Leeonir’s boots hit the cobbles in uneven rhythm. Left foot sent pain through his ribs like broken glass shifting. Right foot made his vision blur at the edges, darkening before it cleared again. The Sword of Ecos dragged in his right hand, tip scraping stone. His left hand was scaled, black, pulsing with heat that climbed past his elbow and crept toward his shoulder. It left smoking prints on the walls he used to steady himself.

  Fifty feet ahead, through smoke thick enough to choke on, shapes moved in the square. Steel rang against steel. Voices shouted orders. Beneath it all came the screams, distant, from streets he couldn’t see, from buildings still collapsing, from people still burning.

  Hajeel.

  The name sat in his chest like a blade. His friend. The elf who’d stood beside him since they were children climbing trees in Eldoria’s gardens, who’d never wavered, never doubted. Who’d died screaming while dragonfire turned him to ash.

  Leeonir’s leg buckled. He caught himself on a broken wall, palm flat against stone still hot from dragonfire. His scaled hand hissed against it. Two heats fighting, the stone’s and his own.

  Just get there. Just get to Thalion.

  He pushed off the wall and walked. His ribs ground together with each breath, bone scraping bone. The skin on his forearms hung in strips where the fire had touched him. Blood ran down his chest inside his armor, warm and thick. Each step sent fresh agony up his legs. His boots stuck to the cobbles with blood that pooled in the cracks between stones, still warm.

  Somewhere to his left, a timber gave way. The crash shook the ground beneath his feet. A woman’s scream followed, high and sharp, then cut off. He kept walking.

  The square opened before him. Bodies everywhere. Mosiah’s militia in their leather and iron, cut down mid-stride. Eldoria’s cavalry, some still in their saddles, horses dead beneath them. The modified beasts lay torn apart—ogres with runes glowing cold on their chests, cyclopes with single eyes staring at nothing, minotaurs split open from shoulder to groin. The stench hit him. Voided bowels. Burnt hair. Blood baking on hot stone.

  In the center stood fifteen warriors, covered in blood, weapons raised, breathing hard.

  Thalion stood over the corpse of a minotaur, energy blades still lit, blue light reflecting off the blood on his face. He was saying something to Treodor, giving orders, his voice hoarse but steady.

  Leeonir took another step. His boot scraped stone.

  Thalion’s head snapped toward the sound. His blades flared brighter. His eyes swept the smoke, found Leeonir, and went wide.

  For a long moment, neither of them moved.

  Thalion looked at him, starting at his face where blood and ash were caked so thick his features were barely recognizable. His eyes moved down to the chest, where the armor was dented inward from impacts Leeonir didn’t remember taking, to his arms where skin hung in blackened ribbons, to his left hand where scales climbed from his fingers up past his wrist, past his elbow, nearly to his shoulder. Black as volcanic glass. Pulsing with each heartbeat.

  Thalion’s jaw worked but no sound came out. He crossed the distance in four strides, boots splashing through blood. His hands reached out, then stopped, hovering in the air between them.

  “You’re alive.” Thalion’s voice cracked. “I thought when the dragon—”

  He didn’t finish. Just stared.

  Leeonir tried to speak. His throat was raw, shredded from smoke and screaming. When the words came out, they barely sounded like his voice. “Hajeel. I heard them shouting. Is he—”

  Thalion’s face went gray. That was answer enough.

  Leeonir’s knees gave out.

  Thalion caught him before he hit the ground, arms wrapping around his chest, lowering him slowly. Pain exploded through Leeonir’s broken ribs. He gasped, couldn’t get air. Other hands appeared. Faces Leeonir didn’t recognize, warriors kneeling beside him, voices overlapping. Someone pressed a waterskin to his lips. The water tasted like ash. He choked on it, coughed, and blood came up with it, dark, almost black.

  From somewhere to the north, a building collapsed with a long, grinding roar, then screams. A child calling for its mother. Then silence.

  The air changed. Something warm hit Leeonir’s cheek. He looked up through vision that wouldn’t quite focus. Drops were falling from the smoke overhead. Not rain. Too thick. Too hot. Black and steaming, hissing when they struck stone. Mixed with something else, green and viscous, bile or ichor from ruptured organs. The stench hit them. Sulfur and copper and rot.

  A shadow fell over the square. A roar tore through the air, not rage but agony, raw and primal. The sound vibrated in Leeonir’s broken ribs, made warriors clap hands over ears. Everyone looked up.

