*Immediately after the destruction of Crysillia*
Aetherios tried to land. Failed. Crashed.
The ancient dragon, who had bent gravity itself to crush three towers at once, couldn't control his own descent. He hit the floating island with the grace of a thrown mountain, gouging a canyon in stone that had stood untouched for ten thousand years.
Black blood leaked from everywhere—his nostrils, his tear ducts, the joints where his wings met his body. His scales, brilliant white moments before, had dulled to the grey of old ash. When he tried to lift his head, it took three attempts.
*The Chorus,* he thought, and even that simple thought felt like swallowing glass.
The other dragons felt it immediately. Pyrrhus, the youngest, vomited molten stone mid-flight and had to land on the nearest outcrop. Umbra's shadow-form flickered, losing cohesion. Even mighty Thanatux, who claimed nothing could touch him, stumbled in his mountain lair five hundred miles away.
The Chorus had a hole in it. Not like when Vash'nil was taken—that was a wound. This was different. Aetherios had overextended, pushed too much power through himself too quickly. For the next three days, maybe more, his voice in the Chorus would be a whisper. His strength, which anchored the eastern harmonies, was gone.
They were all weaker for it.
*WHY?* The thought came from all eighteen others at once, a psychic scream that made Aetherios's vision go white.
He couldn't answer with words. Instead, he shared the memory—thirty elven children trapped in a collapsing tower. He'd reversed gravity for the entire structure, holding it aloft for seventeen seconds. Long enough for them to escape. The youngest couldn't have been more than ten summers.
One of them had looked exactly like Vash'nil at that age.
*FOOL,* thundered Karthaxis the Iron-Winged. *You risk us all for ghosts.*
*They were children,* Aetherios managed.
*They were ELVES. The enemy.*
*No.* The thought came from Silenus, heavy with fresh understanding. *We were the weapon. They were victims. Like us.*
The Chorus recoiled from that truth. But with Aetherios weakened, they couldn't maintain their shared rage. One by one, they felt what he felt—the weight of those thirty young lives against the thousands they'd destroyed. The arithmetic of guilt.
Pyrrhus was the first to approach the fallen ancient, landing with uncommon gentleness. The young dragon, barely two millennia old, pressed his head against Aetherios's neck.
*You saved them,* he whispered, not through the Chorus but directly, mind to mind.
*Thirty. Out of thousands.*
*Thirty more than the rest of us.*
Aetherios tried to laugh. It came out as a wheeze that scattered black droplets across white stone. *And now I'm useless. If the real enemy comes—*
*Then we fight without you for three days. We've fought without Vash'nil for longer.*
*That's different. He's gone. I'm here but broken. The Chorus will feel my weakness like a rotting tooth. Every decision, every action, will be tainted by my exhaustion.*
It was true. Already, the other dragons were listing slightly, compensating for the imbalance in their shared consciousness. When dragons fought as one, they were gods. When one fell, they all stumbled.
*Look,* Pyrrhus said.
Below them, in the ruins of Crysillia, something moved. Not debris. Not survivors. A small figure picking through the rubble with purposeful intent. Even from this height, Aetherios could sense something wrong about it. Something corrupted.
*The elf-thing,* Pyrrhus said. *The one who survived the crystal chamber. She's... different.*
Aetherios forced his ancient eyes to focus. The figure below radiated wrongness—not evil, exactly, but violation. She'd absorbed something from the city's death. The same power that had been turned against them, now living in elven flesh.
*Should we kill her?* Pyrrhus asked.
*No.* Aetherios let his head fall back to the stone. Every heartbeat was agony. *She's like us now. Broken by someone else's design. Let her choose what to do with that breaking.*
*And if she chooses revenge?*
*Then she'll come for us. And in three days, when I can fight again, we'll face her.* He closed his eyes. *But I think... I think she'll choose something else. Something we can't.*
*What?*
*To become the weapon willingly. To turn their trap into her purpose.*
Black blood pooled beneath the ancient dragon, seeping into stone that had never known corruption. The price of playing god, even for seventeen seconds, was written in that stain.
In the Chorus, his absence echoed like a missing tooth, making every shared thought ache. The dragons withdrew to their islands, each nursing the phantom pain of Aetherios's exhaustion.
Three days. They'd be vulnerable for three days.
If Ora had known, if she'd understood how much that single act of mercy had cost them, she might have climbed the floating islands and ended them all while they were weak.
But she didn't know. She was too busy becoming something else.
Something necessary.
Something wrong.
Just like them.
---
*End Chapter 2.5*
---