But this was no ordinary blaze. The azure flame clung, devouring necrotic essence. Where the black mist tried to escape, the fire latched on, consuming it until nothing remained, not even ash.
Kelvin staggered under the backlash. The bond writhed like a fraying rope. His vision was blurred, as though his own throat burned with that impossible flame.
He nearly collapsed, but he forced himself upright while gripping his spear like an anchor. If Xerion could bear the fire, so could he.
The Hollow screamed in response, its chorus of voices twisted in agony. For the first time, the swarm did not reform. The cycle broke at least where Xerion’s fire fell. The source of this content ɪs novel•fire.net
But the swarm did not halt. More beasts lunged, a tide too vast for even blue fire to hold. Lyra’s arms shook as she loosed another volley, her arrows bended impossibly, piercing eyes and throats. But even her precision felt small against this sea of horror.
Then Salaris screamed not in pain, but in fury. Its wings flared with radiant feathers burning with golden light. For a moment, Lyra thought the Hollow would recoil.
Instead, the gold darkened, swallowed in a spreading shadow. The feathers blackened, not with decay, but with sharpness, each quill becoming a blade of midnight.
Wind screamed around them. Salaris rose with wings beating once, twice, and with each beat, the air shredded. A storm of feathers ripped outward, slicing through flesh, bone, spirit.
The Veilshadow Storm tore bodies apart not just physically, but spiritually with their souls unraveling into smoke before the Hollow could reclaim them.
Lyra staggered, clutching her chest. The storm’s fury echoed with her own voice the anger she buried and the grief she never named.
Every arrow she had fired in rage, every memory of Elara’s burial, every scar of loss... Salaris mirrored it all, casting it back at the enemy in storm and shadow.
For one heartbeat, Lyra almost lost herself in it. She felt the pull, the temptation to dissolve into Salaris’ wrath, to let the storm consume not just the Hollow but her too. She forced herself back with a ragged breath, shouting through the storm;
"Don’t take me with you! I need to stand, I need to fight!" Salaris answered not with words, but by folding its storm tighter around the enemy, sparing its Crest.
On the other flank, Darius fought like a wall. His shield cracked again with blood dripping down his arm, but he held the line with teeth bared.
Rhoam bellowed beside him with it’s armored hide glowing faintly. The fissures cracked under its hooves as it stomped forward, forcing the ground itself to obey.
With each strike, Rhoam’s light grew brighter. Then, with a roar that matched Xerion’s, it drove both forelegs into the stone. Light burst outward, sealing fissures with molten armor-glow.
The rifts that had been birthing corpses with their black mist suffocating against glowing barriers. Darius stared, while his chest hammered, as realization sank in.
Rhoam was not just fighting. It was sealing breaches, defending the world as Ironholt once had. The symbolism struck deep, with Ironholt’s last survivor, standing against invasion once more. His throat became tightened, with tears threatening through blood and grime.
"Well done, old friend," he muttered hoarsely. "Let’s hold the walls together this time." The battlefield transformed. Xerion’s azure fire erased the enemy permanently.
Salaris’ Veilshadow Storm shredded the body and spirit alike. Rhoam sealed fissures so the tide could not pour through.
For the first time since they entered the Hollow, the Crest’s blades felt sharp enough, their beasts were mighty enough and their will unbroken.
Kelvin, Lyra, and Darius moved in rhythm, each attack was backed by an evolution born of desperation. Glaive and flame carved through titans.
Arrows found the smallest weaknesses left by storm and fire. Shield and hammer smashed apart what staggered through the breaches. The swarm faltered and then it broke.
What had seemed endless fell silent, corpses burning, shadows shredded, fissures sealed. The Hollow’s whispers faded to a hiss. The titans collapsed into heaps of bone and ash.
The Crest stood panting with their bodies bruised, arms heavy and beasts trembling from the power they had unleashed. Their breaths came ragged, every heartbeat was echoing in their ears.
Kelvin looked at the shadows still lingering deeper below. His instincts screamed it, the Hollow was not defeated. It was holding its breath, watching them and measuring them.
