Inside the cracked stillness of Alfazar's inner den, Khoren crouched beside the broken device, his hands working instinctively, guided more by muscle memory than clear thought. One of his men — the younger one, Erel had his bare hands blackened with soot as he tried to realign the broken conduits in the core. Sparks sputtered, illuminating his clenched jaw in fleeting glimmers of orange.
By the mouth of the cavern, two others stood vigil. They said nothing, weapons raised and trembling. Beyond them, wyverns circled starved for a feast, yet none dared breach the shadows that curled inward from the chamber's edge. Something about the den, some deep-set power or residue of Alfazar's dominion, kept them at bay. But Khoren knew it would not last.
He turned his eyes to the centerpiece of the room — the petrified majesty of Alfazar, wings frozen mid-stretch, hushed spear-like teeth, sleeping defiance. His heart twisted. The battle replayed itself behind his eyes: flames licking up the walls, men screaming, some turning to stone mid-breath. The strategic push — he had ordered it precisely, his voice calm even as chaos surged. Two of his best had gotten the device into position, syncing its resonance to the dragon's core. It had worked… almost.
The last thing Alfazar did before slumber claimed it was to lash out. A feral roar, a tidal burst of wing and tail — Khoren was thrown. The device slammed into the far wall, wires torn, casing bent. Yet, instead of dying, it had pulsed, faint at first, like a heartbeat buried in snow. Now, as Erel closed the final circuit, the pulse began to scale, slow… steady… rising in tempo and volume like a war drum winding toward its crescendo. And just as the high-pitched whining broke, they felt a sudden change in the air pressure.
Khoren shouted, "Get clear—!"
The pulse climaxed, and with a scream of metal and shattering stone, the device exploded into a shockwave — a dome of force expanding outward, slamming against the chamber walls, scattering dust and memory into silence.
Far across the vale, the villagers of Ryn moved like a broken thread, unraveling across the foothills. Their footsteps beat a dirge into the ground, muffled by the dust-laced wind. Gone was the chatter. Gone was the cry of children. Only silence and the occasional flutter of wings overhead broke the trance
The line was thinner now. Where there had once been hundreds, barely a third remained. Wyverns had fallen on them with sick joy, picking off the slow, the injured, the kind who had lingered to help others. A man at the back turned his head just once. The sky above the valley was blackened, dotted with winged shadows. His lips moved in prayer, but the gods were elsewhere.
Fen trudged at the front, his daughter Nerissa clutched to his side. Her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, her breath warm against his skin. She hadn't spoken for hours, but now, her voice returned in a whisper.
"Papa… where's Aunt Belligarde?"
He faltered. The lie was at the tip of his tongue, but Nerissa's eyes were too clear. Too trusting. He swallowed the guilt.
"She's… she still has her own things to do," he said softly. "But we'll see her again soon."
"You promise?"
Fen kissed her brow, tasting salt and ash. "She'll find us, my star."
Three leagues from the broken ridge, Nevun wiped blood from his jaw and steadied his mount. The scouts behind him regrouped quickly, weapons raised. The last wyvern had come too close — but their countermeasure weapons still works, searing through scale and bone.
Nevun alone carried no such weapon.
The terrain here thinned, the trees gnarled and short. The world felt open, vulnerable.
Then a rustle. A rider pushed through from the bramble ahead, mounted on a familiar lizard-steed. Cloaked in gray, the stranger stopped in front of them.
She pulled down her hood.
Nevun blinked. "Are you the She?"
The woman narrowed her eyes. "You people are slow. Follow me."
He chuckled, reining his mount forward. "You're just fast. We were told to wait and meet with you near the cliffs."
Her head tilted. "We are still going to meet. With someone else."
Back at the ruins of the Circle of Teaching, dusk slipped into shadows. Talyri's hands were raw, knuckles bleeding, but she'd cleared nearly all the rubble from the old archive wall. Each stone removed echoed louder with shrieking — and something else. A grunt. A struggle.
She pried free the last stone and it tumbled through a hollow. What opened below was a cratered hollow chamber.
At the far end, Belligarde was pinned, one leg trapped in the rubble. Just beyond her — a dying wyvern, twitching and dragging itself closer by claw and desperation. Its eyes fixed first on Talyri. A new meal.
Talyri screamed.
"Shut it!" Belligarde hissed. "You'll bring the others!"
The beast hissed back.
Belligarde clawed at the rocks on her leg but couldn't budge them. Her eyes darted — the weapon. The artifact was there — just behind the wyvern.
"Talyri," she called, urgent. "You have to get it. Now. Throw it to me!"
"I-I can't! It's too close!"
"We're dead if you don't! I'll distract it — just move!"
She hurled a shard of rock at the beast. It snapped toward her. Talyri darted low, crawling. Her fingers wrapped around the cold artifact just as the wyvern's tail contracts.
"Now!" Belligarde cried, reaching.
Talyri threw.
Belligarde caught it — barely. She twisted it, unsure, and it discharged wildly. A superheated pulse slammed into the ground near Talyri, scorching stone. She screamed again, scrambling away.
"Sorry!" Belligarde gritted her teeth, turned the weapon, and pointed it at the wyvern. The artifact pulsed blue.
Then — thunder. Another pulse burst from it, striking the wyvern's skull. The creature convulsed and slumped. Dead.
Silence fell like snow.
Night had fully claimed the sky.
The remnants of Ryn marched under stars and memory. Bioluminescent moss lit the path in glowing greens and blues. Torches flickered, their flames slow in the wind.
Several leagues behind them lay the grove of stone trees—twisted silhouettes of bark and branch, frozen in ash-gray stillness. Not carved, not shaped, but petrified. Their trunks caught in the agony of flame, their crowns forever reaching skyward in a scream of smoke.
The elders had murmured of it as they passed. Alfazar's ward, they said. Some children thought the stone grove cursed, others sacred. But all walked quieter through it, as though the ancient dragon's presence still lingered among the brittle branches, watching, remembering.
The Elder Healer stepped beside Maelhan, his robes swaying, sweat on his brow.
"What now, Maelhan? Where are you leading us?" His breath came heavy. "The people… need to rest."
Maelhan did not stop walking. In his mind, resting meant death. Safety lay ahead — and only ahead.
"The clearing," he answered. "We rest at the clearing."
They moved on. The trees grew sparser. The ground, dustier. Then — the front-most men brushed aside the last thicket.
What opened beyond was a vast clearing, bathed in starlight. Wind howled through it, ocean-salted and free. The horizon fell away into cliff, and beyond it, the endless black mirror of the sea and its crashing waves. The sky hung above, heavy with stars and the glimmer of Thareon's rings.
The people of Ryn stood at the edge of the world, and for a moment, they were no longer fleeing. They were simply there — breathing, watching, alive.