The light went off like a bomb.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing but white—no dead, no mountain, no sky. Just raw brilliance swallowing everything.
I roared and threw my wings up, lightning flaring instinctively over my scales in a red-black shell. The blast hit, rattling bone and stone alike. Air howled past, full of dust and ash and the metallic tang of her magic.
Then it was gone.
The wind dropped in a single, brutal lurch. Sound rushed back in—moans of the dead, the growl of distant thunder, the low rumble of the mountain's fury.
I lowered my wings.
The battlefield below was… empty.
Not completely. The dead still carpeted the terraces and bridges, some still dragging themselves upright, others twitching with leftover charge. But the girl who disappeared in white light, the orange dragon at her flank, and the human clinging to her scales—just gone.
Vanished.
As if the world had simply decided they no longer belonged here.
A slow, hot thread of irritation slid under my skin.
She got away.
I folded my wings tighter against my sides, letting the dragon shape melt back. Black scales pulled inward, bones shortening, claws folding into fingers. Lightning peeled away from hide to cling instead to skin, humming along my arms and knuckles as I dropped onto the torn stone.
The terrace was wrecked. Chunks of bridge had been blown free, edges fused and glassy from the heat of that last blast. The air still tasted of her—smoke and rain and something familiar that I couldn't quite name.
Annoying.
I exhaled slowly, letting the leftover lightning bleed into the ground in small, hissing streams.
Around me, the dead gathered themselves.
They rose in jerks and shudders, broken limbs knitting wrong, skulls twisting on snapped necks until their hollow eyes faced me. Beasts with shadows trapped under their skin dragged themselves into some semblance of order. Even those that had been blasted apart were already stitching back together, black smoke binding bone to bone.
They turned toward me as one.
Waiting.
Behind them, at the far curve of the terrace, my father stood like a carved piece of night. Armor black as obsidian, eyes a molten red. The darkness clung thicker around him, drawn tight again now that the violet light was gone.
He watched me.
He wasn't the only one.
A colder presence coiled through the air like smoke slipping under a door. I didn't see it. I didn't have to. It was already inside my chest, inside my veins, curling lazy fingers through the storm that lived there.
"She flees," Mortimer murmured, his voice sliding through my skull like oil. "She runs from you, my dark child."
My jaw tightened. "Not for long."
He hummed, low and approving.
"Ambition. I like that."
I narrowed my eyes at the empty space where the blast had been brightest. The stone there still glowed faintly, lines of cracked rock pulsing with leftover violet.
She'd left a mark.
Some part of me responded to that, tightening in my chest.
Not anger. Not fear. Not even proper rage.
Something smaller. Stranger.
Interest.
It sat wrong in my bones—as if an old ache had flared without warning. As if I should know why that patch of broken stone mattered more than any other.
I scowled and shoved the feeling down.
Pointless. She was gone. The battle was ours.
Behind my teeth, Mortimer laughed softly.
"You feel it, don't you?" he whispered. "The echo. The absence."
"I feel an unfinished job," I said aloud.
There was movement at the edge of my vision.
My father stepped forward, the dead parting for him without a word. They bowed their heads as he passed. Not deeply. Just enough to acknowledge where their leash really was tied.
He stopped a few paces away, studying me.
"You let her escape," he said calmly.
Lightning crackled just under my skin, eager to argue.
"I broke the line," I replied. "Drove them off the field. Perhaps next time you might think about helping."
His mouth twitched, almost amused. Almost. "Hold that tongue of yours, boy," he said. "She still breathes. She still defies Mortimer's will. And she has something we need."
My jaw clenched. "The relics."
"And more," Mortimer hissed, his voice lacing over my father's like a shadow doubling a silhouette. "She is a hinge in the door. A crack in the wall. A bridge between what was meant to be mine."
The words meant nothing.
And yet.
The irritation in my chest tightened, coiling into something that felt almost like… frustration. Not because she lived.
Because I hadn't been the one to end it.
I flexed my fingers, red-black sparks skipping from knuckle to knuckle. The dead closest to me flinched, then stilled again, obeying that deeper call.
