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The remaining candidates shuddered, their faces turning the color of ash.

The second transfer stepped forward, his eyes wide with desperate focus. He didn’t look down. He closed his eyes, jumped out into the air, and fell.

A hundred feet down, a tiny, brilliant spark of light erupted from a cliffside cave.

A Lumi swooped out into the open sky. It was a Starlit Sprite—a tiny, extremely rare flyer covered in bioluminescent scales that glowed like falling stars. The beast was curious and notoriously hard to catch, darting through the air in glittering loops. It zipped beneath the falling candidate, catching him by his collar straps, its bright scales illuminating the dark air as it carried him away toward the eastern ridges.

The third transfer jumped immediately after. He plunged fast, falling through the middle sky, past the clouds, past the middle ridges, plummeting terrifyingly close to the boiling sulfur lakes of the valley.

BOOM.

A massive, heavy shape detonated out of a lower stone wall. A colossal Gravelhide—a Stoneback flyer, low to the ground, heavily built, covered in thick, earth-toned scales that looked like living granite—launched itself sideways off the cliff. The giant beast caught the candidate on its massive, flat back like an anvil, its incredible physical strength absorbing the brutal impact as it landed heavily on a lower rock shelf, roaring territorially into the dark.

Six down. Three remaining on the ledge.

Mal stepped to the edge.

He didn’t look at the High Priestess. He didn’t look at the sky. He turned his head slightly, his eyes locking onto mine for a long heartbeat. There was no apology in his gaze for abandoning me in the gully, no lingering resentment for the punch to his jaw. There was only the quiet, lethal respect of two survivors who had endured the nightmare together.

“Don’t miss the sky, Princess,” Mal rasped softly.

He stepped off the obsidian lip into the empty air.

He fell cleanly, his body aligned like an arrow cutting through the wind. A second later, a second Vorlith erupted from the lower clouds, catching Mal with a thunderous snap of its wings, carrying him up into the high volcanic passes.

Mal was claimed.

I stood on the solitary stone precipice, my hands clenching into fists, my heart hammering a violent rhythm against my bruised ribs.

The fourth unnamed transfer, the candidate beside me, let out a terrified sob, ran to the edge, and threw himself into the void. He fell straight down. No dragon answered. His body smashed into a lower basalt shelf, echoing with a sickening crunch before tumbling into the sulfur lakes below.

The last candidate before me, a quiet transfer from the southern tiers, didn’t hesitate. He stepped off the lip, falling three hundred feet before a magnificent Azurion swooped out of the high clouds. The beast was a Sky Sentinel—identical in species to Aerynn’s legendary flyer—its cobalt-blue scales catching the pale moonlight as it caught the male, ascending gracefully into the higher atmosphere.

Now, only I remained.

The wind howled across the empty obsidian ledge, whipping my copper-red waves across my face.

The High Priestess sat motionless atop the pearlescent Celestryx, her silver veil fluttering in the wind, her gold eyes watching me from the edge of the world. The Lightbringer let out another soft, silver chime, its Moonlight scales casting a ghostly glow over my battered frame.

I took a slow, agonizing step toward the edge of the precipice.

My boots stopped just inches from the three-thousand-foot drop. The cold air rushing up from the valley below hit my face like an icy spray, threatening to push me backward.

I looked out over the vast, terrifying expanse of Isath Nalore. I looked at the smoking volcanic peaks, the black petrified forest, the silver rivers, and the blood-stained rocks far below.

My mind searched the horizon one last time. Caspian...

There was no sign of him. No massive shadow in the clouds. No gravelly voice in the wind. The agonizing absence cut a hollow, bleeding cavern inside my chest.

I will survive this, I promised the empty sky. I will survive this, and I will find you.

The brand on my right shoulder reacted to the precipice, burning with a sudden fever that vibrated straight into my heart. Deep beneath my skin, the latent, shadowy footprint of the Nyxalith answered. A silent, ancient presence lingering in my bones, waiting for the sky to claim its due.

I did not pause. I did not plead with the gods. I did not give fear a single second to paralyze my limbs.

I pulled a deep, final breath of the freezing volcanic air into my lungs, stepped out onto the empty air of the abyss—

—and jumped.