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Standing on the opposite side of the steam vent was a solitary figure. He was kneeling beside the sprawled, motionless body of one of the candidates—a male who had survived the ocean crossing only to bleed out on the volcanic rock.

It was Kaelor Ashborne.

The pale transfer wasn’t offering a silent prayer, nor was he searching for a squad mark. Kaelor was systematically stripping the dead male’s corpse of his silver-threaded vanguard cloak and water flask. As I watched from the shadows, Kaelor drew a long, serrated hunting knife and casually dragged the blade across the dead male’s throat—a redundant, cruel gesture born not of necessity, but of pure depravity.

He wiped the bloodied steel on the corpse’s collar, then slowly raised his head.

His washed-out eyes cut straight through the swirling sulfur fog, locking directly onto mine across the thirty-foot drop of the fissure.

Kaelor didn’t drop into a defensive stance. He didn’t drop his stolen gear. A slow, sickening smirk spread across his sharp features, his thin lips pulling back over yellowed teeth in a silent promise. He raised the blood-stained knife, brought the flat of the blade to his own lips, and licked the dark crimson edge while staring straight into my eyes.

A wave of cold revulsion spiked in my chest, my fingers tightening around my dagger until my knuckles turned white.

Not here.

Not on an open bridge.

Kaelor tapped the side of his skull with the hilt of his knife, threw a mocking, courtly bow in my direction, and melted backward into the thick bank of rising steam. The sulfur fog rolled over the archway, swallowing his shadow whole, leaving behind only the dead male on the rock and the chilling certainty that Kaelor was waiting for the right moment to execute his threat.

“Let him try,” I growled softly into the heat, turning my face away from the archway and pushing deeper into the crags.

Ten minutes later, the high ridge trail narrowed into a labyrinth of shattered volcanic rock. A claustrophobic pocket of dead-end ravines and sheer basalt walls that trapped the heat like a furnace.

I was navigating a sharp turn around a jagged obsidian spire when a sound tore through the thick air.

It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t the deep rumble of the volcano.

It was the distinct, sharp clash of steel biting into heavy scales, instantly followed by a familiar, breathless curse that echoed off the high stone walls.

“Come on, you oversized reptile!” a voice shouted, raw with exhaustion and reckless defiance. “Is that the best you’ve got?!”

My heart stuttered against my bruised ribs. Dax.

I scrambled up the steep slope of a collapsed basalt shelf, staying low against the hot stone, and peered over the jagged lip into a deep, dead-end volcanic pocket below.

The scene unfolding beneath me made my blood run cold.

Trapped against an eighty-foot wall of solid obsidian was Dax. He was in horrific shape. His training leathers were torn to shreds, soaked in a mixture of black ash and his own crimson blood. His left arm hung completely limp at his side, clearly dislocated or broken, and a deep gash across his forehead was bleeding heavily into his eyes. He held a single obsidian dagger in his right hand, his posture staggering, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow wheezes.

Cornering him in the narrow space was a Bronze Dragon.

Fuck.

The beast was a thirty-foot nightmare of heavy, metallic armor plates that gleamed like polished copper beneath the sulfurous glare. Its thick, serpentine neck was coiled, its long tail studded with brutal spikes that whipped against the stone, shattering boulders into gravel with every strike.

The dragon was not playing. Its horizontal slitted pupils were narrowed to lethal points, and deep within its wide gullet, an incandescent orange fire was building with a terrifying roar.

Dax was out of room. He was out of stamina. In three seconds, the furnace in the beast’s throat would turn him into a pile of charred bone and ash.

I crouched on the upper lip of the ridge, my mind frantically calculating the terrain.

Get to him, I need to get to him. I can’t lose Dax.

To my immediate right, carved into the basalt wall, was a natural stone archway—a clear, unguarded tunnel leading safely down into the lower basins of the interior caldera. It was my exit. It was a guaranteed route to survival.

If I turned right and ran through the tunnel, I would live. I would bypass the Bronze Dragon entirely, save my shattered ribs from further trauma, and push toward the end of the trial.

If I jumped down into the pocket... I was choosing a fight I couldn’t win. My body was broken, my Fae magic was spent from forced healing, and I was holding two tiny obsidian daggers against thirty feet of armored bronze muscle. Jumping down was pure madness.