“LaLa!” I called. There was only one last thing that mattered now, and that was holding her.

Light glowed on every horizon, shining off the edges of the angry ocean. Stars gleamed overhead, and the halo of sunlight shone around the moon again, eerie and awe-inspiring.

How long was totality?

How long did we have left?

A tiny cry sounded in the distance: LaLa.

Her voice pierced my heart, and we were close—so close—I could almost feel her in my arms. I could almost hear her throaty purr and smell the smoke on her breath.

I flew, sensing the weight of the moons overhead, and the sunlight beginning to bend around the curve, and this all-horizons dawn starting to shatter. There wasn’t enough time. There’d never been enough time, but I hadn’t listened to the first dragon’s warnings.

LaLa called out again, and a small burst of fire shone in the distance.

Moments. There were but moments before the sun returned. I had to do it now—now—but I hadn’t reached LaLa yet. I hadn’t said good-bye.

She screeched again, flapping her wings so hard that her heart felt ready to burst. We were so close, and we needed only a moment more. Just a moment.

But it was too late. Sunlight hovered on the other side of the moon.

A gasp.

A promise.

An ending.

“LaLa!” I screamed and reached out my hand for her, but this was my choice: the world, or holding her again. I knew, of course, I’d be able to hold her after this, but it would never be the same. Our connection would be severed. And I hadn’t said good-bye before—

My eyes ached with tears, and my throat squeezed so tight I could barely breathe. She was only a few seconds away.

We didn’t have a few seconds.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and I shifted course. I dove straight for the sea.

IT WAS DIFFERENT than I thought it’d be.

Even though I plunged into the ocean, pressure building and water boiling around me, a part of me soared up and up—so high that stars shivered back in terror, so huge that galaxies swirled in my wake.

Fire filled up my heart, burning with inferno fury, and for a moment, I thought it wouldn’t happen. I hoped it wouldn’t. I hoped I wasn’t too late, and I could go back for LaLa, and—

That was not what I wanted. Not really.

I dove deeper, my dragon soul and me, and broke through the skin of the world, into an ocean of magma that pushed restlessly for release. Nothing drowned me. Nothing crushed me. Nothing burned me. I was the Drakontos celestus, the first and the last made one. And where I entered, a fissure opened in the bottom of the ocean and molten rock burst through.

Bright red flared. Seawater bubbled, hardening the rush of lava, but more molten rock pushed through the thin new crust.

And there, in the depths, in the dark, in that space between totality and a golden bead shining out of pure blackness, my dragon soul grew, mixing with the magma as it spread across the seafloor, up ridges, down abysses, and all over the dark and strange world below.