By the time the bells start ringing, Fia has almost convinced herself the world is going to behave for at least one morning.
Almost.
She's half-buried in blankets, pressed between soft warmth and steady heartbeats. Seraphine is behind her again, arm draped around Fia's waist like she's physically refusing to let go. Mira is curled against her front, forehead resting over Fia's sternum, one hand splayed where two hearts thrum quietly under skin. Elira is a heavy, comfortable weight over Fia's legs. Lyriel—somehow—has ended up half on the bed with her back against the headboard, glasses crooked, an open notebook on her stomach, ink smudged where she fell asleep mid-sentence.
The room smells like candle wax, worn linen, and the faint, unmistakable scent of skin and sweat that no incense can really erase.
Fia's muscles ache in places battle never touched.
Her lungs are tight, but not in the razor-edged way that says danger.
Her dragon-heart purrs low and smug under her ribs.
You did not break, Ardentis notes lazily. Good. I would be annoyed if my host were this fragile.
"You just wanted the gossip," Fia thinks back, eyes still closed.
Also that.
She smiles, small and stupid and so, so fond it hurts.
Then the bells go from the low, steady chime of morning prayers to the sharp, rolling peal of alarm.
Mira jerks awake first.
Her hand tightens over Fia's chest automatically, eyes flying open, healer's instincts surfacing before memory catches up.
For a heartbeat she looks terrified.
Then she realizes Fia is breathing.
Still here.
Her shoulders sag.
"…damn them," she whispers, voice rough. "They couldn't give us one morning?"
Elira groans into Fia's thigh.
"If this is another false raid drill I'm changing sides," she mutters.
Seraphine is awake and clear-eyed in an instant, the queen snapping back into place over the woman who'd fallen asleep with her nose in Fia's hair.
"Listen," she says quietly.
They do.
Under the bells, they can hear booted feet pounding in the corridors. The pattern is telling: not the frantic chaos of a breach, but the disciplined rush of mobilization.
War room bells.
Not city bells.
Lyriel pushes her glasses up, already reaching for the ward-lines.
Magic flares faintly along the stone.
"Nothing inside the inner lattice," she says. "No demons in the streets. No new holes. Whatever it is, it's at the borders again."
"Of course it is," Fia mutters.
She starts to sit up.
Her body immediately reminds her what she did last night.
Muscles protest.
Her chest twinges.
A blush crawls up her throat as a dozen memory-fragments hit at once.
Mira's mouth on her skin.
Seraphine's hands.
Elira's laugh against her lips.
Lyriel's magic curling around her wrist like a vow.
She swallows hard and pretends her face is not on fire.
Seraphine notices anyway.
Her mouth curves, briefly.
Then the curve flattens.
"Sorry," Fia tells them all, the word slipping out before she can stop it.
Mira frowns.
"For what?" she asks.
"For—" Fia gestures vaguely at the door, the bells, the world. "This. Interrupting. Us. Again. It feels like every time I— we— try to live, the war gets jealous."
Elira props herself on one elbow, hair utterly ruined, eyes still soft from sleep and last night.
"Tough," she says. "The war can get in line. You're allowed to look smug and sore and go yell at generals."
Lyriel slides off the bed, robe skewed, feet hitting the rug with a soft thump.
"We're coming with you," she says. "Obviously."
Mira is already reaching for her clothes, but she pauses long enough to cup Fia's cheek.
"We knew the world wasn't going to stop for us," she says quietly. "That's why last night mattered."
Her thumb brushes just under Fia's eye.
"A selfish night doesn't disappear because morning is loud," she adds. "It just…turns into something we defend."
Fia's throat goes tight.
"Okay," she says. "Then let's go defend it."
The war room is crowded again.
Maps.
Pins.
Smudged ink.
Men and women with tired eyes and straight backs.
The air smells like stale coffee and fear.
Fia stands at the table instead of sitting in the circle.
She's in a clean uniform—simple dark tunic, reinforced trousers, boots. Her hair is braided back, out of her face. Her robe from last night feels like something from a different universe.
Mira stands at her side, already having resigned herself to hovering within arm's reach for the foreseeable future.
Seraphine takes her usual place at the head of the table.
Elira leans against a pillar in easy reach of Fia, one hand on her sword hilt.
Lyriel hovers by the ward schematic, fingertips stained with fresh charcoal.
The messenger at the center clears his throat.
"Reports from Vyrn Gate, Your Highness," he says. "The Crimson Crown has committed more forces. Siege engines in full operation, fresh troops rotated to the front."
Seraphine's jaw tightens.
"How many?" she asks.
"Current estimate: seventy thousand," he says. "Not including logistical support and reserves."
Murmurs ripple around the room.
"Seventy—"
"They'll grind us down at that rate—"
"We don't have the men—"
Fia's fingers curl against the table edge.
Seventy thousand.
Even if half are poorly supplied or barely trained, that's still a mountain of bodies.
