The mountains rose like jagged fangs against a bruised sky as Kael and Lira pressed deeper into the Storm-Carved Pass—one of the most treacherous routes anywhere near the Shattered Peaks. Winds screamed through the narrow corridors, flinging dust and grit into their faces, and the cold bit sharply enough to feel alive.
But neither of them turned back.
They couldn't.
They were finally closing in on the Nightborne Conclave.
And Kael could still feel the echo of that voice—the one that had spoken at the end of their last battle.
Even now, its presence lingered like a shadow pressed between his ribs.
Lira walked slightly ahead, cloak whipping behind her as she scanned the higher ridges with sharp, determined eyes. She had been different ever since the last ambush. More focused. More protective. A fierce steadiness had awakened in her.
Kael liked it—even if he didn't say so.
"Tracks," she called suddenly, crouching.
Kael joined her. The prints in the dust were deep, clawed, heavy.
Not wolves.
Not trolls.
Something far worse.
"Drake riders," Lira muttered.
Kael's hand tightened on his weapon. "How many?"
"Three… maybe four. And not old. A few hours."
Kael cursed under his breath. "They know we're heading for the Conclave."
"They're trying to cut us off," Lira said. "Or chase us into something."
She rose with a kind of calm he wasn't used to seeing from her. Not fear. Not panic. Focus.
She had been training, hard, even when Kael was too drained to notice.
She drew her twin crescent blades, their steel humming softly as she spun them once to test the balance.
Kael raised an eyebrow. "You're getting good."
"I was always good," she said, smirking. "You were just unconscious too often to see it."
He opened his mouth to answer—but the sky cracked.
A screech ripped downward from above as something massive descended through the swirling wind.
A drake—black-scaled, horn-crowned, easily the size of a barn—slammed into the path directly ahead, shaking stone loose from the cliffs. Its rider, masked in obsidian armor, pointed a spear tipped with lightning toward them.
"Run? Fight?" Lira asked lightly.
Kael unsheathed the Silver Dragon's Fang, its edge pulsing with pale inner fire.
"Fight," he said.
But before either could move, two more drakes swooped in from the sides, boxing them in. The riders circled, their beasts snapping and hissing, waiting for the command to strike.
Lira didn't flinch.
She darted forward first—faster than the nearest rider expected—sliding beneath a drake's snapping jaws and slashing deep across its tendon. It roared, staggering, and she sprang up the cliff wall, pushed off it, and landed behind the rider, slicing his saddle strap clean through.
He fell.
Hard.
The drake, confused and wounded, bolted down the pass.
Kael blinked.
That was… impressive.
"Focus!" she shouted. "Two more!"
Kael leapt into action, power flaring through him—but he remembered.
No over-exertion.
No collapsing again.
He fought smart.
He ducked under the sweeping tail of the nearest drake, stabbed once to distract it, then guided its roar by stepping just out of reach. The rider tilted his spear to line up a killing strike.
Kael pivoted.
The drake jerked.
The spear pierced its own mount's neck.
It crumpled.
Before the last rider could flee, the mountains shook—not from Kael's power, not from the drakes—
But from something much higher above.
BOOM.
A colossal winged silhouette passed overhead, blotting out half the sun as storm clouds twisted like a halo around it.
Not a drake.
Not a wyvern.
Something older.
Something sacred.
Lira's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Kael… is that…?"
He didn't answer.
The creature didn't land or circle. It simply glided across the sky, leaving the air trembling behind it, as if the world itself bent in respect.
And then, as quickly as it appeared, it vanished behind a bank of clouds.
Silence.
Lira let out a breath she'd been holding. "What was that?"
Kael stared at the place the creature had gone.
"I… don't know," he admitted.
But every part of him felt as if its presence had stirred something deep inside—the same echo he heard when that mysterious voice whispered within him.
The same force that felt older than time.
He swallowed hard.
"We need to move," he said.
Lira nodded, retrieving her blades. "To the Conclave."
"To the Conclave," Kael echoed.
But neither of them shook off the feeling that something vast had just awakened—and that the mountains themselves were holding their breath.
Something was watching.
Something was waiting.