My breath billows out in a thick cloud of vapor as I stumble after Kaebl, the tree line seemingly miles away. Fenryr is a pinprick in the distance by now, racing full tilt toward the welwigs despite the toll it’s taking on his body.

We make it halfway to the trees before a massive tremor shakes the earth, accompanied by a thunderous roar of cracks and pops that has us freezing in place. I turn, and my heart skips a beat at the chaos that greets me.

Unlike earlier, the rumbling refuses to cease, causing the ice beneath the castle to fissure and break away. In the next blink, the ground caves in, giving way to a massive chasm that seems to split the earth in half. The great stone towers fall inward as the foundation collapses, crushing the flood of soldiers attempting to flee the crumbling structure. All at once, the castle is lost to a cloud of thick, billowing snow, spreading across the land in a great white explosion.

“NO!” The scream that tears from my chest threatens to cleave the sky apart, filled with enough rage and anguish to bring me to my knees. The ice rumbles beneath me, answering my pain with a cacophony of cracks and grinding as the fissures spread across the landscape at an alarming rate.

Come on! Kaebl yanks me backward across the ice, refusing to look back at the wreckage, focused on making it to the tree line before the ground gives away. Kable makes it one single step beneath the canopy and collapses, dragging me beneath the shimmering white leaves just as another wave of energy travels across the land, widening the chasm and causing the world to shift on its axis.

I peek through the curtain of leaves, looking at the cool gray sky as dread settles in the base of my throat. She has to be okay… If she’s not, I can’t… I won’t be able to go on.

The bond vibrates, warm and soothing and filled with a living, breathing energy that assuages all of my fears. I blink, and a ball of bright light shoots toward the heavens, cloaked in swirling red shadows and accompanied by a piercing demonic scream. The shadows turn, beaming straight toward the line of welwigs at an alarming speed.

Through the haze, Malice’s face appears, eyes filled with the same darkness swirling around his shoulders and lips peeled back in agony. His wings are in tatters, his skin scorched and falling off in places, but none of that matters. Because in his arms is the creature my soul has been crying out for.

Dagny.