Miles, clinging to Cassis's waist, felt her body stiffen, every muscle coiled to leap into the abyss where Zaiden and Astris had vanished.
"No!" Cassis wrenched Valor's reins, veering toward the fading embers of the teleportation circle. The wyvern obeyed, but the air where the portal had been was already thickening with veilglass resonance, the prismatic ore in the cliffs humming a dissonant elegy.
Above them, Vyrinth screamed.
The sound was not a dragon's roar but a thing of shattered glass and splintered bone. The bond between rider and beast—forged in Lismore's sacred fires—had snapped, leaving a wound that bled madness. Vyrinth's obsidian scales, once molten with inner fire, dulled to ash-gray as she spiraled, her tail lashing out in a blind arc. A griffon burst into gore mid-flight, its rider swallowed by the inferno of her breath.
"Cousin, pull back!" Vadim's voice cut through the chaos, sharp as his crossbow bolts. Nyx, his wyvern, banked hard to avoid Vyrinth's talons, Collan's Glowmark tattoos flaring as he clung to the saddle. "The dragon's feral—she'll kill us all!"
Cassis didn't listen. Valor dove, skimming the cliff's edge as Cassis scanned the chasm for any sign of Astris's golden hair, Zaiden's wolf pendant. Miles seized her shoulder. "They're gone, Cass! That portal could've spat them out anywhere from here to the Spire's ass!"
Valor jolted as Vyrinth's tail grazed her wingtip, the wyvern shrieking. Miles grabbed the reins, yanking them into a desperate climb. "We can't save anyone if we're dead!"
"Let go!" Cassis snarled, elbowing him, but Valor was already faltering, her loyalty warring with primal fear.
Vyrinth's rampage painted the sky in fire and ruin. She bathed the battlefield in molten breath, friend and foe alike dissolving in her grief. A Celestaviel tamer's wyvern erupted into flames, its rider's scream cut short. Zander, perched behind a stone-faced tamer, flung blades at the dragon's eyes—distractions, not threats.
"Fall back!" Collan bellowed, Nyx swooping low to evade a gout of flame. "Regroup at the eastern ridge!"
Rainer, riding double with a tamer, scrubbed wyvern blood from his sleeve—a futile gesture. "Regroup how? That lunatic's cooking the sky!"
Sloan lobbed an ember-charmed nugget, the explosion peppering Vyrinth's snout with harmless sparks. "Oi, Scales! Over here!"
The dragon turned, her milky eye on them.
"Brilliant," Rainer hissed.
Cassis forced Valor into a hover, her gaze locked on Vadim. "We can't leave them!"
Miles's voice cracked. "You think this is easy for me? That's my sister down there!"
A hippogriff chose that moment to strike—a stallion-eagle hybrid with frostbitten feathers, summoned by the Spire's lingering call. Valor rolled, evading its talons, but the motion sent Miles's compass tumbling into the void.
"Damn it!" Miles lunged, but it was gone—a fey-charmed heirloom swallowed by the mist.
Cora, riding double with a tamer whose hands trembled on the reins, hurled a saltspire pouch. The hippogriff recoiled, blinded, and Cora's tamer speared it through the heart. "Princess, please!" Cora shouted, her clairvoyant pendant bleeding moonlight. "The living need you more than the lost!"
The sky was a graveyard. Griffons circled like vultures, their prismatic feathers shedding veilglass shards that sliced skin and steel. The masked figures and their wyverns had vanished, their mission complete. Only Vyrinth remained, a broken god thrashing in her chains of smoke and memory.
Cassis stared at the carnage—Valor's labored breaths, Miles's ashen face, Vadim's bloodied brow. Her wyvern skull bracelet, icy against her wrist, seemed to whisper: A queen's duty is to the living.
"Go," she rasped.
Valor needed no further command. The wyvern surged eastward, her wings carving a path through the storm. Nyx, Zander's mount, and the others followed, their retreat a ragged symphony of exhaustion and dread.
Vyrinth's roar chased them, a dirge that would linger in the veilglass long after the battle's end
As the survivors fled, Cassis glanced back once. The Hulda Cleft was a smudge of smoke and prismatic light, Vyrinth's silhouette a dwindling shadow against the storm. Miles's hand found hers, trembling.
"We'll find them," he said, the lie sweet and brittle.
Cassis said nothing.
Valor's wings beat onward, carrying the weight of crowns into the freezing dark.
*****
One moment, Cassis's scream—raw, guttural, mortal—pierced the air. The next, silence, as the magic circle's necrotic light collapsed into nothingness, leaving only the echo of her fury seared into the veilglass cliffs.