A tidal wave of fear and obedience and steel.
"Verdant?" Seraphine asks.
"Still holding," the messenger says. "But the beasts are changing. Larger, more coordinated. Rangers report signs of a demon handler of unusual rank—possibly a high contract-holder."
Lyriel's head snaps up.
"So they're spending those now," she says. "Lovely."
"Highwatch?" Seraphine asks.
"Stable," the messenger says. "For now. The new anchor is still working. Enemy attempts to break it have so far failed."
Fia feels the tether hum faintly in her chest.
It hurts.
Less than before.
More than she'd like.
"And our own numbers?" Seraphine asks.
The marshal of the armies, an older woman with a scar across her nose, answers.
"Vyrn's main garrison is at half-strength from the initial siege," she says. "Reinforcements from the southern provinces are en route, but the roads are mud. Verdant's rangers are exhausted; beasts ignore wounds they'd normally flee from. Highwatch is…better, but their civilians are crammed into the inner keep. Supplies are tight."
She glances at Fia.
"At this rate, we can hold the line," she says. "But not forever."
"We don't need forever," Seraphine says. "We need long enough for their king to realize he's losing more than he gains by trying to steal my future wife."
The way she says it is calm.
The words land like a thrown gauntlet.
Eyes flick toward Fia.
For once, she doesn't flinch.
"She's right," Fia says, voice steady. "Every day this goes on, someone on their side notices how stupid this is."
Lysa Kharan's face rises in her memory.
The tired eyes.
The thoughtful silence.
The way the enemy general had watched her during that long, frozen stand-off, as if measuring not just her threat, but her choices.
"We just have to last long enough for that notice to turn into action," Fia adds.
"That's what they're trying to prevent," Lyriel says quietly.
She taps the map at Vyrn.
"Seventy thousand isn't just about numbers," she continues. "It's about pressure. If they keep our forts too busy to think, no one on their side has time for second thoughts."
Mira folds her arms.
"Then we need to take pressure off," she says. "Which means we stop just…absorbing hits. We hit back harder."
Elira's grin is sharp.
"Finally," she says. "Someone says it."
Seraphine looks at Fia.
Not as queen to subject.
As tactician to weapon she loves.
"What do you think?" she asks.
Fia's breath catches.
She hates that everyone's eyes follow that question to her.
She loves that Seraphine asks it anyway.
"I think…" she says slowly, "that if we let them keep grinding like this, I'll kill myself trying to hold three anchors at once."
Mira flinches.
Fia doesn't soften it.
"We built the relay to stabilize the forts," she says. "Not to let them throw infinite bodies at us while we politely endure. We need to break momentum. Somewhere. Once."
She taps Vyrn.
"Here," she says. "This is where they've committed their heaviest investment. Siege towers. Elite infantry. Their pride."
"Break their pride," Elira murmurs. "Break their morale."
"Not permanently," Fia says. "We're not going to incinerate seventy thousand people. I won't. But we can break their pattern. Hit them hard enough that their commander has to pull back, rethink. That buys us time."
Lyriel eyes her.
"You're thinking of going in person," she says.
"Not alone," Fia says automatically.
Mira's nails bite into her arms.
"Absolutely not," Mira says. "You're barely—"
Fia turns to her.
"I'm breathing," she says gently. "Last week, I couldn't stand up without wheezing. Now I can walk across the city. The dragon isn't killing me. The illness isn't gone, but it's…different. Manageable."
She pats her chest lightly.
"He's a very loud tenant," she adds. "And he's tired of sitting still while other people poke at his walls."
Ardentis rumbles in agreement.
We could stretch, he says. We have not tested our new wings yet.
Mira's jaw clenches.
"And if you overextend and drop dead on the battlefield?" she asks, voice tight. "What then? We watched you cough your life onto stone after the monster army. You think we want a repeat in front of seventy thousand enemies?"
"No," Fia says. "I think you want a future where this war isn't the only thing on our calendar until I die of age or illness. This won't end if we keep playing nice."
She takes Mira's hand.
Interlaces their fingers.
"Last night happened," she says quietly, trusting no one else in the room will dare interrupt now, "because we're stupid and stubborn enough to want something after this. I'm not throwing that away."
Mira's eyes glisten.
"Then don't," she whispers.
Fia squeezes her hand.
"I'm not," she says. "I'm trying to keep it. That means I go to Vyrn. With you. With all of you. With an actual plan that doesn't involve me burning myself hollow."
Seraphine studies her.
"What does that plan look like?" she asks.
Fia exhales.
"Not another full Calamity," she says. "I can't. My body can't. But we can…scale it."
Lyriel's brows rise.
"A partial manifestation," she says. "Localized. Targeted."
"Exactly," Fia says. "They brought siege towers and heavy infantry. The towers are their backbone. We break those, the infantry falters. I don't need to erase the army. I just need to make their plan look stupid and expensive."
Elira huffs a laugh.
