Chapter 97

The narrator, bleeding from two stab wounds, rises amid settling smog and ash, avoiding Arkyn’s mutilated corpse. Feeling Rygun’s ember fading within, the narrator calls out and stumbles through the wasteland, desperate to reach the dragon before he dies alone in the snow.

An Elding Bird limps past, its wing shattered and beak still bloody from attacking Rygun. It collapses beside Arkyn and transforms into a red-haired fae woman, then goes still with the narrator’s sword in her back, revealing the predator’s true nature and her connection to Arkyn only in death.

Following the bloody trail, the narrator slides into a crater littered with moonshards and finds Rygun broken—one eye gouged out, scales frost-stiff, breath ragged. Prayers to the Creators and a command to Ignos go unanswered. Seeing Rygun’s ember gutter, the narrator offers back the shared flame that once bound and sustained them, prepared to sever the bond so Rygun might survive.

Rygun answers with a memory of the narrator refusing to let go during the earlier fall, then walls the bond to stop the sacrifice. Realizing the narrator is also failing, Rygun uses his remaining strength to gather them to his chest and curl protectively around them, forming a sheltering knot while the narrator hums an old song to soften the dread of his slowing heart.

As the narrator thinks of Raeve and their daughter, a vast silhouette passes above; silver scales glint in the scattered moonlight. A thunderous roar breaks the stillness, and the narrator slips into darkness beneath Rygun’s wing.