  The olive dragon was falling. Its wings beat once, a weak, spasming flap that did nothing to slow its descent. Blood rained from its chest where two massive harpoons jutted through scales and bone, each one as thick as a man’s leg, driven deep. Its jaws hung open and the roar became a wet, choking gurgle. More blood poured from its mouth, black and thick.

  “JaS,” Leeonir rasped. His eyes tracked the harpoons even through the haze of pain. JaS stone. Which meant the First Peoples.

  The dragon hit the square. The impact was a physical blow. The ground shook. Cobblestones cracked beneath the weight, splintering outward in a spiderweb pattern. A wave of displaced air and ash rolled outward, hot enough to sear lungs. Leeonir threw his arm over his face. The dragon’s body slid to a stop thirty feet away, wings twitching, claws scraping grooves in the stone. Its throat rattled once, stones grinding in a bag. Then it stopped moving.

  For three heartbeats, no one moved. No one breathed.

  Then the screams returned from beyond the square, from Mosiah, from the thousands still dying in the streets.

  Fifteen pairs of eyes stared at the corpse. Thalion’s hand went to his bracer, energy blades flickering. Around them, warriors raised weapons, eyes scanning the ruins, waiting for the next attack.

  Before anyone could speak, a voice cut through the smoke, distant, maybe a hundred feet away, deep and raw. “IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE?!”

  The warriors froze. Weapons came up. Eyes scanned.

  The voice came again, closer now. “YOU WON’T KILL THE GREATEST SOLDIER OF THE DESERT WITH SO LITTLE! COME, BEASTS! I’M READY!”

  The clash of steel. A wet crunch. A roar that cut off mid-breath.

  Thalion’s energy blades flared. “Treodor. Perimeter. Make sure nothing else is coming.”

  Treodor nodded, motioning to three other warriors. They moved to the edges of the square, weapons ready, eyes on the smoke. Their boots crunched over broken glass and bone.

  Thalion looked at the rest. “The wounded. Get them to cover. Anyone who can still hold a blade, stay ready. This isn’t over.”

  A woman sobbed somewhere in the rubble, close, maybe twenty feet. One of the warriors moved toward the sound.

  The sky darkened. Leeonir looked up. A shape descended through the smoke. Wings black as tar, spanning maybe twelve feet tip to tip. A raven. Its talons hit the cobbles twenty feet away, gouging deep grooves in the stone.

  Two figures dropped from its back.

  Joel wore the dark metal armor of Itachi, black feathers bound to his shoulders and forearms. His bow was already in his hand, arrow nocked, eyes scanning the ruins. They found Leeonir and stopped. His jaw tightened.

  Saahag’s armor was the same blue leather she’d worn through the South, scuffed and scorched. Her braid had come loose, white strands falling across her face. Her eyes found his and went wide.

  She stopped.

  For a heartbeat she just stared, taking in the burns, the blood, the scales climbing his arm. Her mouth opened. No sound came out. Then her face twisted with rage so pure it turned her hands into fists.

  Then she was running. Not walking. Running. Boots splashing through blood she didn’t see. She hit her knees hard beside him, the impact jarring, and her hands reached for his face, trembling.

  “Leeonir.” His name broke coming out of her mouth.

  He tried to answer, tried to tell her he was fine, but his mouth wouldn’t form the words. The world was tilting again, spinning, and the pain that had been a constant roar was suddenly all he could hear.

  Her hands touched his face. Cool. Real. The hands that had pulled him from rubble in the South, that had stitched wounds by firelight, that had held his when the nightmares came.

  “I’m here,” she said. Her voice was steady but her hands trembled with fury, not fear. “I’m here. You’re safe now.”

  He wanted to believe that, wanted to close his eyes and let her voice pull him away from this place.

  The pain surged, a wave so overwhelming it whited out his vision. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. Sorry he wasn’t strong enough. Sorry he couldn’t save them. Sorry—

  The world went black.

  ?

  Three minutes earlier.

  Luucner crouched on the rooftop, bow in hand, and watched Naramel work. Fifty feet below, in what had once been a marketplace, Naramel stood in a circle of corpses. Six ogres. Three cyclopes. Two minotaurs. All dead. All torn apart.

  An ogre charged from the east, roaring, swinging a spiked club the size of a tree trunk. Naramel didn’t dodge. He stepped into the swing, caught the haft with his left hand mid-arc, and stopped it cold. The ogre’s eyes went wide. Naramel punched it in the throat with his free hand. The sound was wet. The ogre’s windpipe collapsed. It dropped the club, hands going to its neck, fingers scrabbling. Choking. Naramel’s blade came across its belly in a single horizontal slash. Intestines spilled, hot and steaming. The ogre fell.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Naramel spat on the corpse. “Weak.”

