"Mortimer?" I repeated, the name unfamiliar on my tongue. "Who or what is that?"
Tadewi's eyes narrowed, the lines of age and power deepening around them. "You young ones really don't know anything, do you?" she scoffed. "The world forgets so easily."
"Not by choice," I said. "Most of the Fire Nation's records were burned centuries ago—to spite the gods, or maybe to erase them. Depends on which historian you ask."
Muir crossed his arms. "We don't waste time with old stories where I'm from. History's just bones and dust. We believe in the present—and in what's coming."
Tadewi exhaled slowly through her nose, a sound halfway between amusement and disappointment. "A shame," she said. "Many of the things you face now were born from that same arrogance—forgetting what came before."
She turned toward the horizon, clouds rolling beneath the cliffs like an endless sea.
"Mortimer," she said finally, "was once a god like the others. But where they were born of light—of fire, water, and earth—he was born of darkness. Still, the world needed that darkness to keep its balance. Every light casts a shadow, and he was meant to tend it.
"But jealousy corrodes even the divine. Mortimer envied the others—their worship, their purpose, their creations. While they shaped life, he was left to tend its decay. So he began to twist it."
"In the end, he convinced himself that if the world was drowned in darkness, if every flame was smothered and every voice silenced, then humanity would have no choice but to worship him."
Her voice carried, low and steady, blending with the sigh of the wind.
"He gathered the forgotten, the broken, the cast aside. He promised them power in exchange for devotion. He turned death into something hungry. And when the other gods cast him out, he made his home in the shadows between worlds—where life and death blur."
The air around us grew colder.
Revik shifted uneasily. "You're saying the thing swallowing your borders—the sea of death—is him?"
Tadewi's gaze cut to me. "Not him. His echo. His hunger, given shape. Mortimer himself has slept for ages… but the dead remember his name."
The name hung in the air like smoke that refused to clear.
A god twisted by envy. Death turned sentient.
I'd faced monsters, tyrants, and men who thought themselves immortal—but this… this was something else. You couldn't stab a god's hunger. Couldn't burn away its shadow.
And yet every part of me—the soldier, the dragon—knew we'd have to try.
A muscle ticked in my jaw. "And if he's waking?"
"Then the balance you all fight for," she said, "will cease to exist. The relics will no longer be symbols of power—they'll become his prey. Mortimer will hunt them, one by one, to keep the gods trapped on their side of the veil."
The scout's boots skidded across the stone as he dropped to one knee before Tadewi. "Elder," he said, breath sharp with windburn. "The shadows are moving fast. If they stay their course, they'll reach the Sky Bridges in thirty-six hours—maybe less."
Tadewi's expression shifted instantly. The calm, all-knowing elder vanished. What replaced her was a general. Her voice cut through the air steady and commanding.
"Evacuate the lower terraces," she ordered. "Move the young and infirm to the Cloud-Ridge caverns. Send half the Skyguard to fortify the eastern currents—if the bridges fall, we cut the lines and let them go. No hesitation."
The scout bowed low and sprinted off, his cloak snapping in the wind.
Horns echoed from below—low, steady, and grim. The whole mountain seemed to stir awake, a great creature shifting beneath its own skin. Skyguard launched from terraces, their gliders catching the dying light. Wind howled through the temple arches, carrying the scent of ozone and coming war.
Beside me, Lyra stepped forward, the exhaustion in her eyes giving way to determination. "What can we do to help?"
Tadewi rounded on her, eyes sharp as talons. "You can stay out of the way," she snapped. "The day I ask the Fire Nation or the Water Kingdom for aid will be the day I'm in the ground. I can protect my own."
My patience thinned to embers.
"Sometimes what's best for your people," I said evenly, "means putting your pride aside."
Her eyes narrowed at me, old and unyielding. I didn't look away. "We've fought the dead before," I continued. "And whatever this is—you're going to need help. Whether you want to admit it or not."
For a moment, something flickered across her face. Pride. Maybe reluctant respect.
Then she exhaled, her tone cooling. "Perhaps. But the Primal Dragon cannot remain. The shadows will come for her first."
Lyra's brow furrowed. "You think they're after me?"
"Not just you," Tadewi said. "They can sense what burns within you. Your power will draw them like a moth to a flame. If Mortimer's hunger is waking, it will hunt the relic before it hunts the living. You must find it before he does."
"No," I said before she could respond. "She's not going alone."
Lyra turned toward me—soft eyes, steady voice. "We don't have a choice, Raiden."
"There's always a choice."
"Not this time," she said. "If I stay, more people could die."
I wanted to argue. To tell her I'd rather burn half the sky than watch her walk into danger again. But Tadewi's voice cut between us like a blade.
"You won't go with her," she said.
My glare snapped to her. "You don't get to decide that."
"I do," she said simply. "Because you, Lightning Prince, are part of the storm that still keeps this world from falling apart. You are a shield before you are a sword. And your shield is needed here."
I clenched my fists until sparks ran down my arms. She didn't flinch.
Tadewi's gaze flicked between Lyra and me, studying us like she was reading the weather. "The hum between you is strong," she murmured. "Old. Familiar. The air dragon and the water dragon of centuries past shared such a current or so the stories say. They were drawn together by purpose, as you are."
Her eyes sharpened. "History repeats itself, Raiden. The question is whether you let it do so as tragedy or as salvation."
The wind rose again, cold and sharp, carrying the sound of more horns from the lower terraces. The shadows were moving faster than even the scout predicted.
Tadewi turned toward the horizon. "Go," she said. "Find the relic. The rest of us will hold the skies."
Lyra looked at me then—really looked.
There were a thousand things I wanted to say, and not one that would make her stay.
The wind howled between us, tugging at her hair. She stepped closer, close enough that the heat of her palm brushed my wrist—soft, fleeting.
"Don't die, little thief." I said quietly.
Her smile was small, tired. "You too, Sparky."
She turned away before I could stop her, walking toward the edge of the peak as the storm gathered far on the horizon. The white strands of her hair flashed silver in the fading light, her silhouette swallowed by cloud and distance.
She hesitated—just for a heartbeat—and then she was gone.
The wind screamed after her, hollow and endless.
I turned toward the horizon where the shadows churned like a living tide.
If Mortimer wanted a war, he'd have one.
But before the dark tries to get to Lyra.
it would have to go through me.
And I'm not making it easy.