Page 153 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Every wingbeat tightened Serenna’s ribs as the crown island claimed more of the sky. If Veyrix was anywhere, he’d be at its summit. And if the king’s razorwings had discovered this last sanctuary, they’d be hunting the same heights.

Below, a dracovae screamed as a crosscurrent buckled its wings. Zaeryn’s flare of Essence scored a command through the air, and the rangers peeled from the formation to circle below, where the wind loosened its grip on feathered wings.

This was the first divide they’d planned. The children of earth and starlight would open the next reach, then Serenna, Vesryn, and Fenn would take the final ascent alone.

Ahead, the wind folded back on itself, currents colliding until every route upward sealed as quickly as it opened. Serenna pointed toward the knot. “We’ll need the shamans from here.”

Kaedryn drew alongside her, wings strumming a steady rhythm. “My scalebound will hold with Zaeryn while the children of earth and starlight open the sky. We’ll watch the horizon.”

Vesryn’s fingers strayed again to the pouch at his hip, where the leather stretched over the Heart of Stars’ angular facets. Jassyn had entrusted it to them before they took flight, the relic carrying all their hope that Veyrix would be found and freed before the day was done.

“Keep the sky open for retreat,” Serenna said as she hovered. The cold gnawed through the membranes of her wings, finding blood that ran too close to the surface. “If something goes wrong…”

“Define wrong,” Fenn said. “Because my threshold’s considerably higher than yours, she-elf.”

Vesryn rolled his eyes. “Your threshold is a brush with death.”

“If something goes wrong,” Serenna repeated, ignoring them both, “and Veyrix reacts like Skylash did when we freed her in the Maw, get everyone out.”

Kaedryn dipped her chin. “Fly true.”

Serenna returned the nod.

Below, the children of earth and starlight spread across the sky. Power shuddered from their hands into the air, buckling the wind. Currents wrenched apart, opening a single corridor along the island’s spine.

Fenn cracked his knuckles as they angled toward it. “Let’s go free a dragon.”

“Let’s find the dragon first,” Vesryn said, his wing claws clacking. “But I know you prefer courting death with a sense of occasion.”

The bonds brightened on either side of Serenna, their anticipation rippling. She led them into the open path, the three of them ascending the crown island alone.

For a few hundred feet, the funnel held.

Then the ancient winds tightened.

Serenna cast her senses outward. Currents, pressure, and absence etched themselves across her awareness. Veyrix’s druids had twisted the upper reaches into one final defense, its paths splintering into switchbacks before curling toward the island’s roots.

A channel collapsed beneath her. Serenna banked hard, caught the next draft on a snapped downstroke, and cut through a gap already sealing ahead. Fenn’s wing overlapped hers as the gust struck, splitting its force before he slipped back into place. Vesryn held half a wingspan ahead on her other side, taking the brunt whenever the wind veered. When Fenn yielded a span of sky, Vesryn filled it, and the old friction between them became formation.

Below, the children of earth and starlight vanished into the haze of distance. Gusts tore loose through the forced corridor, unmaking the routes around them. Serenna tucked her wings close and sheared the gale aside, holding open pockets of calm barely large enough to slip through.

With every wingbeat, the thinning air scoured Serenna’s throat, leaving each inhale stranded high in her chest. The Aetherveil’s chain fell away like scattered rubble, its largest islands reduced to pebbles before they disappeared completely. The southern horizon darkened at the edges, swollen with a storm.

A shadow passed over them.

Serenna’s scales cinched tighter. Above, a wind glider hovered in the open air, the pearly sheen of its body catching the dawn. Where a Starshard had once glinted in its skull, flesh had sealed over an empty scar.

More gliders moved through the upper reaches, the ten they’d released scattered in loose clusters. Broad wings swept in measured strokes, their bodies rising and settling with eerie grace, each turn tracing no discernible pattern.

Fenn’s wing claws curled as he tracked the nearest. “They don’t know they’re free.”

The gems had sustained them for countless centuries—perhaps the only reason the creatures still moved through the sky.

Serenna’s fingers lifted toward her own Starshard. They’d given the gliders freedom and no promise that they would live to keep it.

The creatures banked through a languid arc around them. Serenna braced, every membrane in her wings waiting for the wrench of stolen sky. But the gliders drifted aside in succession, opening a path between them before settling back into their wandering course.

Serenna continued upward, the currents drawing tighter and faster with the climb. The sky twisted into a vortex, shrieking along its rim. Her wings hammered against the spinning wall, membranes pulled taut enough to burn, each turn rattling her skull.