Read Chapter 22: The Siege

The rockslide started as a whisper—a few stones skittering down the scree slope above the narrow switchback. Elara pressed her back against the cold granite, breath held, watching the riders below fan into formation. Their dragons moved in unsettling unison, wings half-furled, eyes glowing that sickly amber that marked Voss's corruption.

"Now," she breathed.

Sera raised her hand, fingers crackling with pale blue light, and slammed her palm against the cliff face. The mountain groaned. For a heartbeat, nothing happened, and Elara's stomach twisted—then the entire upper shelf of rock gave way with a sound like thunder splitting the sky.

Boulders tumbled down the mountainside in a cascade of dust and shattered stone. The riders below shouted, breaking formation as their corrupted mounts shrieked and scrambled to avoid the avalanche. One dragon took a boulder to the wing, crumpling sideways and throwing its rider into the ravine. The others scattered, peeling off in different directions to escape the killing field of falling rock.

"Now!" Elara shouted, grabbing Anya's arm and pulling her toward the narrow cleft in the mountain face—the secret entrance Sera had marked on her weathered map. The others followed, boots slipping on loose scree, dust choking their lungs as they ducked into the shadowed opening.

For a moment, the darkness swallowed them whole. Elara's heart hammered against her ribs, and she could hear Cedric's labored breathing behind her, could feel Ignis's warmth pressed against her leg where the small dragon had refused to leave her side. Ashfall's larger frame filled the tunnel behind them, his wings folded tight, his movements sluggish from exhaustion.

"We need to go deeper," Sera said, her voice echoing strangely off the stone. "The wards are further in. If we can reach the inner chamber—"

A roar cut her off. Not a dragon's roar—something deeper, more guttural, a sound that seemed to vibrate through the very mountain itself. The ground shook, and dust rained from the ceiling.

"What was that?" Anya whispered, her hand going to her knife.

Elara didn't answer. She was already moving, pushing deeper into the tunnel, heart pounding as the roar came again—closer this time, and accompanied by the sound of stone cracking, of something massive forcing its way through rock.

They emerged into a vast cavern just as the far wall exploded inward. Chunks of granite flew past them like shrapnel, and Elara threw up her arm to shield her face. Through the settling dust, she saw it.

The beast was the size of three dragons, its body a twisted mockery of dragonkind—scales black as pitch and riddled with glowing veins of amber corruption, wings torn and ragged but still functional, jaws lined with teeth too large for its mouth, dripping a viscous black ichor. Its eyes were not amber like the other corrupted dragons. They were white. Empty. Soulless.

And standing on its back, staff raised, robes billowing in a wind that shouldn't exist underground, was Voss.

"Did you really think," Voss called, her voice echoing with unnatural resonance, "that I would let you reach the summit's heart?"

Elara's hand went to the artifact at her belt—the stolen source of Voss's immortality spell, still pulsing faintly with stolen dragon essence. "You can't have it back."

Voss laughed, and the sound made the corrupted beast snarl. "I don't need it back, child. I need you to carry it to the exact place where I can drain its power into the mountain itself." She spread her arms, and the glowing veins in the beast's hide brightened. "You've done my work for me. The wards will break when I feed the source to the summit—and every dragon tied to this land will follow my command."

Sera stepped forward, her face pale but determined. "The summit's wards were sealed against corruption ages ago. You can't—"

"Can't what?" Voss gestured, and the beast lunged forward, jaws snapping. The outcasts scattered, diving behind stalagmites as the beast's claws gouged deep furrows in the cavern floor. "I've spent decades unraveling every ward, every barrier, every ancient protection your precious summit once possessed. Did you think your hidden refuge was the only secret I've uncovered?"

Elara scrambled behind a boulder, Ignis pressed tight against her chest. Cedric was on the other side of the cavern, his sword drawn, but his face was streaked with dust and exhaustion, and Ashfall was barely standing, wings drooping, sides heaving.

They couldn't fight this. Not here. Not now.

*Think. She's always one step ahead. But she let Cedric escape. She wanted us to come here.*

The realization hit Elara like a cold wave. Voss didn't just anticipate this move—she'd orchestrated it. The tracking device on Cedric's pin was one thing, but there had to be another way she'd known where they were heading. Something on the artifact itself, perhaps. Or—

Her gaze snapped to Anya.

The other girl had positioned herself near the cavern's far entrance, closest to the tunnel that would lead deeper into the mountain. Her knife was drawn, but she wasn't looking at the beast. She was looking at Voss, and there was something in her expression that made Elara's stomach drop.

No. She couldn't think about that now. If Anya was a traitor, revealing that fear would only make things worse. She needed a play, a distraction, something to get them out of this cavern and into the wards' protection.

"The artifact," she called out, rising from behind her boulder with the pulsing source held high. "You want it? Come take it."

Voss's eyes narrowed. "A brave bluff from a girl who knows she's outmatched."

"Not a bluff." Elara turned and hurled the artifact toward the cavern's deepest shadow, where a crack in the floor split wide and black. The sound of it clattering away echoed through the space, and Voss snarled, her composure cracking for the first time.

"You fool. If that falls into the fissure—"

But Elara was already moving, shouting to the others, "Now! Into the dark!"

They ran. Sera was fastest, leading the way with a flickering light from her palm as they plunged down a narrow passage that sloped steeply away from the cavern. Behind them, the beast roared, and Elara could hear Voss screaming orders—but the fissure was narrow, and the beast was too large.

For a moment, they'd bought themselves time.

Then the passage opened into a vast chamber dominated by an ancient stone altar, its surface carved with symbols that glowed faintly blue in the darkness. Sera gasped, stumbling toward it. "The wards. They're still active. We can—"

A wrenching shriek echoed from behind them, and the entire mountain shook. Elara turned to see the beast's jaws forcing its way into the passage, cracking the stone wider with every thrash.

"It's not going to stop," Cedric said, his voice grim as he helped Anya to her feet. "Voss won't let us reach the altar."

Elara looked at the altar, at the glowing symbols, and then at the artifact's distant clatter fading somewhere in the darkness below. She'd thrown away their only bargaining chip.

Hadn't she?

Sera caught her eye, and something passed between them—a glimmer of understanding.

"Unless," Sera said slowly, "the wards don't need to be activated. Unless they've been waiting for someone to walk into them."

The symbols on the altar flared brighter, pulsing in rhythm with the artifact's stolen magic.

Voss's voice echoed through the passage, cold and triumphant. "There is nowhere left to run, little rider. The summit has already marked you—and soon, it will mark you as mine."

But Elara saw what Voss didn't—the way the altar's glow seemed to reach toward her, recognizing something in her blood that she'd never understood.

She stepped forward, and the mountain sang.