"You really are a villainess," she says frankly. "You sound like you're talking about ruining an evil noble's party."
"Same principle," Fia says. "Different dress code."
Mira scrubs a hand over her face.
"And how do you avoid collapsing?" she asks.
Fia glances at Lyriel.
"We tether differently," she says. "Instead of using me as a static battery for three forts, we focus everything on one battlefield for a short burst. Lyriel, you lace the local ward lines at Vyrn to catch as much of the overflow as possible, feed it into defensive grids, not back into me. Mira, you monitor my hearts. If I start to spike too high or dip too low, you pull me out. Literally, if you have to. Elira, you keep anything with a sword off my back. Seraphine—"
"Leads," Seraphine says calmly. "From the front. So nobody forgets whose war this is."
The marshal clears her throat.
"Your Highness, if you go to the front—"
"The front is already here," Seraphine says. "I just haven't been standing in it physically. That changes today."
There is a long, heavy silence.
The room is full of people who have bled for her family.
For her.
For Fia.
They know what commanders at the front mean.
Hope.
And risk.
"We're not asking for permission," Seraphine adds, very gently. "We're telling you the shape of the next move. Your job is to make it as survivable as possible. For our people. For us. For her."
Fia feels something deep in her chest loosen.
Fear doesn't go away.
It never does.
But it has company now.
Love.
Rage.
Stubborn hope.
"I'll need a day to reweave Vyrn's ward pattern remotely," Lyriel says, slipping fully into strategist mode. "I can piggyback off the existing architecture, but I'll have to strip down some redundancies."
"Is that safe?" Mira asks sharply.
"For Fia? Safer than letting her pour dragonfire into a network designed for candlelight," Lyriel says. "For Vyrn? It'll make them a little more brittle if the enemy manages to crack the new pattern. But honestly, their current situation is 'slowly boiling in a pot.' I'm offering them a chance at 'brief, controlled explosion' instead."
Elira slaps the table.
"I like 'explosion,'" she says.
Mira glares at her.
"You would."
Fia listens to them argue details.
Feels their worry.
Feels their confidence.
Feels Ardentis, coiled and attentive.
You will break if you try to carry everything, the dragon murmurs. But you are learning to choose what to burn. This is good.
"Will this work?" she thinks.
I do not know, he says. But I am curious. That is better than bored.
"That's deeply unhelpful," she mutters.
I am not a battle oracle, he replies. I am an instinct. A furnace. You supply the plan; I supply the fire.
She almost laughs.
Almost.
On the other side of the war, dawn comes gray and cold over Vyrn's valley.
Lysa Kharan stands on a ridge and watches the siege towers grind forward.
They're ugly things.
All angles and chain and iron, creaking as they're dragged by teams of oxen and conscripted laborers.
Men swarm around them—engineers shouting, soldiers forming up, officers barking orders.
She can taste the mood of the army.
Restless.
Determined.
Tired.
Afraid.
"Seventy thousand," Arven says at her shoulder. "You'd think that would make you feel safer."
"It makes me feel like I'm holding a lot of funerals I haven't met yet," Lysa says.
She holds a glass up to her eye, watching the distant shimmer of the Vyrn ward dome.
It flickers faintly as enemy mages test its surface from within the fortress.
The Crown's own artillery mages prepare counterspells in response.
A dance of light and potential violence.
Her orders from the king crinkle in her pocket, the parchment stiff and unforgiving against her palm.
Proceed with all speed.
Deploy the new chains.
Break their Calamity.
The "chains" had arrived the night before.
Iron Circle work.
She'd known the moment she saw them.
The shackles were heavy, dull-black metal etched in sigils that made her teeth hurt to look at.
The priests wouldn't touch them.
The handlers were too eager.
"This is how we bind her," they'd said. "This is how we pull the dragon out from under her skin and make it ours."
Lysa had looked at the young lieutenant demonstrating the mechanism.
Had seen his aura through the faint veil of her own magic—bright, eager, thoroughly indoctrinated.
He'd died at Vyrn three hours later, leading a charge that should never have been ordered.
She still sees his face when she closes her eyes.
"General?" Arven asks quietly. "The new weapons. Do you intend to use them?"
Lysa watches the ward dome.
Thinks of a girl with too much fire and a body that shook on the battlements, coughing blood as she tried not to collapse in front of her enemies.
"I intend," Lysa says slowly, "to win this battle with as few corpses as possible. On both sides."
Arven exhales.
"That is not what we were told to prioritize," he says.
"I'm aware," Lysa says.
She lowers the glass.
Her expression is neutral.
Her decision is not.
"Send word to the Iron Circle handlers," she says. "The chains stay in reserve unless I personally order otherwise. If they deploy without my explicit command, they will be considered rogue actors and treated accordingly."
Arven's brows rise.
"That's…a bold interpretation of the king's orders," he says.
"It's the only one I can live with," she says. "If he wants the Calamity in chains, he can come put them on her himself."
