Chapter 112

Carnage.

It was what I asked for. It was what my pack gave me.

They tore into the orcs and the humans alike, shattering their charge, breaking them into pieces we could handle. Nim held the bridge - a wall against the rising tide. Clo moved through the chaos like a shadow with teeth. Moss devoured anything that got too close. Tansy carved a path in every direction at once. Thae made every strike count, every movement perfect.

The Others hit like a hammer - the wargs beneath them - both weapons of teeth and claws and speed. They followed my lead. They listened.

I was the alpha.

It wasn’t enough. The tide didn’t stop. It never stopped.

After Thae was thrown over the wall, I kept fighting the storm-woman - wind and lightning tearing at me - until Mirri slammed into her and drove her back. I barely had time to breathe before the world broke open.

The tear in the sky pulsed, howling and loud, a vibration that crawled through my bones and rattled my thoughts loose.

And they came.

Black things poured out of it - flowing, writhing, leaping over one another in a living flood. I threw myself at them, claws tearing, teeth snapping-

Nothing.

They carried me with them like I didn’t matter, their bodies flowing around mine as they surged over the wall.

I saw my pack below.

Moss had one in her jaws, tearing it apart like meat. The black tendrils writhed, trying to slip away, trying to escape her bite - but she just shoved them in her mouth. They feared her. I could see it in the way they pulled back, the way they avoided her reach.

Clo hunted. Blood ran down her side, her ear gone, her stomach torn open - but she moved like nothing had changed. She struck, clean and precise, cutting them open and tearing out something deeper - a core of dark sinew. They collapsed when she hit them right, melting into thick black sludge.

Tansy had four arms now - held four swords. She spun through the battlefield like a storm of steel, blades flashing in every direction. Limbs flew. Bodies dropped. Red and black sprayed across the ground in her wake.

Thae took to the air. Fire poured from her jaws as she swept over the battlefield, wings beating hard. She looked different - longer, leaner, more like her mother with every passing moment. Her strikes were deliberate, calculated. Every breath of flame placed exactly where it needed to be.

Nim didn’t move from the bridge. He didn’t need to.

He’d grown - broader, heavier, rooted. A dark mane of hair framed his neck, his body swelling with strength. The tide broke against him and stopped. Ink-stained bodies slammed into him and went no further.

The Others were faltering. The black corruption reached for them, trying to **** its way in. Soldiers and orcs alike began to turn - not on each other, but on the Myrddin. Fighting together now, ****, surrounded.

Then more came.

Soldiers in leather and red - riding on horses. Others blinking into existence in flashes of light.

Iilvarion. Morentis.

They crashed into the corruption - steel, fire, arrows, and magic - cutting into the black tide.

I hit the ground hard and rolled, my hand closing around a fallen sword.

A Myrddin lunged.

I met it with steel. The blade split it open, and this time I didn’t stop there. I reached inside, felt for the core and found it. Fibrous. Tense. Writhing.

I tore it free.

The thing collapsed instantly, melting into black tar at my feet.

Another came at me.

I bit it. Tore off part of it with my teeth and slammed the rest into the ground until it stopped moving.

The pack was around me. Everywhere. Separate - but never alone. Moving together without thinking, striking from different angles, covering each other without needing to speak.

We were one.

I was Velgra - the Pack Leader.

And this - this was what I was made for.

I threw my head back and howled.

* * *

They all felt it - something was wrong.

Iolite felt it first, deepest of all. The Earthpulse didn’t flow - it screamed. It twisted, warped into something jagged and corrupted, like stone grinding against itself until it shattered. The Mother of Deep Roots - Dromaia - was not well. Not gone. Not silent.

Raging.

That rage bled into everything. Stone cracked where it should have held. Veins buckled. Above stone formed where there should have been none. Home trembled on the edge of collapse.

And beneath it all - The Shaper.

Iolite didn’t know how she knew, but she did. The same way she felt the pulse of stone, the same way she knew the paths of the veins without seeing them.

He was in danger.

She gathered the others. They hesitated. They pulled back, their forms shrinking, trying to sink deeper into the safety of the stone. Fear rippled through them. Hide. Wait. Endure.

No. Not this time.

The veins were already failing. She could feel them fraying, collapsing, paths closing one by one. If they waited, there would be no path left.

So she didn’t wait. She pulled them together - those who would come - and drove them into the veins, forcing passage through the unstable stone, riding the broken pulse upward.

Toward him. Toward the above stone.

She didn’t like what she saw. The ancient destroyers had come.

Wet. Black. Moving in ways stone never should. They flowed over the above stoners, forcing their way inside, taking control. Corrupting them. Making them strike each other. Making them turn on the Shaper.

Her people rose to meet them.

Stone surged from the mountains, bodies forming - giants of granite and gneiss, towering and terrible. They struck with fists that could break cliffs, smashing into the destroyers, tearing them apart.

It wasn’t enough. The blackness clung. It seeped. It ate.

Stone hissed and cracked where it touched. Bodies collapsed, forms unraveling as the destroyers burrowed deeper. For every one they crushed, more of her people fell - sent back to the heart of the Mother of Deep Roots.