My father's gaze flicked to my hands, then back to my face.
"Mortimer chose well," he murmured. "Your control has improved."
The praise slid over me like water over glass.
Old habits twitched—a half-remembered boy flinching for approval. The feeling came without context, like a scar I couldn't recall earning. For a second, it tugged at me, something heavy and longing stirring in my ribs.
Then the shadow in my chest tightened its grip.
The tug dulled to nothing.
All that remained was the fact: praise. Efficiency. Power.
"Not enough," I said. "If it had been, she'd be dead."
"Yet you lived," Mortimer purred. "You endured her light. You took the blow and still stand. That alone sets you above the others."
His approval sparked a grim satisfaction.
I wrapped both hands around it, let it settle where the other feeling had been.
"What does it matter?" I said. "You can't track her."
Mortimer's chuckle rippled the shadows at my father's shoulders.
"Oh, but I'm sure you will be able to find her," he said. "Light is always noticeable in the dark."
Something under my sternum flared at the word light. A color I couldn't name flashed across my mind, gone too quickly to catch.
My brows pulled together.
Memory?
No. If it had been, I'd be able to grasp it. This was only… an echo. A phantom limb of a thought.
Annoying.
I pushed it away and swept my gaze across the ruined terraces.
The remaining Skyguard—those my father hadn't slaughtered outright or resurrected into puppets—had either followed her or fallen. Muir was nowhere visible; whether that meant he was dead or hidden was irrelevant at the moment.
What mattered was that the Air Nation lay broken. The Sky Bridges were crippled. The wards were shattered, their magic nothing but a faint tang in the air under the taste of shadow.
We'd cracked a kingdom.
And yet all I could think, underneath the steady, hungry satisfaction, was:
She slipped through your claws.
My fingers curled.
Why does that bother you?
I didn't have an answer.
I only knew that when she'd vanished, something in my chest had lurched, like a heartbeat misfiring. When the violet blaze had swallowed her and torn her from my sight, a hollow ache had opened in my ribs.
I didn't know why.
I only knew that I hated it.
"Still a thread remains," Mortimer mused, as if I'd spoken aloud. "Curious."
"Cut it out," I said.
A low, amused hum rolled through my skull.
"it is… useful. That tether will draw you to her. Hunt dogs follow scent; you will follow whatever this is."
"As long as it ends with my hand around her throat," I said. The image came easily—her face, streaked with ash, eyes wide with defiance and something like hurt. My fingers tightening until the light went out.
The ache under my ribs flared again at the thought. Sharp. Wrong.
I gritted my teeth.
It faded slowly, like a bruise remembering itself.
"Yes," Mortimer said, satisfied. "You will put out that light in my name. And in doing so, you will finish burning away what little of the old you remains."
My father's gaze drifted over the dead ranks, assessing, calculating. "We should not linger," he said. "The Air Nation is broken. Its survivors will flee to the other kingdoms. The longer they live, the more time they have to warn your enemies of what you are."
"What we are," I corrected.
His head tilted. The corruption in his eyes brightened, molten red flaring around pupils gone almost black. For a second, something like pride shifted there.
It did not move me.
"I am already what I was meant to be," he said. "Now you catch up."
The old sting tried to rise again—the reflex to bristle, to argue, to demand something from him.
Shadow smothered it before it could fully form.
I rolled my shoulders, forcing my focus back to the one thing that made sense in this mess of half-buried feelings: the hunt.
"We have the sky," I said. "We have the dead. Where do you want them?"
"The Fire Nation," my father said without hesitation. "You will rally what remains of the old order, and we convince them to join our side."
"And if they refuse?" I asked.
"They will join our ranks dead."
"I want the Water Prince dead too," Mortimer added, his tone thoughtful. "His loyalty is to the girl. It will place him in your path again."
Muir. A memory flashed in my mind, his body slamming into me, taking a blow that should've taken my throat. His blood on the stone. A guy's face, white with fury as he grabbed him.
Why did that feel… significant?
I couldn't place it.
Didn't really care.
Only one thing truly hooked behind my ribs and refused to let go: the image of iridescent white wings spread wide, scales catching both flame and water light, a human figure perched between them, defiant even as the world tried to crush her.
