The wind along the outer ridge was quieter—eerily so, after all that Nevun had endured. The charred sky had begun to clear in patches, revealing swathes of pale daylight bleeding through drifting smoke. He reined his mount to a crouch behind the broken crown of a toppled pine, listening to the distant shrieks of wyverns fading toward the central lake.
No one waited at the rendezvous point.
Just the guttural groans of wind through stone, and the far-off hiss of wings slicing air.
Nevun dismounted, his boots crunching over brittle pine needles and shale. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the tree line.
A flutter of motion.
Then came the thunder of claws on dirt—less than a dozen lizard mounts surging over the hills like a low tide of scales and breath. The scout leader led the charge, his black sash torn at one shoulder, hood blown by the wind on his back. He pulled up just short of Nevun, eyes sharp beneath the grime and soot.
"Khoren?" he asked.
Nevun held his stare, voice roughened by smoke and wear. "Decimated. Only four of them left."
The scout leader's expression didn't change—just a faint twitch at his jawline.
Nevun exhaled a short, bitter breath—almost a laugh. "And those four now have to improvise."
Silence lingered between them, heavy with the weight of the fallen. Then the scout leader turned his mount toward the narrowing trail that led west.
"Go with the others," he said, voice low. "Wait near the cliffs, four leagues from here. She'll meet you."
"She?" Nevun asked, blinking.
But the leader didn't answer. He was already pulling away, nodding to the riders burdened with satchels of stone tablets. "I return to report to the Crown," he called behind him. "We meet again only if the valley doesn't consume us all."
And then he was gone, swallowed by trees.
Back at the Long Hall, smoke drifted through splintered rafters like mourning veils. The villagers moved with haunted eyes and blistered hands, salvaging what little they could. Bundles of herbs, wounded kin, keepsakes tucked into satchels. Others bound the injured with cloth soaked in wine and ash, whispering prayers beneath their breath.
Maelhan pushed through the chaos, his eyes scanning the shifting crowd. Every shout felt louder. Every movement more urgent. There was no order—only the desperate noise of survival.
The hall groaned overhead as Maelhan stepped across fallen beams. He passed a weeping mother, a healer tying bandages with trembling hands, before spotting her.
Near one of the thick pillars toward the rear of the hall, half-hidden behind a toppled bench and scattered bundles of cloth, Nerissa knelt on the wooden floor. Her small hands trembled against her face, her shoulders racked with sobs.
"Papa…" she cried into the space before her, her voice thin, cracked from shouting. "Papa, where are you?"
Maelhan's breath caught. Something in his chest seemed to fray.
He crossed to her in hurried steps and knelt without a word, wrapping his arms around the child. Her small frame curled instantly into his embrace, clinging with desperate fingers to the folds of his tunic. Tears soaked into the fabric. He felt the stifled shudders wrack her, and all he could do was hold her tighter.
"There, there, little star," he whispered, holding her tight. "I've got you. I've got you."
She didn't respond with words—only a soft, hiccupping gasp as her face pressed deeper into his chest.
And in that closeness, Maelhan felt it. Guilt blooming in his chest like fire licking through dry grass. He couldn't look at her without seeing the chain of choices that had led them here. That had led her here.
But there was no room now for regret. Only action.
And still… even as he held her, something deep within him whispered that he had already failed her.
Fen and Belligarde crept through the cracked remains of the upper terraces, the scent of blood and dust thick in the air. Below them, in the skeletal remnants of the village, wyverns moved with sluggish hunger, their bellies now full from the feast of the fallen. Their wings dragged against rooftops. Blood soaked into stone.
Nearby, scavenger lizards picked at the remains, only to draw fresh attention from the beasts. A screech rang out as a wyvern lunged toward them—sinew and scale crashing forward.
Fen froze as they neared the Circle of Teaching, his posture low, every step calculated.
Belligarde followed close. Her hand clutched the artifact slinged at her back, but her eyes were on Fen.
That's when she heard it. A shriek—closer than the rest.
She turned in time to see the beast barreling from the rubble to their right, having discarded the lizards for a larger prize. Its jaws opened, eyes locking onto Fen.
"Fen!" she roared.
He barely had time to register the sound before she shoved him.
Her shoulder crashed into him with brutal force, sending him tumbling clear.
The wyvern collided with the path.
Stone split. The ground gave way.
With a roar, the path shattered, and both Belligarde and the wyvern plummeted into the darkness below—the old archives buried beneath the Circle.
Dust and rubble bloomed upward. Fen scrambled to the edge, coughing through grit.
"Belligarde!"
Below, she lay sprawled among crumbled masonry, one leg pinned. The wyvern, not ten paces from her, snarled and thrashed, half-crushed beneath a fallen pillar. Its teeth held by its long neck snapped, only a pace too short of reaching her.
Fen trembled.
It was too familiar. Too cruel. The rubble, the blood, the breathless decision. Lira's scream still echoed in the back of his mind.
"Go," Belligarde barked, catching his eyes. "You don't get to fail this time."
"Belligarde—"
"GO!"
He didn't move.
Not at first.
Then he did.
He ran.
Deep beneath the collapse, Talyri stirred. Dust drifted through fissures above her, tiny shafts of light breaking through cracks in the archive chamber. She coughed once, tasting blood and old stone.
The rumble had loosened the wall near her.
She blinked.
Then she crawled. Presented with an opportunity and a glimmer of hope.
Fingers bloodied, she began pulling at stones, one by one.
Maelhan clutched Nerissa tight as the crowd funneled through the broken village outskirts. The path to the ridge was long and treacherous, littered with debris and broken carts. The sky above now stirred with fresh wings—wyverns regrouping, circling again.
Maelhan could barely lift his arms anymore.
Then—a blur from the rubble.
"NERISSA!"
A wrenching pain seizes Fen's chest as his eyes land on his daughter. Relief floods his senses, but guilt lingers at the edges, gnawing at him with the weight of the lives lost and the memory of Belligarde left behind.
The child turned, gasping.
"PAPA!"
Fen was running, a shadow streaking across the dust-lit field.
He dropped to one knee, catching her in his arms as she leapt toward him. As she grips his hand, her eyes wide with fear and confusion. He wants to say something that would make sense of it all, but his throat closes around the words.
"My star…" His voice broke against her hair.
Maelhan stepped beside him, breath ragged. Fen looked up.
"Where are we going, Chief?"
Maelhan didn't hesitate.
"Outside the valley," he said. "Where we have a better chance to survive."
Together, they turned. Together, they ran.
And far behind them, scattered along a splintering trail of refugees, the wounded trudged, the children wept, and the horizon bloomed with wings.
Wyverns closed in—silent but swift.
Back in the ruins of the Circle, Belligarde groaned, shifting her weight. The wyvern still thrashed, still growled, but it was dying. So was she, if she didn't move.
She clenched her jaw and reached for the stones pinning her.
One. By one. By one.