They knew it now: they could not kill the dragon. Not today. Even with half the camp already torn apart, going for the kill would only finish the ruin and still leave the beast raging. So they aimed for a different win.
Another burst built in the dragon's throat—black wind and white glare twisting like two ropes at war. Elira cut the torrent into a lane, not a wall, drawing the wind thin with the blade's wake. "Wind Shearline!" A hair-narrow current sliced the breath in two. The main blast hit her slanted Wind Barrier, scraped past, and howled into empty tents.
"Left seam—watch it," Kael said, stepping into the lane. Draga's plates took the shove; the shock ran down his frame to his heels and bled harmlessly into dirt.
Mira's rings spun once, twice. "Cooling the edge—Hydro Mirror!" A palm-wide disk of water flashed along the lane, drank the heat, and broke to steam. She stitched the leak with ice thread. "Rime Suture!" The line held for one breath, then hissed apart. "No seam yet," she muttered, eyes narrow.
Under soot at the dragon's throat, Elira saw it: a bronze band sunk into scaled flesh. Faint runes pulsed off-beat with the monster's breath.
Not breath—command, Lumeveil murmured in her hand. There is an anchor.
"Mira, check the throat."
"On it." She flicked a thin wave—"Hydro Mirror!"—past the snout. The reflection showed glyph chains running from the band into the chest. "Tethered. Collar outside, chain inside."
"So we break the yoke," Kael said. "Not the beast."
Elira nodded once. "Force the lane. Pin the head. Cut the band. Hit the chain."
"Keep the dome tight when I call," Mira said, breath steady. "Ready."
They moved.
Elira narrowed the lane until it was just wider than Kael's shoulders. "Wind Guide!" The current drew straight and true. Mira raised three staggered pillars at the jaw hinge. "Glacier Break!" The ice didn't smash; it leaned the head where Elira needed it. Grass woke under stone—"Bramble Snare!"—thin roots curling up to steal a sliver of force from the next claw pull.
Kael advanced inside a small, bright shell. Elira set a tight shield. "Sanctaria Light!" The dome covered only his frame; when the breath hit, the rim flared white and spilled the blast around him. He reached the band. Up close, the runes hissed like wet iron.
He planted and drove a short, mean punch. "Pulse Vault!" Metal rang under his fist. The dragon's breath hiccuped, then roared.
"Softening," Mira said. She braided a hair-thin stream of water with a hair-thin lick of flame, then starved the flame at the last instant. "Boil-Line!" The scald kissed bronze; the band dulled and sagged.
Elira slid a half-step, keeping dark sealed behind light. Lumeveil's edge became a needle. "Lantern Needle!" No shadow—only clean gold. She didn't swing wide. She wrote. A bright hairline traced across softened metal.
The band flared. A shock wave punched the yard. Kael skidded two paces before Draga locked him down. Steam burst in Mira's face; she coughed, wiped, reset. Elira rode the shove and dropped another tight dome so the rebound wouldn't take Kael's head off.
"Two parts," Mira rasped. "Outer ring. Inner chain."
"Open the window," Kael said. "One more."
The dragon reared. Light and dark fought harder in its throat. The lane buckled. Elira pinned it with twin gusts, small and exact. "Gust Pins! …Ready."
"Root and ice—Frostvine Cataclysm!" Glyph-seeds spun from Mira's rings and sank beneath the jaw. Vines of ice and grass erupted, lashed the throat, yanked the head down, and flash-chilled the runes where Elira's cut had begun.
"Now!" Mira shouted.
Elira redrew the bright hairline—deeper, cleaner—"Lantern Needle!" The inner chain flashed for a blink, thin and black.
Kael planted and drove his fist into that notch. "Pulse Vault!"
Something inside the band screamed like a bell that hated being a bell. The inner tether snapped. The black wind died to a wheeze. The white glare broke into dull sparks and went out.
Silence fell like a dropped blanket.
The dragon sagged. Its chest rose—once, twice—like breath was something it had to learn again. It blinked, slow, stunned, showing the world it had eyes.
"Back off," Elira said, sword lifted but not aimed. Lumeveil's light cooled to a steady line.
Mira loosened the vines so they wouldn't tear flesh. Water washed the band so cooling metal wouldn't brand the neck as it fell. "Easy," she said, and it worked.
