The first shot missed Kael's head by inches.
A lance of condensed dragon-fire slammed into the gantry behind him, melting sigil-steel like wax and throwing sparks into the abyss. The shockwave hurled the Kael sideways. He hit the floor hard, breath bursting from his lungs, and his ears ringing.
"Suppress him!" the Inquisitor snapped as she ordered.
The Wardens advanced in formation, boots striking the metal in perfect rhythm. Their weapons hummed as suppression runes activated, patterns designed not to kill dragons, but to silence them.
Kael pushed himself up on shaking arms.
Down, the dragon urged. They know where to strike.
Another blast tore through the air with brute force. This one grazed his shoulder, burning cold and hot at once. Pain flared but before it could consume him, it dulled, as though absorbed by something vast and patient.
Shared, the dragon said. Not proudly. Simply as fact.
Kelth shouted something from behind the lattice binding him, but the words blurred together. The chamber felt unreal now too bright, too sharp, every rune screaming meaning he could suddenly understand.
Suppressive sigils weren't just light.
They were commands.
"Stop," Kael said hoarsely.
But no one listened.
The Inquisitor raised her hand again, fingers curling in a precise gesture. The air thickened around him, gravity turning syrup-slow. His knees buckled as an invisible weight forced him down.
"There," she said. "You feel that? That's the proper order of things. Dragons below. People above. And anomalies—"
She stepped closer, boots stopping just beyond his reach.
"—contained."
The pressure intensified, Kael felt like his body was going to break.
You will break, the dragon warned him. Your body is not forged for this.
"I know," he whispered.
The dragon paused.
Then, carefully like laying a blade flat instead of edge-first it shifted.
The weight vanished.
The Inquisitor staggered, surprise flashing across her face as her binding collapsed into sparks. The wardens faltered, formation breaking as their weapons screamed feedback.
"What did you do?" she demanded.
Kael stood.
He didn't feel powerful.
He felt responsible.
"I didn't fight you," he said. "I asked it to stop helping you."
The words rang strange in the chamber. Even the dragon seemed to consider them.
Then the chains began to crack.
Not shatter. Not explode.
Crack, slow and deliberate.
Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across sigil-forged steel as ancient runes flickered, their meanings unraveling under a truth they had never been written to contain.
The dragon did not rise.
It leaned closer.
its eyes vast and molten fixed on the Inquisitor.
You have worn my pain like armor, the dragon.
The Inquisitor's face went pale.
"Fall back!" she shouted. "Full lockdown now!"
But that was too late.
The floor lurched as power rerouted violently. Conduits burst, spewing raw magic into the air. The chamber lights flared white, then died.
Darkness swallowed everything.
For one breathless moment, there was nothing.
Then red.
Emergency runes ignited, casting the chamber in pulsing crimson. Smoke curled through the air. The wardens lay scattered, weapons dead in their hands, groaning or unconscious.
The Inquisitor remained standing.
Barely.
She stared at Kael as if seeing him clearly for the first time. "Do you have any idea," she said quietly, "what you've just started?"
Kael looked past her down into the abyss where the dragon waited, still bound, still enduring.
"Yes," he said.
She laughed once, sharp and humorless. "No. You don't."
The ceiling boomed.
Not a collapse an opening.
Far above, emergency blast doors groaned apart as a shaft of moonlight speared down into the chamber. Silhouetted against it were figures descending on cables, cloaked and swift.
Not Concord wardens.
Kelth's eyes widened. "Those sigils… Aether League."
Mercenaries hit the gantry running, blades and rifles already raised.
"Asset confirmed!" one shouted. "Secure the Voice!"
The Inquisitor swore.
In seconds, the chamber became a battlefield three powers converging on a single point, none of them allies.
Kael backed toward the edge, heart pounding.
You must leave, the dragon said to Kael. Now.
"I can't free you," he whispered.
Not yet, it agreed. But you can carry my will.
A shard of broken chain floated upward, glowing faintly. It drifted into his hand—warm, heavy, alive with meaning.
This is not power, the dragon said. It is a promise.
Kael closed his fingers around it.
The floor beneath him ruptured.
Stone and steel gave way as a maintenance shaft collapsed, opening into a plunge of darkness. Wind howled upward as gravity reached for him.
The Inquisitor lunged.
Their eyes met.
In hers, he saw certainty: this would not end here.
Then the ground vanished beneath his feet.
He fell.
Not alone.
Fire wrapped around him—not burning, not consuming, but holding—as the dragon's presence surged like wings unfolding in the dark.
Above, alarms screamed.
Across the city, something ancient shifted.
And far beyond the capital, other dragons—sleeping, bound, forgotten—stirred for the first time in centuries.
Because a voice had fallen into the depths.
And the world had heard it.