AshlynThe road home wound through the trees, long and empty. The air was cool, heavy with rain that hadn’t fallen yet. I had the windows half open, one hand on the wheel, the other tapping against the console.Krav stayed behind in Panther City with Keiral to test the seams.I told myself it was fine. We needed to divide focus, cover ground, all that logical shit we said when we didn’t want to admit that leaving someone behind hurt.The Den wasn’t far now — half an hour at most. The familiar scent of pine and soil crept through the open window. It should’ve felt like peace.It didn’t.Sheetal had been quiet since Panther City. Too quiet.When the Honshu slept, it was like being alone in your own head again.When she woke, it was like sharing it with a storm.Lately, she’d been flickering, restless under my skin.I was halfway past the second ridge when the temperature dropped. The air went thin. My vision blurred for a blink, like the road ahead was bending.“Sheetal,” I said under m
Krav The pressure pushed again, harder. Not an attack. An instruction. Get up. Move. Remember. Claim. The same way I would tell a young dragon to ride a crosswind instead of fighting it until he tumbled. “Not yours,” I said. “Not this life.” I felt it smile. Not warm. Not cruel. Certain. Then my vision shifted a last time and locked into something that made my stomach drop. I was looking through eyes that were mine and not mine at a battlefield that wasn’t a field. A grid suspended in air. Bodies moved across it in lines. Wolves. Dragons. Something older. I moved my hand and the grid answered. A door opened in the middle and he walked through. Me. Not me. He carried blue in his bones the way I carried it in my blood. He carried heat in his wings that matched the heat in my throat. He looked at me like I was late. Then he said my name in a voice that had never needed a mouth. “Korrin.” My body flinched. No one had called me that in years. Not as a name. As a title. The old wo
Krav Flight always cleared my head. Not tonight.The city dropped away under me into a clean grid of dark roofs and blue ward lines. The tower spires cut the clouds. My wings drove hard. Air burned through my lungs clean and hot. I pushed higher until the hum of the lower nets faded and only the high lanes held me.Catan wanted the cold and the height. My panther wanted ground and walls. I ignored both. I needed the sky.Three days since Ashlyn’s vision. Three days since Keiral said the name none of us should have said. Three days of sleep broken into pieces. Every time I closed my eyes, the seams moved. Every time I landed, the ground felt wrong, like it wanted to tilt.I banked east and cut for the ridge. The mountains held steady in the dark, black lines against a washed moon. I rolled, locked my wings, and let my body fall until the wind screamed in my ears. At the last second I snapped open, flared, and climbed again. Muscle. Bone. Heat. Simple.Then my vision blurred.It hit fa
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Keiral For many moments we stood in silence, contemplative of what this all meant.Ashlyn. Me. Mira. The deaths. The god. It was hard to come up with anything worth saying.The lab around us hummed — the steady pulse of tech, the low thrum of the generators under the floor. The overhead lights buzzed faintly, and the air felt too still, too tight.Ashlyn stood with her arms crossed, eyes distant, as if she was somewhere else entirely. I sat on the edge of the counter, legs dangling, trying to make sense of the puzzle pieces that refused to fit. Mira sat near the door, her head low, fingers fidgeting with the charm Ashlyn had given her weeks ago.It wasn’t just fear that hung between us. It was confusion — a thick, heavy kind that doesn’t let thoughts form straight.“I keep thinking maybe it’s all connected,” I said finally. “The deaths. The dreams. The god.”Ashlyn didn’t look at me. “They are.”Her voice was quiet, but final.Mira lifted her head. “Then why us?”That was the questio
Ashlyn In all my years, I knew someday death would find me like a calling card, waiting to show me its face.It came that night.Krav’s apartment was quiet except for the hum of the city through the windows. My skin still burned from where his hands had been, slick with sweat, the room thick with the scent of us, saalt, musk, heat, and something electric that always came after we touched. My hair clung to my neck. His heartbeat pressed steady against my back as I lay half across his chest, eyes half closed, lungs trying to remember what calm felt like.We didn’t talk. We never did right after. It wasn’t awkwar, just silent. The kind of silence that said everything we didn’t have to.Krav’s fingers traced along my shoulder, lazy. His breath warmed my ear. “You’re quiet,” he murmured.“I’m thinking.”“About what?”“Whether the gods still remember who they made us to be.”He gave a quiet laugh, more breath than sound. “If they ever did.”I smiled faintly, but it faded almost as quick. S