🜂 Second Skyfall
The second dreadcarrier was bigger.
Older.
More alive.
It moved not like a ship, but like a god—veins of molten alloy pulsing across its undercarriage, bristling with sky-lances and siphon cores. Even the air recoiled as it passed, dragging gravity in its wake.
Kael scanned its silhouette through a scope. "This isn't just another carrier," he said, voice dry.
Mira whispered, "It's the carrier."
> The Hollow Halo.
Last of the original Warden dreadforges. The one that turned the Tiderift blue with dragon blood. It had vanished after the Fall of Scoria.
Until now.
It didn't arrive to finish the fight.
It arrived to end the planet's second chance.
---
🜂 The Message
A broadcast tore through every device, every mind-flare comm, every pyrelink node in the city.
Warden Prime Caelus Vire's face appeared—expression calm, eyes cold.
> "Citizens of Valecrown.
You have embraced treason.
You harbor dragons.
You carry seeds.
This is not a warning.
This is correction."
Then the Hollow Halo began charging its planetfaller.
A superweapon.
One shot.
Enough to erase not just Valecrown—but the entire Ashwake basin.
Mira paled. "We don't have time."
Jackie's embercore pulsed beneath her ribs.
"No," she said. "We make time."
---
🜂 The Flight of Ashwings
Jackie gathered the others at the summit of the Crownspire.
"We can't stop the Halo from here," she said. "We have to board it."
Luci glanced at the horizon. "It's in low orbit. That's… a long jump."
Kael smiled grimly. "Unless we fly."
He unrolled a schematic from the Archives—Jazira's final Embercraft project: Ashwings.
Half-glider, half-dragonbone harness. Flies by ember impulse and sheer audacity.
There were only four.
That would have to be enough.
---
🜂 Boarding the Halo
They launched at dusk.
Valecrown fell away behind them, a halo of smoke and flame.
The Ashwings howled through the air, their wingpanes crackling with firelight. Jackie felt the pull of the Halo above—a magnetic wrath like a storm calling home its thunder.
As they neared the dreadcarrier's underbelly, Jackie shouted: "Break! Take opposite hangars!"
They split off—Kael and Mira spiraling toward the eastern bay, Luci firing into sky-turrets, and Jackie aiming straight for the central reactor gate.
The Halo noticed.
And opened fire.
But it was too late.
They were already inside.
---
🜂 The Heart of Iron
Inside, the Halo was a cathedral of war.
Columns of energy climbed skyward. Golems patrolled in formations. Wall-pipes hissed with synthetic flame.
Jackie raced through it all, her embercore reacting violently—pulsing in warning. The ship hated her.
And deep within its core, Caelus Vire waited—still human, barely, encased in layers of exo-armor and flame inhibitors.
He turned as she entered.
> "You think fire makes you sovereign?
Fire only consumes."
Jackie stood tall, ash swirling around her feet like snow.
> "No," she said. "It chooses."
And she charged.
---
🜂 Sovereign Clash
Their battle shook the Halo.
Steel met fire. Embers crashed against kinetic fields.
Caelus struck with tactical precision—decades of Warden training honed to destroy anything with dragonblood. Jackie fought with something older. Wilder. Inherently disobedient.
He tried to suppress.
She refused.
As the core chamber cracked and emberlight poured through, Jackie pulled her last vial from her belt.
An original seed.
Jazira's.
> She hurled it into the ship's heart.
The Halo began to burn from the inside out.
Caelus screamed—not in pain, but in clarity.
> "She wanted this.
She knew I'd follow."
Jackie stood over him, eyes lit with living flame.
> "Then follow her to the end."
And she left him there.
---
🜂 The Halo Falls
The Hollow Halo broke atmosphere like a dying star.
From Valecrown below, the people saw a second sun streak across the sky—burning, breaking, shedding fire like feathers.
It didn't crash.
It surrendered.
Jackie soared from its collapsing hull just in time, Ashwings sputtering, embercore overloaded. Luci caught her midair, Mira and Kael trailing behind with escape flares.
They landed hard in the outer basin.
Smoke. Ash. Silence.
Then cheers.
Valecrown was still standing.
The Halo was not.
And for the first time in a thousand years, the fire no longer needed to hide.