This was not the end of a war. It was the pause before the next strike. Xerion’s flame was dimmed, but its eyes still glowed.
Salaris folded its wings, while it’s feathers were dripping with midnight mist. Rhoam stomped once more, sealing the last fissure with finality.
The Crest glanced at one another with exhaustion in their eyes but also something new, an awe. Their beasts had crossed the thresholds they had not believed that they were possible.
But the question remained, had the Hollow simply let them, because it needed to see what they would become? The silence pressed on them like a weight. A silence too heavy to be peace.
Kelvin felt it first, the sudden silence between the heartbeats. Xerion stiffened beneath his hand, the beast’s scales was humming with an energy that was too volatile to name.
The waa air thickened, like oil poured over fire, before the world split beneath their feet. The fissures came without warning with jagged mouths cracking the stone, vomiting a storm not of rain, but of corruption itself.
Sickly-green lightning spat from the depths, carving scars across the walls. Winds of ash and iron lashed at them, choking breath and vision alike.
From the ruptures, fire spewed upward in molten tongues, only to fall back as blistering rain that hissed where it struck stone and skin.
"MOVE!" Darius roared, with his voice nearly lost beneath the shriek of the storm. The Crest scattered across the broken ledges as the ground convulsed like a living beast.
Kelvin threw himself toward the nearest outcrop, with boots scraping for things on a crumbling rock. Xerion, sensed the danger, snapped its coils around his waist and anchored him against the violent gale.
The beast’s body was a living tether, its muscles were straining to keep Kelvin from tumbling into the glowing abyss that was yawning below.
A fissure opened where Lyra had been standing before. Salaris dove through the choking winds, its wings straining against the ash, and caught her in a sweep of its talons.
The lift came too late as the storm ripped against them with claws of glass. Lyra screamed as Salaris faltered, the tips of its feathers shredded away like wet parchment in the acid-laced rain.
Together they crashed against a ledge with stone shearing beneath their weight. "Lyra!" Kelvin’s shout vanished in the roar of the Hollow.
He clung tighter to Xerion, forcing the beast to coil upward, dragging him to higher ground where the fire-rain did not fall as heavily.
Below, Darius was swallowed by falling stone. The cavern roof cracked open above him, pouring boulders the size of carts into his path.
.For a moment, he disappeared entirely in the crush. Then a thunderous shockwave blasted upward. The rubble exploded outward in shards, Rhoam’s massive form erupted through the wreckage like a war god’s hammer.
Darius rode astride his beast, lightning skittering over its horns, both of them bellowing defiance into the storm. But the Hollow was not finished.
The fissures pulsed with malignant light, vomiting shadows shaped like men. They moved with jerks and spasms, broken things trying to crawl into form.
The green lightning stitched their outlines with half-flesh, half-wraith. With every heartbeat, more of them clawed their way into the open.
Kelvin gritted his teeth. "We don’t just climb, we fight through this!" Xerion’s throat glowed with a pale blue fire leaking from between its fangs.
The storm struck back with vicious timing. Kelvin’s boot slipped on wet stone as he leapt to the next ledge. The world tilted as he fell forward with his hands grasping for empty air.
The chasm below widened like the mouth of death, heat was dropping through his face. He screamed, not in fear but in fury. In the last instant, Xerion’s tail lashed out, wrapping around his chest like an iron band.
The beast pulled out with a violence that nearly cracked ribs, hauling Kelvin back to a solid stone. His heart thundered like war drums as he stumbled to stand upright, sweat and ash was running down his face.
Lyra fared worse. The gale tore her cloak away, and the ground beneath her buckled. She pitched forward with body slipping toward the abyss. Salaris screamed with a cry that cut through the storm and thunder.
With a desperate dive, the griffon slammed its body into her, pinning her against jagged rock. Its feathers became blackened and shredded as the fire-rain poured across its wings.
The smell of burnt quill and flesh filled the air. Lyra clutched the griffon’s neck, sobbing into its ruined feathers. "Stay with me," she whispered, though her words were carried off by the wind.