Kael stepped away with open palms. Draga hummed low, then quieted.
The collar split and dropped. A shard skittered to Elira's boot, humming with a wrong rhythm, like a heart that kept the beat in the wrong place. On the cracked ring, old fine sigils swam—careful, exact.
Elira's fingers twitched toward the shard.
Do not touch bare-handed, Lumeveil warned, the tone sharp. Wrap it. Seal it. It remembers orders.
"I've got it," Mira said. She cupped a thin shell of ice around the shard—"Ice Coffin!"—clear and tight. "Bag it later."
Across the yard, voices rose—orders, roll calls, steel on stone. Smoke and steam crossed in dirty layers. In that tangle of noise, Elira heard a cleaner thread: boots in rhythm, a squad changing pace. She looked up and saw Vaelis at the edge of light, head tilted as if he heard a song no one else heard. A group of soldiers broke into a run—straight at them.
"Time to go," Kael said, already lifting the split band half.
"Agreed," Mira said, cinching cloth around the ice shell. "Left service lane—through the kitchens."
Elira checked Lumeveil's balance—light-edge only, dark sealed—and nodded. "Move."
They moved.
Elira threw a low veil that kicked smoke sideways and drew a bright curtain from live coals. "Wind Veil!" Mira snapped steam straight up. "Vapor Screen!" Lanterns above them hissed and dimmed. Kael shouldered a beam aside and opened a slit between a fallen tent and a cart.
"Through," he said.
They slipped the slit. Boots pounded behind them; the squad hit the smoke and coughed. "Fan it! Keep on them!" someone barked, raw.
Elira skimmed a thin path down a corridor of torn canvas. "Breeze Edge!" The cut spilled cloth that billowed back, hiding their trail. Mira froze a slick under the mud. "Rime Sheet!" Chasers slid and swore. Kael dragged a crate across a choke point, then grunted it tighter with a heel-kick. "Anchor Set." Draga's weight locked the crate in place like a door jam.
"Kitchens ahead," Mira said, eyes cutting left.
The ovens loomed, hot stones hissing where soup had died. A service door hung from one hinge. Beyond it lay a thin alley between storage sheds and the inner wall.
"Gate or wall?" Mira asked.
"Wall," Kael said. "Fewer eyes."
They burst into the alley. Shouts leapt closer. "There! By the ovens!"
Elira flung a flat gust at a stack of dry wood. "Gust Cut!" Timber crashed into the gap behind them. Mira slid an ice wedge under the spill. "Rime Wedge!" The pile locked in place. Kael barreled down the alley, Draga turning his run into a moving bulwark.
The inner wall rose ahead. A supply ladder leaned half burned. Kael slammed it upright. "Go."
Mira went first with the parcel. Elira followed, Lumeveil sheathed at her spine but warm against her palm. Kael climbed last and kicked the ladder away as hands reached it from below. It fell, bounced, and took three pursuers down in a tangle.
They dropped to the far side into scrub and broken barrels. Night took them. Camp noise dulled to a far roar.
They ran until breath burned, then walked, hunched and quick, keeping to hedges and shadow lines. A ravine opened like a black mouth to their right; they slid into it, boots whispering on cold grit, and crouched under a lip of stone.
"Swap?" Kael asked between breaths.
"Swap," Mira said, already rolling her shoulders. Aure shifted around her wrists, the twin rings sliding into a Tri-Coil Pattern that favored range and speed over raw burst. "Travel form," she told the spirit, and the glow dimmed to a hush.
Elira adjusted her grip and let Lumeveil's Lightblade Mode settle—edge bright, shadow quiet, dark sealed. "No eclipses," she whispered. "Not tonight."
Kael tapped the plates at his hip. Draga answered with a soft click as joints re-geared into a lighter carry, heels shedding weight. "Long walk set," he said. The armor hummed like a slow drum.
They stayed still until the shouts thinned and only crickets dared speak. Then they climbed out of the ravine and cut across open scrub toward a low ridge. When they reached the hollow behind it, they let themselves breathe.
Mira set the cloth-wrapped ice shell on a flat stone. The shard hummed softly inside, like a wasp trapped in glass. Kael placed the cracked band beside it. Up close, the lines on the bronze were clear—Element craft, old and exact, the same style curled on the back of Elira's pendant.