  His sword caught the firelight. The blade was thick, heavy, nearly four feet of white translucent stone shot through with crimson veins like frozen blood. JaS fused with Sunstone. The edge shimmered faintly, light bending around it. When it moved, it sang, a low hum that vibrated in Luucner’s teeth.

  A cyclops came from the south, moving fast. It raised a hammer over its head, brought it down. Naramel tried to sidestep.

  Too slow.

  The hammer caught his shoulder, a glancing blow but enough. Naramel’s armor cracked, the Sunstone splintering. He staggered, dropping to one knee. Pain shot down his arm.

  The cyclops raised the hammer again.

  Naramel surged up, blade coming horizontal, and took the cyclops’s head off before the hammer could fall. The head hit the ground and rolled. The body stood for a heartbeat, neck fountaining blood, then collapsed.

  Naramel stood, chest heaving, left arm hanging wrong. Blood ran from beneath his pauldron, darkening the white stone. He pressed his hand against it, fingers coming away slick and red.

  “COME ON!” His voice echoed off the ruins. “MORE!”

  Two minotaurs charged together, horns lowered, coordinating. Naramel planted his feet and let them come. At the last second, he moved forward, ducking under the first minotaur’s horns.

  The second minotaur adjusted mid-charge. Its horn caught Naramel’s side, punching through armor, through skin, scraping ribs. Naramel roared, not a battle cry but pain. He grabbed the horn with one hand, stopping the beast’s momentum, and drove his blade down through its skull with the other.

  The minotaur collapsed. Naramel ripped his side free from the horn, blood pouring from the wound. He pressed his hand against it but the blood came through his fingers, hot and dark.

  The first minotaur was already recovering, turning to charge again. Behind it, an ogre raised a crossbow, aiming at Naramel’s back.

  Luucner’s arrow took the ogre in the wrist. The crossbow fell, bolt firing wild into the smoke. The ogre roared, clutching its hand.

  Naramel finished it with a horizontal slash, then spun and drove his blade into the charging minotaur’s chest. The beast fell.

  Naramel stood in the center of the carnage, surrounded by bodies. His chest heaved, each breath a ragged gasp. Blood ran from his shoulder, from his side, pooling at his feet. His left arm hung useless, the Sunstone pauldron cracked and darkened with blood. His blade dripped, tip resting on the ground because he didn’t have the strength to hold it up anymore.

  He looked up at Luucner. Blood dripped from his chin. “How many left?”

  Luucner scanned the ruins. “These were the last here. But I hear fighting in the central square.”

  “Thalion.” Naramel wiped his blade on a fallen ogre’s hide and started walking, slower now, each step careful. “Good. Let’s see if he left any for me.”

  Luucner dropped from the rooftop, landed in a crouch, and fell into step beside him. His boots squelched through pooled blood. “That’s three I owe you.”

  “Keep count if it helps you sleep.” Naramel’s voice was rough. “I lost track after Itachi.”

  They walked in silence for a moment. Then Luucner spoke, his voice flat. “I told you the three hundred could stay in Eldoria. This isn’t a war. It’s a distraction.”

  Naramel stopped walking and turned to look at him. “Explain.”

  “Two dragons. Dozens of these modified beasts, maybe more. It’s enough to burn Mosiah to the ground.” Luucner gestured at the ruins around them. “But if the goal was to destroy Eldoria? This is nothing. They want our eyes here, on this city, while they do something else.”

  Naramel’s jaw tightened. “Then the real attack hasn’t started.”

  “No. Which is why Kooel needs to find Leelinor fast. The longer we’re here, the less time we have for what’s coming.”

  Naramel started walking again, faster now despite the blood. “Kooel’s the best flyer we have. Hercules is faster than anything in Eldoria. If anyone can find Leelinor in that mess,” he pointed at the sky where blue fire and smoke twisted together in a toxic spiral, “it’s him.”

  “And Gurgel?”

  Naramel’s lips pulled back. “Gurgel doesn’t miss.”

  From somewhere to the north, a child’s voice cut through the air, high and terrified, calling for its mother. Then silence.

  They walked toward the central square. Around them, buildings burned. The heat was oppressive, pressing down like a physical weight. Luucner’s face was slick with sweat. His lungs ached with each breath. Naramel’s hand never left his sword, even as blood dripped from his fingertips.

  ?

  Saahag’s hands moved fast, checking burns, checking ribs, checking the pulse at his throat. Weak, thready, but there. Her face was tight, lips pressed into a thin line. She pulled bandages from her pack, pressed one against the worst of the burns on his forearm. The cloth came away black.

