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As the sleek Umbrax swept beneath his position, Caspian launched his massive frame off the cliff edge, landing heavily onto the back of the wild Shadow Striker mid-flight.

The impact made the black dragon rock violently in the air, its head snapping back with a furious hiss—but Caspian didn’t flinch. His calloused fingers drove between the onyx scales at the base of its neck, his broad, muscled thighs locking around the beast’s torso with a vice-like grip that forced the wild predator into immediate submission.

Caspian hauled his head up, wiping a smear of volcanic soot from his sharp cheekbone.

His gaze cut straight across the hundred-foot gap of open sky between our flying mounts, locking directly onto mine.

Relief—hot, fierce, and utter—surged through my veins so fast it made my vision blur. He was alive. He had dug his way out of the ground, fought through the dark, and mounted a Shadow Striker just to reach the summit.

As our eyes locked across the sky, a profound shift rattled the very roots of the mountain.

The island did not merely tremble; it buckled.

The brand on my shoulder didn’t just hum—it exploded into a blinding, white-hot fever that shattered the internal seals. The stress of the fall, the roar of the Nyxalith, and the visceral sight of Caspian alive beside me acted as the ultimate catalyst.

I was not just chosen by a beast. I was recognized by the ancient realm itself.

“Haaah—!”

A sharp gasp tore from my lips as my Remnikai broke completely free.

Darkness erupted from my body.

It was not smoke. It was a sweeping flood of living shadow—an eclipse of pitch-black void laced with glittering specks of celestial starlight that burst outward from my core in a silent shockwave.

The darkness expanded at a terrifying velocity, swallowing the sky, swallowing the clouds, and cloaking the entire five-mile expanse of the dragon formation in an impenetrable abyss. Sunlight vanished. The red glow of the volcano was erased. For a mile-wide radius around the Nyxalith, the world was rendered in pure midnight.

The other candidates flying below us looked up in paralyzed terror as the sky above them turned into a living void.

Yet inside the shadow, I felt no fear. I felt a surge of exhilarating clarity. The Nyxalith let out a low, purring rumble that echoed the pulse in my veins. Beside us, Caspian rode his Umbrax through the living night, his face illuminated by the celestial specks floating in the shadow, his eyes locked on me with an intense pride that burned hotter than dragon fire.

We were the storm. We were the night. And the kingdom was about to watch us descend.

The descent from the high volcanic peaks to the black sand beaches of Isath Nalore was a display of absolute airborne dominance.

The Nyxalith led the formation, flying at the point of a sweeping V-shape, surrounded by the dozens of wild flyers that had answered its call. The massive cloak of darkness remained anchored to my body, trailing behind us like a star-draped banner of pure void that blotted out the moons as we dropped through the mountain fog.

Down on the shoreline, the world was waiting.

The two massive command ships were moored in the shallow bay, their iron hulls glowing with amber wards. Assembled along the timber docks and the wet, black sand was the High Mages in their crimson robes, the commanders of the Vanguard tiers, and the high-born lords of the sovereign houses who had gathered to witness the conclusion of the trial.

They had been expecting broken survivors. They had been expecting a handful of exhausted candidates clinging to low-tier flyers, begging for medical aid.

They were not prepared for the sky to fall.

A collective gasp echoed across the beach as the temperature plummeted to an atmospheric freeze. The High Mages scrambled backward, their hands flying to their amulets as the vast celestial shadow swept over the harbor, swallowing the moonlight, plunging the ocean shore into pitch-black night.

Then, out of the living void, the Nyxalith descended.

The colossal titan struck the black sand with a thunderous impact that sent waves of volcanic grit flying fifty feet into the air. Its massive talons dug deep into the wet shore, its vast leather wings snapping open to full span. A two-hundred-foot wall of shimmering obsidian.

The moment the beast’s feet locked into the ground, the massive cloak of living darkness trailing behind us reacted.

It did not dissipate into the wind. The shadows surged forward, rushing back toward my body in a swirling hurricane of cold air. The pitch-black void collapsed into my skin, snapping cleanly back beneath my flesh, re-absorbing into the dark, writhing ink of my tattoos until every line rested flat and silent against my skin.

The sky above cleared instantly, returning the pale, cold light of Nymeria’s moons to the beach.

Silence—absolute and dead—dropped over the assembled court.