Astris and Zaiden fell through the Void's sieve, the teleportation's grip snapping like a rotten rope. They plunged into a churning maelstrom of water so cold it stole thought, breath, soul. The impact was a hammer blow. Freezing water punched through Astris's lungs, her body screaming as the current seized her. She flailed, limbs numb, vision blurring—until Zaiden's arm locked around her waist, hauling her gasping to the surface.
"Breathe!" he shouted, though the command was swallowed by the roar of the Veilshard Cascade.
The waterfall towered above them, its deluge thundering from a cliffside riddled with jagged veilglass formations. The mineral's prismatic glow refracted through the water, casting fractured rainbows over the rapids—a cruel mockery of beauty. The wyvern and its rider hit the pool behind them with a concussive splash, the beast's wings tangling in the froth as the current dragged it under. Its rider—mask half-shattered, scarred face contorted—clawed at the wyvern's reins, shouting curses in a guttural tongue older than Lismore's throne.
"Move!" Zaiden snarled, kicking against the pull.
The rapids carried them like leaves in a gale. Icy water sliced at Astris's skin, each breath a knife to the chest. Zaiden's dragon-forged armor, usually warm to the touch, leached heat, its enchantments overwhelmed by the supernatural cold. Frost crusted his lashes, his breaths coming in ragged plumes.
The Frostspine Peaks were no ordinary mountains. Legends claimed they were the bones of Vrynn, the Icewarden, a god who had shattered himself to seal a primordial fire-drake in the world's core. His lingering rage seeped into the stone, the air, the very blood of those foolish enough to tread here. The cold was alive—hungry, sentient. It gnawed at exposed flesh, whispered numbness into veins, turned breath to crystalline dust.
Ahead, the river narrowed, funneling into a gauntlet of jagged ice formations. The water surged, white-capped and snarling, dragging them toward a labyrinth of frozen teeth.
"Left!" Astris croaked, spotting a gap between two spire-like icicles.
Zaiden obeyed, muscles straining as he pivoted. They shot through the gap, the ice grazing Astris's shoulder, tearing fabric and skin. Blood bloomed, ruby-bright, before the water stole it away.
Behind them, the wyvern resurfaced, screeching as its rider drove a dagger into its flank. The beast thrashed, breaking free of the reins, its wings churning the water into a frenzy. The rider vanished beneath the foam, swallowed by the rapids' maw.
The sky, a leaden tapestry, darkened further as the winter storm prowled the horizon. Snow fell not in flakes but in jagged shards, each one hissing as it struck the water. The wind carried the keening of frostwraiths—spirits of those who'd perished in Vrynn's domain, their voices a dirge of endless cold.
Zaiden's grip on Astris tightened, his body a failing bulwark against the elements. "That ridge—" he gasped, nodding toward a slab of ice-jagged rock protruding from the riverbank. "Climb!"
They fought the current, limbs burning. Astris's fingers found purchase on the rock, its surface slick with hoarfrost. Zaiden boosted her up, his hands trembling—not from weakness, but from the kiss of the unbound, the phantom agony of Vyrinth's severed bond.
Astris hauled herself onto the ridge, then turned to grab Zaiden's forearm. His armor slipped in her grip, the dragon-scale edges biting into her palms.
"I've got you—"
The wyvern erupted from the water below, its roar a wet, guttural thing. Its jaws snapped, missing Zaiden's leg by inches. The beast's eyes, once amber, now glowed corpse-green with Spire-sickness.
Zaiden lunged onto the ridge, dragging Astris back as the wyvern's claws scored the rock. "Keep moving!"
The ridge led to a cavern entrance hidden behind a curtain of frozen waterfalls. Inside, the air was marginally warmer, thick with the mineral stench of ice and ancient stone. Bioluminescent moss clung to the walls, their glow a sickly blue, casting long shadows over carvings etched by forgotten hands—depictions of Vrynn's fracturing, his godly blood becoming rivers, his bones the peaks.
Astris collapsed against a wall, her soaked clothes stiffening into icy armor. Zaiden knelt, fumbling with a pouch at his belt. "Here," he muttered, handing her a vial of emberroot extract—a Lismore alchemist's answer to frostbite.
She drank, the liquid burning a path to her stomach. "Th-thanks."
He didn't meet her eyes. "We need fire. Shelter. Before the storm—"
A roar echoed from the cavern's depths. Not the wyvern.
Deeper. Older.
Zaiden stilled, his hand drifting to the empty scabbard at his hip—his sword lost to the rapids. "Or not."
The wyvern's screech pierced the cavern, closer now. Green-tinged talons scraped stone.
Zaiden stood, shoulders squared. "Go deeper. Find the heartfire."
Astris bristled. "And you?"
His jaw tightened. "I'll hold it off."
"With what? Puns?"