Arven is quiet for a long moment.
Then he nods.
"Understood," he says.
The siege towers creak onward.
The day leans toward violence.
It takes a day and a night to prepare.
Lyriel works without sleeping, weaving and unweaving complex geometries across Vyrn's representation.
Fia rests when she can.
Eats when Mira shoves food into her hands.
Tries not to think too hard about the fact that every step of this plan is another wager with her own body.
By the time they stand on the teleportation platform in the palace's inner sanctum, she is steady.
She's not fine.
She may never be fine again.
But she is steady.
Armor replaces soft cloth.
Her breastplate is light but strong, etched with flame motifs that weren't there before—someone's nervous joke, perhaps, or quiet homage.
Under it, her lungs ache in rhythm with the dragon coil.
Mira adjusts the straps like she's touching a bomb.
"If at any point you can't complete a full sentence, you stop casting," Mira says for the ninth time. "I don't care how dramatic the moment is."
"Yes, Healer," Fia says.
Seraphine stands to her right, fully armored, crown traded for a crested helm tucked under one arm.
Elira is on her left in reinforced plate, sword at her hip, another strapped across her back.
Lyriel wears layered leathers under a long, rune-lined coat, crystals hovering above her hands like miniature moons.
The last time Fia went to a battlefield, it was in a haze of fever and system prompts.
Now there are no floating text boxes.
No route indicators.
No "WARNING: THIS WILL LEAD TO BAD END #7" flashing in the corners of her vision.
The system is still suspended.
The world is running on raw consequence.
"Ready?" Seraphine asks.
Fia nods.
She takes their hands.
Mira's fingers lace with her left.
Seraphine's with her right.
Elira and Lyriel each grab a shoulder, grounding the circle.
The teleport sigils flare to life.
Fia feels the world twist around her, space folding like cloth, sound smearing into white noise.
For a heartbeat, she isn't in her body at all.
She's fire.
She's motion.
She's a dragon slipping through a crack.
Then stone returns under her boots.
Cold air slams into her lungs.
The smell hits her first.
Smoke.
Iron.
Blood.
Vyrn.
They stand on the inner battlements, high above the valley.
The ward dome shimmers a few feet above their heads, a faint translucent curve.
Outside it, the world is a nightmare painting—siege towers crawling across a churned, muddy field, ranks of crimson-clad soldiers shifting in formation, banners snapping in the wind.
Spells crackle and burst against the dome, sending ripples through the air.
Each one tugs at Fia's chest like a plucked string.
"Welcome to Vyrn, Your Highnesses," a hoarse voice says.
Commander Hadrien bows stiffly.
He looks like he hasn't slept in days.
There's blood on his armor that isn't his.
He still smiles, a short, exhausted flash.
"Didn't think you'd actually come," he adds.
Seraphine's mouth curves.
"Sorry to disappoint," she says. "How bad is it?"
Hadrien gestures with his spear toward the valley.
"They've been testing the dome all morning," he says. "Light volleys. Probing. Then they brought those."
His voice flattens as he indicates the nearest siege tower.
Up close, they are worse.
Layered plates of iron.
Reinforced joints.
Gleaming sigils at the base.
"They're trying to get close enough to anchor anti-ward pylons to the dome," Lyriel murmurs, eyes narrowed. "If they succeed, they can pin it down and crack it piece by piece."
"And your men?" Fia asks.
"Exhausted," Hadrien says frankly. "But standing. The ward-lattice you reinforced is the only reason we're not kindling."
He gives Fia a long, measuring look.
"You don't look like death today," he adds. "That's new."
"I have a very pushy doctor," Fia says.
And a dragon, she doesn't say.
Down in the valley, horns sound.
The crimson army shifts.
Ranks tighten.
Siege towers grind forward.
"They're committing," Elira says quietly. "This is the push."
Lyriel's crystals hum.
"The reweaving's ready," she says. "Once you light it, the lattice will channel as much of your output as it can into local shields and counter-batteries. It will still hurt. But it should hurt less."
Mira's hand finds Fia's wrist.
Her thumb presses over the dragon mark.
"What's your pain now?" she asks.
Fia checks.
Her chest aches at a steady six out of ten.
Her lungs feel like they're breathing through a damp cloth, not knives.
"Manageable," Fia says. "Annoying."
"Good," Mira says. "Try not to go above 'annoying.'"
Fia gives her a look.
"I'm about to breathe fire at siege towers," she points out. "My definition of 'annoying' may need to stretch."
Mira glares.
"Seven," she says. "Eight max. You hit nine, I knock you out."
"Understood," Fia says.
She steps to the very edge of the battlement, just under the curve of the ward dome.
Seventy thousand men and women stand beyond it.
Some are polishing armor.
Some adjusting helmets.
Some are just…staring up at the fortress, at the shimmer of the dome, at the black speck of her standing on the wall.
The herald beside Hadrien opens his mouth, probably to make some formal announcement of her presence.
