But something shifts.
A sound rises above the chaos. Not the clash of steel or the crack of Skyfire or the pained groans of dying men.Something deeper.
It reverberates through her chest before she fully hears it; a low, ancient vibration that pulls her attention upward without thought.
Seren turns her gaze to the sky.
And the world stops.
They break through the smoke like something out of memory, out of myth—vast forms cutting through ash and fire, wings stretching wide as they catch what little moonlight filters through the haze. Their scales glint in shifting colors, gold and obsidian and deep, endless blue, each movement reflecting something more extraordinary than the war raging below them.
Dragons.
Not stories.
Not remnants.
Alive.
Free.
Holy fucking Stars.
Realization ofhowthe dragons take to the skies floods her veins.
Lara.
It had to be Lara.
Seren scours through the chaos, desperately searching for her. But then she remembers—she snaps her eyes skyward again.
Each dragon carries a rider.
This is what they were born to do—and they are.
Witches are mounted on their backs, cloaks snapping in the wind, their silhouettes carved into the sky as they move with instinctive precision, guiding the dragons into formation as though they have done this a thousand times before. As though this is history repeating itself.
That’s when she sees her—Lara atop a dragon the hue of midnight. Relief floods her, and a single thought: Lara belongs to herself.
But her thoughts are interrupted by fire. Dragonfire.
The blast tears through the Caelorian lines, consuming soldiers and weapons alike in a sweeping arc of destruction that forces the front ranks to break apart. Another follows, thenanother, each strike more devastating than the last, carving through the battlefield with a force nothing on the ground can match.
Seren feels it then—not just awe, not just disbelief. But a deep, visceral understanding: this is what was taken. This is what was buried.And it has returned.
A breath escapes her.
“They’re back,” someone whispers from behind her.
She’s not sure who. And she does not care. Because her gaze has dropped. And found Elyssara.
She stands alone in the wreckage, unmoving, her figure illuminated in the fractured light of the battlefield. Across from her, Nyrielle’s power gathers again, vast and terrible, the air around her warping under its weight.
Elyssara does not raise her magic. She does not move. Just…waits.
Seren’s chest tightens. “No!”
The dragons roar.