A flicker of his old smirk. "Worked on the griffons."
She grabbed his wrist, the kiss of the unbound searing her fingertips. "We go together."
Outside, the storm's howl crescendoed. Somewhere, Cassis's scream still echoed.
The cavern trembled.
Something ancient stirred.
*****
The Celestaviel palace rose from the storm like a skeletal hand clawing at the heavens, its towers carved from glacial marble veined with frostsilver—a metal that sang in the presence of wyverns. Valor's wings faltered as they approached the royal perch, a crescent platform jutting from the palace's flank, its edges adorned with wyvern skulls frozen mid-roar. Cassis's grip tightened on the reins. There, flanked by a dozen armored Grounded—Celestaviel's oathbreakers, their faces branded with ash-gray sigils—stood Prince Drystan Voclain.
Her uncle's silhouette was a blade against the twilight: broad-shouldered, draped in a cloak of snow-panther pelts, his beard braided with silver chains that chimed like funeral bells. Beside him, General Orvyn, a mountain of a man whose left eye had been replaced by a veilglass orb, glowered at the battered retinue.
"Gods' teeth," Collan muttered, his Glowmarks dimming as Nyx descended. "This'll be a slaughterhouse chat."
Valor landed first, her talons scraping ice from the perch. Cassis dismounted, her boots crunching over frost-rimed wyvern bones embedded in the stone—a warning to traitors. Miles followed, his usual swagger reduced to a limp, his cheek split by a griffon's claw.
"Nephew," Drystan drawled as he watched Vadim, his voice honeyed with venom. "What a… surprise."
"Joint training mission," Collan blurted, stepping forward with a grin that didn't reach his eyes. "Bit of wyvern drills, tactical maneuvers—you know, fostering unity between kingdoms."
Drystan's gaze slid to Cassis. "Unity. How novel."
General Orvyn snorted, his veilglass eye swirling with storm clouds. "Training missions don't leave wing-scars like that." He pointed to Valor's singed flank, the flesh still smoking faintly.
Cassis forced her spine straight, the wyvern skull bracelet on her wrist biting into her skin. "Lismore's dragons are… enthusiastic partners."
"Enthusiastic," Drystan repeated, strolling closer. The chains in his beard hissed like serpents. "And where, pray tell, is Prince Zaiden? Surely he'd grace us with his enthusiasm."
Miles tensed. Vadim coughed, subtly loosening his dagger.
"Delayed," Cassis said, her breath frosting in the air. "A storm diverted them."
Drystan's laugh was a winter gale. "A storm. How convenient."
General Orvyn seized Collan's arm, inspecting a gash oozing Spire-rot—a sickly green-black. "This wound reeks of dungeon magic. You expect us to believe Lismore's royals train with corruption?"
Collan yanked free. "We got ambushed by griffons. Dungeon-spawned, probably."
"Griffons," Drystan mused, circling Cassis. "And yet you return without spoils, without prisoners… and without your betrothed."
Cassis met his gaze, the cold gnawing through her layers. "We regroup. We adapt."
"Ah, yes. Adapt." Drystan's hand shot out, gripping her chin. His fingers smelled of iron and myrrh. "You think me a fool, girl? I've played this game since before you mewled your first breath."
Valor snarled, her tail lashing. The Grounded leveled spears.
"Uncle," Cassis warned, her voice steady as stone.
He released her with a shove. "You've dragged Celestaviel into Lismore's conflict. The Spire's rot bleeds into our borders, and you prance about with lies."
Zander stepped forward, an edge hidden in his palm. "Respectfully, Prince Drystan—we've bled today. Save the interrogation for when the corpses stop piling."
General Orvyn's eye pulsed. "You speak too freely, shadow."
"He speaks truth," Cora cut in, her clairvoyant pendant cracked but glowing. "The Spire's horde grows. United, we might survive. Divided…"
Drystan's smile was a slit throat. "United. Under whose banner, I wonder?"
The wind howled, carrying the distant cry of a frostwraith. Cassis's mind raced—Zaiden's face, Astris's defiance, the Spire's growl—but her voice, when it came, was ice.
"Ours. Or none."
Drystan studied her, then turned to the storm. "You have until dawn," he said softly. "Prove this unity isn't a child's fancy. Or I'll carve your Lismorean allies into feast-meat and feed them to the Spire myself."
He strode away, his cloak billowing like a vulture's wings. General Orvyn lingered, his gaze on Valor. "That wyvern's seen battle. Best pray she doesn't see more."
As the perch emptied, Cassis sagged against Valor's side. Miles touched her shoulder. "We'll find them."
She didn't answer. Above, the palace's frostsilver spires hummed—a dirge, a warning, a challenge.