Fia raises a hand.
"Don't," she says quietly.
"Don't…what?" he asks.
"Don't announce me," she says. "Let them figure it out."
She draws in a breath.
Feels her hearts stutter.
Feels the coil flare.
Fire rises.
Not wild.
Not yet.
"I'm going to open a window," she tells Lyriel. "Get ready."
"Don't you dare punch straight through—" Lyriel starts.
"I'm not a complete idiot," Fia says.
She lifts her hands.
Touches the ward dome.
For a moment, it's like pressing her palms to water.
Then it recognizes her.
Dragon.
Anchor.
Soulknife.
The dome parts under her fingers, a small, controlled opening just big enough for a person.
Cold air slaps her face.
The roar of the enemy army surges in.
Shouts.
Drums.
Someone screams something about "the witch."
Fia steps up onto the parapet.
Elira sucks in a breath.
"Fia—"
"I'm not jumping," Fia says calmly.
She stands, bare-headed, the wind tugging at her braid.
For a heartbeat, there is silence.
Then a murmur.
It ripples across the valley as recognition spreads.
That hair.
That strange, too-pretty face.
That aura.
She hears it in snatches.
Calamity.
Villainess.
Dragon.
She inhales.
Lets Ardentis rise with the breath.
Scales shimmer along her forearms, black shot with ember-red.
Her pupils slit.
Heat pours from her chest into her limbs, not in a tearing torrent, but in a thick, controlled wave that curls around her bones like molten glass.
Gently, Ardentis reminds her. We are not storm. We are scalpel.
"Right," she mutters. "Scalpel."
Seraphine's voice carries from behind her.
"Fia," she says quietly. "Come back to me."
Fia glances over her shoulder.
Four faces.
Four hearts.
Four reasons.
She nods once.
Then she steps off the wall.
She falls.
Wind tears at her.
For a heartbeat, she's a body dropping toward a churned field and an army that wants her.
Then the fire in her spine snaps.
Wings roar out from her back in a burst of heat and light—half spectral, half scaled, a pair of great, ember-bright appendages that catch the air and snap taut.
She jerks.
Levels out.
Gasps.
Holy shit.
"Language," Mira's voice snaps faintly over the bond, threaded through Lyriel's lattice.
"You're hovering," Elira says, awe naked in her tone. "You're actually—"
Fia doesn't hear the rest.
The field rushes up at her.
She banks, fire trailing off her wings in a burning wake.
Below, the nearest siege tower shudders as soldiers scramble, pointing, shouting.
"Now," Lyriel's voice rings in her head. "The lattice is open. Feed it, Fia. But aim."
Fia bares her teeth.
"I've always been good at target selection," she says.
She folds her wings.
Drops like an arrow.
The tower's sigils flare, sensing incoming power.
Too late.
Fia inhales.
Ardentis inhales with her.
Together, they exhale.
Fire pours from her mouth in a concentrated lance, white-hot at the core, orange-gold at the edges, streaked with faint, shimmering traces of something older than this world.
It hits the base of the siege tower.
Not the men on it.
Not the oxen.
The joint.
Iron shrieks.
Heat blooms.
The sigils on the tower's base flicker, then go dark as their etched lines melt under the onslaught.
Fia cuts the breath off hard, chest spasming.
Pain flares under her ribs.
She coughs once.
Twice.
Copper on her tongue.
"Seven," Mira's voice snaps. "You're at seven. Stay there."
"Working on it," Fia wheezes.
The tower shudders.
Slows.
Its front corner crumples inward.
With a drawn-out groan, the whole structure lists, groaning as weight shifts.
Men leap from it, some not fast enough.
The tower tips.
Falls sideways, crashing into the mud with a thunderous impact that sends a shockwave rolling across the field.
Men scatter.
The crimson ranks nearest it falter, eyes wide.
Fia banks again, wings straining.
The fire in her chest roils.
She forces it down, channels it along the lines Lyriel wove earlier.
They flare into view—faint, geometric shapes etched across the valley floor, anchored to Vyrn's walls.
The excess flame pours into those lines, streaking off toward the fortress.
On the battlements, the ward dome brightens as it drinks in the redirected energy.
Shields thicken.
Slabs of hard light snap into place above artillery emplacements.
Counter-batteries spin up, hurling bolts of condensed flame and force back toward the enemy.
Fia grins, breathless.
"It's working," she gasps.
"Of course it is," Lyriel says, voice tight with concentration. "I am very good at what I do."
"Don't get cocky," Mira snaps. "Fia, check your pain."
Fia checks.
The stabbing in her chest ebbs from a sharp nine back to a grinding seven.
Manageable.
Barely.
"Still here," she says.
The second tower's handlers scramble to adjust.
Sigils flare along its base, forming a crude anti-fire lattice.
They've learned.
Good.
She loves it when enemies learn.
It makes outplaying them that much more satisfying.
