“Now we are promised. We feel a tremor in the earth before it arrives.” There’s a pause. “The song is becoming louder and stronger.”

“You can’t let it overwhelm you.” I cling to Evlorasin’s mane, as if I have any control over the huge wyrm at all. “They’ll give you a lot of food, and that helps, but you have to practice. Now, before it gets too loud. You are of the silence.”

“We are in the silence.” The valkerax finishes the words we’ve practiced. There’s a growl deep in its throat that emerges from the depths, faint and only getting stronger.

“Focus!” I back up. “Just the blackness, nothing else. No thoughts, no feelings—just the silence.”

“Silence.” The valkerax chatters its fangs eerily again, breathing growing labored. Suddenly I’m shoved from behind by a massive coil of something—its tail? I collapse on the ground, my ribs crying out in agony. I can hear Evlorasin just above me, panting.

“It hungers.” The valkerax snarls. “It hungers for everything in this world!”

“You have to fight it!” I yell, each word knocking the breath from my aching lungs all over again.

“Zera!” I hear Yorl shout. “It’s going for the gate! You need to stop it, or else I’ll have to—”

“You want to be free, don’t you?” I scream out to Evlorasin, jumping to my feet and staggering across the arena to where I can hear it moving. “You can’t let the song win! You are the silence!”

“It is…so loud,” Evlorasin snarls, and a sudden earthquake jolts me to my knees as the valkerax throws itself against the gate, scales meeting metal in one powerful impact. Another quake, and the metal gate gives a mighty screech.

“It’s going to break!” Yorl calls out frantically. “Ready the greatlance!”

No—no, they can’t kill it.

I scrabble forward, following the scent of rotting things and throwing myself onto the valkerax’s body. I catch its back leg, clinging to the ankle as it moves—taking steps back, as if preparing to ram the gate again.

My mind flashes; what stopped me? Back in the clearing, what was I thinking just before I Wept for the first time? I had to protect Lucien. That’s the only thing I wanted. Everything boiled down to one thing, one moment; the one thing I wanted more than anything in the world.

“Evlorasin! You want to fly!” I scream. The hind leg stops moving, and I blurt, “Above the Dark Below, in the sky-home! But you have to be silent!”

The hind leg suddenly swings around, my brain careening in my skull as the momentum almost flings me off. I dig in with my claws and hold fast.

We are not the hunger.

i am all you have, the dark voice seethes.