To wait. To be remade.

Iolite wasn’t sure that would happen anymore. The pulse was wrong. Dromaia was wrong. There might be no return.

She pushed forward anyway. She had to find him.

She found the Shaper near the walls he had raised, near the cave he called his workshop.

On his knees.

A destroyer had pierced him - its black, oozing tendril driven straight through his core.

He didn’t move.

His face was locked in a silent scream. Tendons stood out in his neck like they would snap. Veins bulged beneath his skin. The whites of his eyes had turned red, blood spilling down his face in slow, steady streams.

His Earthpulse poured out of him, spilling into the ground, uncontrolled.

Iolite rose higher, her form swelling into something massive, a giant among giants. She seized the destroyer and tore it free from him in one violent motion. It resisted, clinging, stretching - but she ripped it out and hurled it away, over the wall, toward the other above stoners.

She couldn’t kill it, but maybe they could.

The Shaper stayed where he was. Breathing. Barely.

He blinked, slow and unfocused, looking around like he didn’t understand where he was. Like the world had been taken from him and replaced with something unfamiliar.

Corruption on two legs approached the Shaper from behind, carrying a brand that burned red-hot, heat bleeding off it in waves. It moved with purpose, with hunger, raising the weapon to strike.

Iolite didn’t hesitate. Her fist came down like a falling cliff.

Stone met flesh and drove the thing back, sending it crashing across the ground. She stepped between it and the Shaper, her body forming a wall.

The thing rose. Its face stretched into a grin that didn’t belong on anything alive. Its eyes were empty. Hollow.

And it came at her.

* * *

I’d been gone too long.

The thought clawed at me, sharp and insistent. Panic rose with it, hot and ****, and I had to **** myself to slow - had to keep my wings steady, my pace measured.

I could step. They could not.

The battle with my father still burned in my mind.

Brutal didn’t begin to cover it. The caldera we’d met in hadn’t survived the first exchange. Stone cracked, then shattered, the mountain itself collapsing under the **** of us. We took to the air because there was nothing left beneath our feet - just fire, smoke, and falling rock.

The sky turned to smoke and flame.

The others scattered to the edges, keeping their distance from the destruction. They could have fled. None of them did.

They stayed. To watch. To see how it ended - whether I fell… or he did.

Not one of them believed in me. Not one of them thought the frightened, sheltered princess would stand against him, let alone win. He was the Lord of Dragons. He was Domination Through Strength, made flesh and fire.

But I didn’t have the luxury of fear. Not anymore. We needed help.

Four armies marched on our home. The Myrddin might already be there. My family - those fragile, short-lived, two-legged mortals that were so insignificant to dragons - were in danger.

And they were family. More than he had ever been. More than any dragon had ever been. They weren’t insignificant. I’d seen what they could do. They had slain dragons. Slain gods. Slain god-killers.

But this would break them.

So I went where I knew I had to.

To him.

He would never have come willingly. Seth had already humiliated him once. He would sooner watch the world burn than lift a claw to save anything tied to that man. And if he knew… if he knew I had taken Seth as a mate, that I had borne his child-

He would have called her weak. Twisted. Unworthy.

No. There was only one way - challenge. Strength against strength. Claw against claw.

I remembered him as impossible - vast, untouchable, a shadow that swallowed the sun.

When I faced him again… he wasn’t. He was still enormous. Still powerful.

But so was I. I matched him. Then I surpassed him.

Tooth and claw and fire - we tore into each other, ripping, crushing, shattering the sky itself. I drove him down piece by piece until his wings faltered, until his body failed him, until he could no longer stand.

And I did it before them all - every dragon watching.

He was bound by his Faith. He could not deny strength. Could not yield to weakness - but he could not refuse someone stronger.

So I took what was mine.

I rallied them and we flew.

Across the ocean. Across Iilvarion. Over the forests and hills I had come to call home.

Straight into war.

The battlefield spread out below - chaos and blood stretching nearly a mile from the keep. The Myrddin were already there, black corruption crawling through soldiers, turning them, driving them forward. Orc and human fought side by side now, not against each other, but against the things that had taken their kin.

Banners snapped in the wind. Arvellia. Morentis. Iilvarion. The Iron Nation.

Stone elementals rose and fell, smashing into the corrupted tide, buying space with every crumbling blow.

And my family-

Thae wheeled through the air on crimson wings, her fire small but bright, each breath burning corruption to ash. Nim stood on the bridge, broader than before, stronger, bleeding from a hundred wounds and not moving an inch. Moss tore into the Myrddin, her body larger, heavier, her jaws wide enough to swallow them whole as they fled from her. Clo was everywhere at once, a blur that left echoes behind her, carving through the black tide with impossible speed. Tansy spun through it all, blades flashing so fast it looked like she had more arms than she should. Vel moved between them, guiding, reinforcing, holding them together.

My chest tightened.

They were still standing.

I drew in a breath and called back to the dragons behind me, my voice carrying on wind and storm, two tones layered into one. “Burn the corruption! Leave the mortals!”

Then I folded my wings and dove.

Silver fire roared from my throat, pouring down into the battlefield, washing over the black tide and burning it clean.