"They're adapting," she says.
"Can you punch through?" Elira asks.
"Not the same way," Fia says. "If I brute-force it, I'll be coughing up more than dramatic amounts of blood."
"Alternative?" Seraphine asks.
Fia scans the field.
Sees the pattern.
The towers are slow.
Heavily armored.
The men around them aren't.
She dives again.
This time, she doesn't aim at the tower itself.
She aims at the ground in front of it.
She breathes.
Not a sustained lance—just a sweeping fan of heat that turns mud to hissing, sticky glass.
The front line of the tower's pushing team hits the newly hardened ground at a run.
Boots slip.
Men stumble.
The oxen balk.
The tower's momentum falters.
"Artillery, now," Lyriel snaps, relaying through Vyrn's command channels.
On the walls, mages unleash focused bolts at the tower's sigil nodes.
They spark.
Crack.
Fizzle.
Fia's breathless laugh is ugly and exultant.
She banks again, lungs burning.
Her vision blurs at the edges.
"Six and three-quarters," Mira mutters. "Don't you dare climb."
The crimson lines below are in chaos now.
Some officers are trying to re-form formations.
Others are screaming to push through.
A knot of mages is aiming up at her, hands weaving.
She feels the spell as it forms—cold, precise, designed not to burn, but to bind.
"Anti-flight pattern," Lyriel warns. "Don't let that hit you."
"On it," Elira says.
Fia has just enough time to be confused.
Then Elira is flying past her.
Not literally.
Rope and hook and sheer suicidal bravery.
Elira has rappelled from the wall as soon as Fia opened the dome, using the momentum of her drop to swing out under the curve of the shield.
Now she releases the rope, hitting the ground in a hard, rolling tumble that would break a lesser person's bones, and comes up directly in the path of the enemy mages.
"Hi," Elira says.
She smiles like this is the best idea anyone's ever had.
Then she charges.
Fia has no idea what words she's shouting down there, but from the way crimson lines flinch and break as she plows through them, they're either very inspiring or very terrifying.
Probably both.
The anti-flight spell fragments as two of the mages go down under her sword.
The remaining caster panics.
Throws the spell early.
It goes wild, splintering harmlessly against the ward dome.
"Reminder," Mira says tightly, "never let Elira design a plan unsupervised."
"What, and miss this?" Fia pants.
A laugh bubbles in her chest.
It hurts.
She doesn't care.
Something shifts at the back of the enemy lines.
A new banner rises—a deeper crimson, embroidered with a crown and coiled chains.
Fia's skin crawls.
"Iron Circle," she whispers.
Lyriel's crystals flare.
"I see them," she says. "They've got carriers near the third tower. Something heavy. Wrapped. Sigils read…anti-magic. Suppression."
Mira's breath hisses through her teeth.
"The chains," she says.
Fia's hearts stutter.
"If they get those on me—" she starts.
"We're not letting them," Seraphine says, voice cold as the wind.
It's not bravado.
It's simple fact.
On the ridge behind the crimson army, General Lysa Kharan sees the chains moving forward and feels her stomach knot.
"Who ordered that?" she demands.
The Iron Circle handler, a pale man with ink-black eyes, bows shallowly.
"By direct command of the king," he says. "The Calamity is exposed. We must seize the opportunity."
Lysa's jaw clenches.
"Your orders go through me," she says. "Pull them back."
The handler's smile is thin.
"I'm afraid we cannot, General," he says. "These chains were made at great cost. If we delay, we may lose the chance to bind her."
Arven shifts beside her.
"This is exactly what she feared," he murmurs.
Lysa's hand curls around the hilt of her sword.
She could draw it.
Right now.
Cut the handler down.
Spark a civil war in the middle of a siege.
Her king's face rises in her mind's eye.
His fury.
His fear.
His obsession.
Her soldiers' faces rise, too.
Tired.
Cold.
Trusting that she will not throw them into a fire she wouldn't stand in herself.
"Arven," she says quietly.
"Yes, General?"
"If that handler moves those chains one more step without my explicit go-ahead," she says. "You will ensure they don't reach the front."
Arven's brows rise.
"Discreetly," she adds.
He hesitates.
Then he nods once.
"Understood," he says.
Down below, the chains move forward through the ranks.
The sigils on them glimmer.
Even at a distance, Fia can feel their wrongness—a dragging, gnawing sensation in the magic around them, like rust trying to creep into clean springs.
Her dragon coil recoils instinctively.
Unclean, Ardentis snarls, for once spitting not amusement but genuine anger. Thieving metal. Parasite.
Heat licks at Fia's ribs.
Not the hungry, spreading warmth of battle.
An old, offended fury.
"They're bringing the chains," Fia says aloud. "They want to clip my wings."
"Then we make them regret carrying them," Seraphine says. "Lyriel?"
"I can't unravel those sigils from here," Lyriel says. "They're too densely layered, and I'd need a closer look. What I can do is make it extremely unpleasant to hold them."