  She forced her hands to keep moving but her jaw was clenched tight enough to crack teeth. Eighteen years old. The boy she’d watched grow into a warrior through fifteen villages of blood and fire. The boy who’d held her when she woke screaming from nightmares of Claamvor. The boy she loved.

  They did this to him. They burned him and called it war.

  She wanted to scream, to put down her tools and find whoever had orchestrated this and make them feel every second of what Leeonir was feeling, make them burn the way he burned.

  But she didn’t. She worked. Because that’s all she could do.

  Thalion stood over them, fists clenched. “Will he live?”

  Saahag didn’t look up. “His ribs are broken. Burns across half his body. Muscles torn.” She tied off a bandage, moved to his chest, started wrapping. Her hands were efficient, practiced, but they shook. “He should be dead.”

  “But?”

  “But he’s breathing. That’s something.”

  Joel stood ten feet away, bow in hand, arrow nocked. His eyes never stopped moving, scanning rooftops, alleys, smoke, but they kept drifting back to Leeonir. “How long until he can move?”

  “He’s not moving. Not for days. Maybe weeks.”

  “We need to get him to Eldoria.”

  “Then help me prepare him so we can carry him without killing him.” She didn’t look up, didn’t stop working. “There’s no way we can move him without stabilizing his injuries first. I don’t understand how he was still standing.”

  Joel’s jaw clenched but he didn’t argue. Just kept his eyes on the smoke, bow ready.

  Ten feet away, Luucner stood with his bow hanging loose in his grip. He stared at his little brother. The boy who used to follow him through the gardens of Eldoria, asking a thousand questions, never afraid of anything. Now that boy was covered in blood and scales and burns, chest barely rising with each breath.

  Eighteen years old. They’d grown up in war. Bled in it. Got shaped by it. But Leeonir had never broken, never run. He’d pushed himself until there was nothing left.

  Luucner’s hands trembled. The bow slipped. He caught it and forced himself to look away because if he kept staring he’d break. And Leeonir needed him whole.

  Footsteps, heavy and deliberate, approached through the smoke.

  Thalion turned, energy blades flaring.

  A figure emerged from the smoke. Tall, broad, moving carefully despite the confidence in his stride. His armor gleamed pale in the firelight, translucent white Sunstone covering chest, shoulders, forearms. The breastplate was cracked on the left side, darkened with blood. The pauldron hung wrong, shattered. His helmet was shaped like a sun, twelve rays extending outward, sharp as blades. His skin was deep red, his eyes the color of honey. In his right hand, he carried a sword of white translucent stone shot through with crimson veins. Blood dripped from the tip. More blood ran down his side, soaking into his belt.

  The man stopped twenty feet away. Looked at the warriors, at the bodies, at the dragon corpse with two harpoons jutting from its chest. His gaze lingered on Leeonir, unconscious, Saahag kneeling over him. Then he smiled, white teeth against red skin, though his breathing was labored. “Looks like I missed the fun.”

  Thalion kept his blades up. “Who are you?”

  “Naramel. Councilor of the First Peoples.” He gestured behind him with his sword. A second figure appeared. Luucner, bow in hand. “We saw the smoke from ten miles out. Thought Eldoria could use help.”

  Thalion lowered his blades slightly. “You’re late.”

  “Better late than dead.” Naramel’s eyes moved back to Leeonir. The smile faded. “That Leelinor’s son?”

  “Yes.”

  Naramel’s expression shifted to something harder. Respect. “He fought well.”

  “He fought alone.”

  “And lived. That’s more than most.” Naramel looked at Thalion. “How many civilians did you pull out?”

  Thalion’s face darkened. “Maybe thirty. There were tens of thousands here this morning.”

  A muscle in Naramel’s jaw twitched. He looked at the ruins, at the bodies piled in the streets, at the smoke rising in black columns. “Then we’re not done.” He raised his sword despite the blood running down his arm. “There are still people alive in this city. We find them. We get them out. And if more of these things come, we kill them.”

  Thalion’s blades flared brighter. “Agreed.”

  Around them, the fifteen warriors tightened their grips on weapons. No one relaxed. No one sat. They stood in a circle around Leeonir and the few civilians they’d saved, eyes scanning the smoke, waiting. Because in war, there was always another wave.

  Luucner stepped forward and walked slowly, eyes fixed on Leeonir. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “How bad?”

  “Bad,” Thalion said.

  Luucner knelt beside his brother. Looked at the burns, the broken ribs, the scales climbing Leeonir’s arm, black and pulsing, almost to his shoulder but not quite there yet.

