Pan and I leaned back on the exterior of the half-broken wall, and I tried to catch my breath. I was strong, but I had never been in a real fight before, let alone a battle. What little preparation I had gotten in beforehand had hardly been enough.

Then, through the crowd, I saw him running away. Ragnall Jerrick was taller than most—other than some of the Omte—and he had a bloody handprint splattered on the back of his shaved head. He was escaping from the mess he’d created here and going for the bridge.

I couldn’t see the bridge from where I was—the plateau of Áibmoráigi curved slightly around the mountain, and that’s where it connected with the bridge.

—as I had once before, when I followed the white elk through the ruins and Illaria found me at the waterfall—

I couldn’t let Ragnall cross the bridge or enter Alfheim, so I raced after him. Someone dove at me, but I ducked out of the way, and I punched another Älvolk soldier and pushed him to the side.

I ran faster than I ever had before. My lungs burned, and I pushed myself as fast as I could, and I was managing to close the gap.

The Lost Bridge of Dimma was just before him, a stone arch stretching over the canyon between the two mountains, and I shouted, “Ragnall! Wait!”

He paused long enough to look back at me, smirking over his shoulder, and then he charged across the bridge.

“You’re going to kill us all!” I yelled after him.

He laughed loudly—the bombastic sound ricocheting off the mountains—and he ran so fast he was nearly across the bridge before I’d even reached it.

“Maybe,” he called over his shoulder. “But I will live eternal.”

I stopped at the bridge, hunched over with my hands on my thighs as I struggled to catch my breath.

Ragnall made it across the bridge. He laughed again, almost hysterical, and he ran his bloodied hands over his smooth scalp as he looked around in delighted amazement.

The air rippled, and I heard a strange sound. A crackling bleat strangled by a guttural growl. Behind Ragnall, water sprayed out from the ethereal waterfall. From the correct angle, the way the water fell, it looked like a woman in her bridal veils.

But now a beast was emerging from it.

It had a broad snout covered in iridescent evergreen scales and a mouth of jagged teeth. With emerald eyes and spiky protrusions all down its spine. It had no legs or wings, and yet it flew through the air, like a snake slithering through the clouds.

It was the dragon known as a wyrm.

Ragnall stared up as the beast circled over his head, casting a dark shadow over him. The wyrm was large enough that giant woolly elk would have only been a snack for it.