Her crystals flare brighter.
Lines of force arc out, invisible to most eyes, connecting with the air around the chain bearers.
"Fia," Lyriel says, "see those men on the left side of the third tower? The ones moving slower?"
Fia squints.
Her dragon sight sharpens things—auras flaring around people like heat halos.
The carriers glow with a different sort of light: sickly, pulsing, eating at the edges of their own energy.
"I see them," she says.
"I've thinned the air around them," Lyriel says. "Just enough. A little more heat should make those chains very hard to hang on to."
Mira sighs.
"We're committing war crimes against metallurgy now," she mutters.
"Good," Fia says.
She dives again.
Not low this time.
High.
She loops over the third tower, wings burning, and lets a rain of small, controlled firebursts fall—not on the men, but around them.
Each burst hits a sigil on the chains, superheating the etched metal.
The suppression runes flare desperately as they try to drink down the magic.
It's like watching dry, rotten wood try to swallow floodwater.
They can't.
The metal glows dull red.
Then brighter.
The carriers scream as the heat travels through their gauntlets.
Some drop the chains.
Others try to hold on.
Their auras flicker.
One collapses.
Another staggers, clutching at their chest as the sigils rebound, chewing on their own magic instead of Fia's.
"Don't kill them," Fia mutters through gritted teeth. "Just drop it. Drop it and run."
Several do.
The chains hit the mud with a heavy, ugly thud.
The sigils on them flicker, confused, as they try to pull power from a host that's no longer actively feeding them.
"Now," Lyriel says.
She throws her own magic into the gap, threads of cold, sharp force weaving through the chain's pattern.
Fia feels the impact in her teeth.
The suppression matrix frays.
Not all of it.
But enough.
Enough that when the Iron Circle handler snarls and raises a hand to reassert control, the chains jerk—not toward Fia, but sideways.
Right into a bolt of counter-artillery from Vyrn's wall.
Light.
Heat.
A sharp, ugly snapping sound as several of the chain links crack under the intersecting forces.
They don't shatter.
But they weaken.
"You're making new enemies," Ardentis notes with satisfaction.
"I already had them," Fia thinks back.
Her chest hurts.
She's been in the air too long.
Her wings strain with each beat.
Sweat slicks her skin under the armor.
Her breaths are shallow.
"Pain?" Mira demands.
Fia checks.
"Seven," she says. "Maybe seven and a half."
"Time to come down," Mira says. "You've broken two towers and disrupted their fancy chains. Let the ground forces work."
"I can still—" Fia begins.
"She said down," Seraphine's voice cuts in, low and absolute. "That wasn't a suggestion."
Fia's jaw clenches.
A dozen impulses scream at her to do more.
To burn more.
To make sure.
But another impulse is louder now.
Last night.
Laughter against pillows.
Hands on her skin.
Four hearts around her.
The promise she made to herself to live for more than just martyrdom.
She banks.
Glides back toward the fortress.
Arrows hiss up after her, but the ward dome snaps closed around her the moment she's through the aperture, deflecting them with contemptuous ease.
Her boots hit stone.
Her knees buckle.
Seraphine is there instantly, one arm around her waist, taking her weight as if she weighs nothing at all.
Mira's hands land on her chest, magic sliding under bone, checking, reinforcing, soothing.
"Sit," Mira orders.
Fia sits, because there's not much choice.
Her lungs burn; each breath feels like dragging air through bruised velvet.
Her hearts race.
Not dangerously.
Not yet.
But close.
"Talk," Mira says.
"Everything hurts and I probably smell like roasted iron," Fia rasps.
"Good," Mira says. "If you can complain, you're not dying."
Lyriel leans over the battlement, watching the chaos she and Fia have sown.
Below, the first siege tower lies on its side, a mangled heap of metal.
The second is stuck in cooling glass-mud, crews struggling to shift its wheels.
The third is half-hobbled—chains scattered, carriers nursing burned hands, the Iron Circle handler raging at men too shocked to listen.
The crimson infantry's neat formations have shattered into pockets trying to adapt to a battle that's begun to move on terms they don't recognize.
"It's working," Lyriel says softly. "They'll have to pull back to regroup, at least."
Commander Hadrien stares at Fia like she's a legend walked off a tapestry.
"You just bought us a week," he says. "Maybe more."
Fia coughs.
Blood flecks her glove.
She grimaces.
"A week is good," she says. "I like weeks."
Mira presses a cloth into her hand before the blood can drip.
Her fingers tremble, just once.
"Seven and a half," she mutters. "You're not going near eight again today. That's it. You're done."
Fia sags back against Seraphine's chest.
Her wings, still half-manifested, flicker.
Scales fade, leaving only faint ember-glow lines along her arms.
Ardentis settles, shifting coiled limbs under her ribs.
You did not break the vessel, he says. Acceptable performance.
"High praise," Fia thinks.
She closes her eyes for a moment.