The girl.
The primal.
I realized my fists were clenched so tight my nails had bitten crescents into my palms.
I let them go, flexing my fingers until the stiffness eased.
"I'll find her," I said.
My father regarded me for a long, silent moment. The wind tugged at the edges of his cloak; the shadows didn't move.
"Be sure you kill her," he replied. "Mortimer wants her light extinguished. Not chained."
"Not yet…" Mortimer corrected smoothly. "First I want what she carries. The relics. And whatever opened that door between realms. Then you may kill her however you wish."
Something inside me recoiled at the thought.
Not intellectually.
Just my body's protest. The way my chest tightened, the way my throat felt too narrow, the way my hands twitched as if remembering holding something precious.
Ridiculous.
I scorched the feeling with sheer will, imagining lightning burning through whatever this phantom hesitation was and leaving nothing but clean, obedient shadow.
The discomfort dulled.
What remained was simple.
She is a threat.
She stands between Mortimer and what he wants.
"You'll have the relics," I said. "And whatever else she's hiding. I'll make sure of it."
"Good," Mortimer whispered, satisfaction coiling like smoke.
My father inclined his head once, crisp and precise, the way he might acknowledge a report from a general.
"Then we move," he said. "We march the dead to the capital. Let our people see what their prince has become when freed of the gods' leash."
The thought stirred something ugly and almost eager in me.
Our people.
Once, that phrase had carried weight. Responsibility. The sharp, constant pressure to be better, to be enough.
Now, all I felt at the idea of walking into my own city at the head of an army of dead was a cold, dark thrill.
Let them see.
Let them fear.
Let them kneel—or join the ranks of those who'd already fallen.
"Fine," I said. "We'll crack their gates the way we broke these bridges."
Tadewi's shattered sky-paths smoked quietly in the distance, the absence of their spanning arches making the mountain look wrong. Incomplete.
I should have felt something for that.
Awe. Guilt. Triumph.
All I felt was that same, nagging pull in my chest when my gaze snagged on the last place I'd seen her.
That patch of stone where her light had flared brightest.
That empty space where she had stood between me and Mortimer's will and refused to break.
I wasn't used to not understanding myself.
It irritated me more than the ache itself.
"Raiden."
My father's voice yanked me back. I realized I'd been staring at nothing.
"I'm coming," I said.
He turned away, cloak of shadow flowing behind him. The dead parted to make way, then closed ranks again, forming tidy columns where moments ago there'd been only chaos. It would not take much to turn them toward the Fire Nation now. Their march would be slow but relentless. Rivers of corrupted flesh spilling over borders, through villages, into homes.
Plenty of food.
Mortimer's hunger will be easily satisfied.
I took one last look at the torn edge of the world where she'd vanished.
The air still felt wrong there, like a wound refusing to close.
The irritation under my ribs sharpened into something almost like anticipation.
"She won't stay hidden," I murmured. "Not from me."
A breath of cold laughter brushed my thoughts.
"No," Mortimer agreed. "Not from you."
As I turned away, the strange pressure in my chest shifted—less like an ache, more like a tether being pulled taut. It pointed somewhere I couldn't see yet, some direction beyond mountains and torn sky.
As if some quiet, buried part of me already knew where she would run.
I didn't question it.
I embraced it.
Let the tether pull. Let it drag that faint, unwelcome warmth along with it. I'd follow the thread to the end, burn away whatever lay waiting there, and present Mortimer with her ashes.
That was the plan.
That was all that mattered.
The rest—the phantom feelings, the half-remembered tightness in my throat, the strange sensation that my heart had been fuller once, when I'd had something I couldn't name—
All of that was just noise.
And I was very good at burning noise away.
I lifted my hands.
Lightning crawled over my skin in jagged, red-edged lines. The dead shuddered, then began to move in unison, boots and claws and hooves dragging over stone as they turned toward the route my father had already chosen.
Toward home.
Somewhere beyond the broken horizon, violet light still burned.
Good.
Let it.
Because soon I will be the one to envelop it in darkness.