Page 58 of The Reckoning of Starlight

The ground swelled. A thick root cleaved the marble in front of their charge. Stone buckled, catching their boots. Their bodies pitched forward as vines snapped around their ankles, pinning them to the earth.

Jassyn’s fingers twitched but he kept them at his sides, channeling his reach through soil and vine. Two blood-bright flowers unfurled, rearing like serpents. He latched on with thought, tilting their petals toward the guards the way blooms track the sun.

They snapped forward. Barbed darts fired from their centers, guided by the sharp hook of his control.

One pierced the hollow below a guard’s chin. The other buried itself in the second’s throat.

Both soldiers thrashed against the roots, boots drumming marble before the venom stilled their hearts.

Blossom didn’t give Jassyn time to reckon with what he’d done. She advanced, talons sinking into earth, and her certainty pressed through him, obscene in its simplicity.

Carrion, still warm.

The Heart had forbidden hunting, not scavenging.

Armor shrieked as vines burrowed under the plates and wrenched steel from flesh. Barbs scraped through straps and buckles before Blossom’s fangs punched through what remained.

Ribs crushed in her bite. Spines shattered like reeds beneath her talons. Blood sluiced over petals unfurling under her claws.

Jassyn breathed through his nose.

One or two soldiers at a time, he and Blossom could manage. But one scream echoing through a window—one servant portaling to Kyansari for reinforcements—would end them.

He severed the thought and strode on. No spirals. Only forward.

The sun slanted through the marble arches veined with captive Essence. Shadows pooled below them, a mouth leading into the estate’s throat.

Blossom couldn’t follow inside. Her neck would never pass through the estate’s doorways, let alone—

A growl rumbled behind him, vibrating through the soil.

The ground split open beneath an arch. Marble plates cracked apart and tipped inward, vanishing into the churned loam below. Roots erupted through the breach, coiled around the pillars, and dragged them down. Stone supports buckled and sank, swallowed by the earth.

Jassyn stumbled back as the entryway fractured.

“Wait!” His voice broke as he spun on the dragon. “You can’t bury everything. I won’t be able to find the Heart.”

Essence thundered through the estate’s walls—alarms flaring, panicked voices ricocheting through the halls, shouts ringing like struck bells.

So much for slipping through unnoticed.

Blossom prowled toward him, fangs still dripping blood. Her tail lashed, scattering roots and flinging soil in thick clumps. Each step drove another tremor through the ground. Jassyn flinched as a nearby pillar groaned and crumbled further.

Blossom lowered her massive head and shoved her skull against his chest.

Then she showed him.

Passage. Talons digging through a mountain’s gut. Stone folding. Soil yielding. The shape of this elven estate unmade into rot—galleries rearranged by moss, corridors split open, walls pulled from their foundations by roots. A corpse dragged through the dark. The taste of marrow where no sun had ever touched.

Jassyn’s breath snagged as his own hands entered the vision, ripping open paths. Hallways shifting. Entrances caving. Traps blooming like orchids.

A house built of stone could be unbuilt by earth. She’d carve through the manor until the Heart beat in his hands.

Jassyn staggered when Blossom released his mind, her satisfaction sending tremors through his ribs. The earth steadied, but the roots held, pressing against the estate’s foundation.

Waiting.

Breath shallow, he turned toward the shattered archway. The screaming had mattered when silence was still possible. Now it only measured how little time remained.