  “He’s eighteen,” Luucner said quietly. “Eighteen years old. He never had time to figure out who he was. We grew up in war. Bled in it. Got shaped by it.” He put a hand on Leeonir’s shoulder, careful not to touch the burns. “But he didn’t break. He didn’t run. He pushed himself until there was nothing left.”

  Saahag looked up at him. Her eyes were wet. “He saved people today. More than we’ll ever know.”

  “I know.” Luucner’s hand tightened on Leeonir’s shoulder. “I just wish he didn’t have to.”

  Naramel stepped forward and looked down at Leeonir, then at the sky. “Kooel’s up there. He’ll find Leelinor. Gurgel will bring that dragon down. But until then, we keep moving. There are still people alive. We find them. We save who we can.”

  A scream cut through the square, distant, somewhere to the west, a woman’s voice raw with terror. Then it cut off.

  Warriors shifted. Hands tightened on weapons. No one moved to help. There were too many screaming, too many dying. All they could do was stand in this one small circle and protect the few they’d saved.

  Naramel’s grip tightened on his sword, blood still dripping from his fingers.

  Far above, through smoke and ash and fire, Kooel flew.

  ?

  Above it all.

  Kooel leaned forward on Hercules, body pressed flat against the pegasus’s neck. Smoke clawed at his eyes. His lungs burned with each breath, throat raw from the toxic air. He coughed, couldn’t stop, each spasm making his grip on Hercules slip. The mira in his left hand pulsed faintly, runes glowing pale blue against his palm. Sweat ran into his eyes, mixing with tears from the smoke, blurring his vision.

  He blinked hard, trying to clear it. Wiped his face with the back of his hand, smearing ash. His fingers were cramping, going numb from holding the mira too long. The device was slippery with sweat.

  He raised it and looked through. The smoke thinned. The world sharpened. Heat distortion flattened into clarity.

  Five hundred feet above, a quarter mile east, was Arcanjo. White wings beating hard, frantic. On his back, barely visible through the haze, was a figure in scorched armor. Leelinor.

  Above him circled the yellow dragon, patient, wings spread wide, blotting out the sun.

  Kooel pressed the first rune. The mira pulsed once, twice. The signal went out.

  Far below, on the eastern ridge overlooking Mosiah, Gurgel felt it, a tingle in his palm, sharp and insistent. He turned to the scorpio and adjusted the angle. One degree. Two. His hands moved with the precision of decades, checking tension, checking wind. He waited.

  Kooel urged Hercules higher. The pegasus’s wings beat harder, climbing through the smoke. Kooel’s lungs screamed for clean air. His vision swam. The mira’s crosshairs blurred. He blinked again, wiped his eyes, forced himself to focus.

  The dragon hadn’t seen them yet, too focused on Leelinor, too certain of its kill.

  The dragon’s wings tilted. It dove.

  Leelinor saw it coming. Arcanjo banked hard left, wings folding, dropping thirty feet in a heartbeat. The dragon followed, jaws opening. Blue light gathered in its throat, pulsing brighter with each second.

  Arcanjo rolled right. The fire missed by inches, scorching feathers. The smell of burnt hair filled the air.

  Kooel moved Hercules into position, above the dragon, behind it. His arms ached from holding position. His hands trembled. The beast leveled out, searching for Leelinor below, wings beating slow and deliberate.

  Kooel raised the mira again and centered the dragon in the crosshairs. The device hummed, calculating wind speed, distance, trajectory, accounting for the dragon’s movement, for the thermals rising from the burning city below.

  A point of light appeared in his vision, exactly where the harpoon needed to strike.

  The dragon dove again. Arcanjo twisted, wings snapping open to catch air. Leelinor was good, fast. He’d flown Arcanjo for decades. But the dragon was faster.

  The point of light in Kooel’s vision moved, tracked the dragon. The beast’s wings spread wide, preparing another dive, muscles bunching beneath scales.

  Kooel’s hand trembled. Not from cold. From weight. Below, Mosiah screamed. He could hear it even up here. Thousands dying while he aimed. If he missed, if the calculations were wrong, if the wind shifted, if the dragon moved at the last second, Leelinor would die. The city would fall. And whatever came next would sweep over Eldoria like a flood.

  His heart hammered in his chest. Sweat made the mira slippery. He adjusted his grip, fingers cramping.

  The point locked. His hand steadied. He pressed the final rune.

  The signal flared bright enough to cut through smoke, through fire, through hell itself.

  Gurgel saw it. Adjusted. Fired.

  The harpoon flew.