On the ridge beyond the battlefield, Lysa Kharan watches her troops falter and feels a strange, fierce relief.
She can sell this.
She can tell the king they tested the Calamity and found her limits.
She can order a temporary withdrawal under the guise of "tactical recalibration."
She can buy time.
"Signal the retreat horn," she says.
Arven blinks.
"Now?" he asks.
"Yes," she says. "They've lost a tower and their shiny chains are half-broken. If we push now, we lose more men on principle than the ground is worth."
The Iron Circle handler rounds on her.
"You cannot be serious," he snarls. "We are on the cusp of—"
Lysa's gaze turns on him, cold and flat.
"The last time I checked," she says, "I commanded this army. You command a sack of cursed metal."
His eyes flash.
"You're disobeying a direct royal directive," he says softly. "Think very carefully, General."
"I am," she says. "Every day. While I count our dead."
She steps closer, lowering her voice until only Arven and the handler can hear.
"She is not what you told us," Lysa says. "That girl. That dragon. Whatever she is. You told us she was mindless fire. A storm. A thing to be used. I saw her pull back. I saw her aim."
The handler's jaw tightens.
"Sentiment," he spits. "Dangerous. Treasonous."
"Observation," she corrects. "Very dangerous. Especially to those who prefer blind obedience."
She straightens.
"Sound the retreat," she says, louder.
The horns blow a moment later.
Low.
Reluctant.
The crimson lines begin to pull back in reasonably good order, dragging what they can salvage of the towers with them.
On Vyrn's wall, a cheer threatens.
Commander Hadrien glances at Seraphine.
She nods once.
He raises his spear, signaling the defenders to hold discipline.
Celebrate later.
Secure now.
Fia watches the retreat through half-lidded eyes.
Something inside her unwinds a notch.
It's not over.
Not even close.
But the relentless forward grind of that army has broken.
At least for today.
She's still breathing.
At least for today.
"Hey," Elira murmurs, crouching in front of her, eyes searching her face. "Still with us?"
Fia manages a tired smile.
"Annoyingly," she says.
Elira's grin softens.
"Good," she says. "I had some very inappropriate plans for after this battle. I'd be annoyed if you missed them."
Mira whacks her lightly on the shoulder.
"Absolutely not," Mira says. "She's going to sleep for twelve hours under observation."
"Observation," Elira repeats, eyebrow lifting. "Is that what we're calling it?"
Lyriel sighs.
"You're all incorrigible," she says. "Commander, we'll need a quiet room for the Calamity and her idiotic entourage. Preferably one with thick walls."
Hadrien huffs a laugh.
"You can have my quarters," he says. "They were never this interesting anyway."
Seraphine presses a kiss to the back of Fia's head, quick and fierce, uncaring who sees.
"You did well," she murmurs.
Fia's eyes sting.
"I didn't kill seventy thousand people," she whispers. "I was so afraid that's all the dragon would ever let me be."
Ardentis snorts.
You confuse my nature with your fear, he says. Fire is not only destruction. It is boundary. It is choice. You chose where to burn.
"I had help," she thinks back.
The dragon hums.
Yes, he says. You have built yourself a hoard of inconvenient, loud, stubborn hearts. How very dragon of you.
She almost laughs.
Almost cries.
Does a messy, exhausted version of both instead.
Mira's arms close around her.
Seraphine's grip tightens.
Elira's hand settles on her shoulder.
Lyriel leans in just enough that their knees press.
This is what she fought for this morning.
For last night.
For the possibility that there will be more.
More battles.
More mornings.
More stupid, domestic arguments and hot, flushed nights.
The war continues.
The enemy regroups.
Iron Circle plots.
The king rages somewhere far away, clutching his broken plans.
But here, on a wall that still stands, a girl who was supposed to die alone in a tidy bed sits between four women who have decided, with infuriating certainty, that she is worth a future.
"What now?" she asks quietly.
Seraphine's smile is small and dangerous.
"Now," Seraphine says, "we make sure today wasn't a single, brave, stupid flare on the way to a tragedy. We turn it into the first crack in his war."
Lyriel's eyes gleam.
"And we find out what happens," she adds, "when someone on their side decides they're done obeying stupid men with crowns."
Far away, on a cold ridge, Lysa Kharan folds the king's latest letter.
Does not open it.
Not yet.
Her gaze turns toward the fortress again.
Toward the faint speck of a girl with ember-bright wings.
"Hold," she murmurs, to herself, to her men, to the future. "A little longer. Let's see whose fire lasts."
Between worlds—between prophecy, suspended systems, and the raw, messy choices of flawed people—the war grinds on.
More adult.
More brutal.
More real.
And Fia, terminally ill, dragon-touched villainess, no longer fights just because a game script shoved her.
She fights because last night happened.
Because this morning happened.
Because she has something deeply, ferociously adult to lose.
And that, more than any prophecy, is what makes her truly terrifying.