Page 212 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Below, Galaeryn halted and tipped his face toward the rings overhead, their reflections trembling across the faceted crystal at his feet.

Serenna clenched her Starshard harder as she hauled on everything left inside her Well. Heat seared her palm and rippled outward, catching Vesryn and Fenn in the current.

Their Starshards flared.

Power climbed through Serenna’s veins like the first star splitting darkness, a wound of light seared into the void. Her wings spread wide against the igniting sunfire, membranes shuddering with the effort of keeping it controlled.

Across the lake, Essence ruptured through twenty circles, every strike waiting on Serenna’s signal.

One fired too soon.

The bolt speared down and missed Galaeryn by half the platform, shattering against the crystal’s outer edge.

Glass exploded skyward, shards flashing through the dark. Water punched through the fracture, boiling under the impact as soldiers were thrown from the platform.

Galaeryn didn’t flinch.

“Wait!” Serenna shouted.

Too late.

Another circle fired.

Then another.

Panic tore through their ranks. Vesryn’s telepathy surged beside her, his command to hold reverberating through the bond while one ring after another discharged their power. Sunfire descended in erratic strikes, each one alone where twenty had been meant to land as one.

The king lifted a hand. A lance of sunfire split around his palm, its colors bending toward him until the light vanished against his skin.

Serenna’s chest seized.

Three more strikes were already falling. Light crashed over Galaeryn’s shoulders, burying him in the blaze.

More volleys plunged into the glare, widening fractures through the platform while Galaeryn remained lost inside their light.

For an instant, there was only sunfire where the king had stood.

Then the light collapsed inward.

Every attack still pounding the platform bent toward Galaeryn, unraveling in burning threads. Strand by strand, he gathered the wreckage of their strike, funneling the current into his chest.

The king’s mouth curved as he flicked his wrist toward the spiral galaxy burning across the sky, its crowded stars shining impossibly close.

Pressure ruptured outward, splitting the night without a sound. Above the Drowned Spires, a portal ripped open across the stars, blotting them out one by one. The expanse spread beyond the platform, dwarfing the glass towers until the sky disappeared into a lightless void.

The lake fell away as the rift seized her, the portal’s vastness exerting a gravity of its own. Serenna shot skyward as it pulled her, stomach lurching from the sudden ascent. Her wings swept wide against the drag, pain tearing through her shoulders as the portal hauled her higher.

Vesryn rose beside her in the same violent rush, wings flaring to hold himself back. Fenn pitched after them, Vasharax locked against his chest.

All around the Drowned Spires, their circles reeled toward the portal. Sunfire lashed between outstretched hands in broken arcs, each connection dying as wielders were dragged apart.

Serenna fought the rift to haul herself lower, searching the broken rings for any chance to salvage their forces into a unified strike.

Blue Essence erupted from the king’s palm, a bolt of force streaking toward her, Vesryn, and Fenn.

It crossed the distance before Serenna could twist clear, punching into her chest and spinning her backward as lake and stars wheeled into a senseless blur. Vesryn’s curse cut through the rush of air. Serenna’s wings swept wide, catching a current sideways as she wrenched herself upright.

Fenn’s terror tore through the bond.