Chapter Twenty Eight – The Storm

Sierra’s POV

The forest split open inside her chest.

It wasn’t just whispers anymore. Shadows didn’t murmur, didn’t brush softly at her edges — they roared. They clawed her throat raw from the inside, begging release.

Her knees buckled. Breath shattered as she stumbled across the roots, hands clutching at her ribs as though she could hold herself together by force alone. Her pulse was erratic, no longer hers.

And Malick’s voice—

Distant. Torn apart by the wind.

Stay with me, Sierra—

She wanted to. She reached inward, as she always did, toward her mother, toward the warmth that had once been a tether in the darkness.

Please—help me—

But there was only silence.

And then, curling cold and absolute, a single word:

Mine.

The fire erupted.

It burst through her skin black and wild, devouring. Trees splintered like bones cracking under an unseen hand. Small creatures shrieked and vanished into ash. The familiar they had conjured together — that luminous, impossible creation — screamed as it was wrenched into the world unbidden. Its twin followed, both howling, their light torn ragged by the black tide.

Sierra fell to her knees. The storm inside her chest became the storm outside.

She screamed, but it wasn’t a human sound anymore.

Malick’s POV

He found her in the ruins of the clearing.

Not Sierra — not the girl who had once laughed, who had once kissed him with trembling courage — but a figure swallowed in fire and shadow that refused to die.

The air blistered his skin. Shadows slashed at him, raking claws of fire across his chest, but he forced himself forward.

“Sierra!” His voice cracked, raw with smoke. He raised his arms to shield himself, dragonfire boiling in his veins, answering the unnatural blaze before him.

The shadows didn’t retreat. They bared their teeth at him, hungry, furious.

But he pushed harder. Step after step.

Because she was there. Somewhere inside that vortex of ruin. Small. Fragile. Drowning.

He reached his hand through the fire, through the storm. “Come back to me—”

And then his mouth betrayed him.

The name tore from his chest before he could stop it, instinct stronger than sense:

“Vaelira!”

Her head snapped up.

Her eyes—

Not Sierra’s. Bottomless black, silver pupils burning like fractured moons.

And yet.

For a heartbeat, she saw him.

Her lips parted, trembling. “Malick…”

It was her voice. Weak, desperate, still tethered to him.

And then the shadows ripped her away.

The Crows’ POV

They had wanted power.

They had wanted vengeance.

They had wanted to bring down the academy brick by brick, to force the old bloodlines to their knees.

But what they had called was no longer theirs to command.

The ritual chamber split under the pressure. Black fire burst through the cracks, crawling along the carved runes like veins filled with poison. Patricia shrieked, clutching her head as stones rained from the ceiling. Elara stumbled back, candle dropping from her hand, her face twisted in horror.

And Gloria—Gloria only smiled.

Her veil slipped, her teeth bared. She drank in the sight like wine.

“She’s waking,” she whispered. “Our queen of ruin. Our key.”

But when the fire above turned black — when a scream that wasn’t human echoed through the halls of the academy, rattling every bone in their bodies — Elara’s terror solidified into certainty.

This wasn’t theirs.

This wasn’t the Crows’ plan.

This was someone else’s.

And they were all already caught inside it.

Sierra’s POV

Her body betrayed her.

She could feel it: every vein burning, every nerve raw. Her hands bled from magic she hadn’t called. Her lips moved with words she didn’t know. Her shadows curled like wolves at her feet, waiting for orders that didn’t come from her.

Her throat locked as she fought it, screaming silently inside her own body.

I am Sierra. I am mine. I am not—

But the air rippled, and through the fire, the figure appeared.

Half-formed. Cloaked in wings that dripped shadow. His outline too vast for the clearing to contain, his molten eyes burning down into her marrow.

Her father.

Vorath Kane.

The Dragon King.

The name hit her like a curse she had never chosen.

He reached through the storm, and the fire bent toward his hand as though eager to kneel.

“You are mine, Vaelira,” he said. His voice was thunder across the world. “You always have been.”

Her chest cracked. Her tears burned hot, blistering her cheeks.

“No—” she choked, defiance splitting her throat. “I am not—”

But the word never made it out.

The shadows closed around her neck, choking the sound before it could live.

And then the fire consumed her.

Malick’s POV

One moment she was there. Crying, shaking, reaching for him.

The next, black fire swallowed her whole.

The clearing caved in. The ground itself collapsed, groaning like a beast dragged from sleep. The academy’s wards shrieked in unison, their ancient magic unraveling, towers splitting and stone cracking apart.

The sky bent wrong. The air itself tore open.

Malick roared her name and lunged into the storm. His shadows bucked violently at his back, screaming warnings, begging him to stop, but he didn’t care.

The flames shredded his skin raw, peeling him to the bone. He didn’t care.

She was in there. She had to be.

But when the fire finally parted, when the smoke cleared, there was nothing.

No body.

No Sierra.

Just ruin. Just ash. Just silence.

Malick fell to his knees, his voice breaking again and again against the hollow night.

“Sierra! Sierra!”

But the world no longer answered.

Gloria’s POV

From the edge of the collapsing forest, Gloria watched him break.

Watched the dragon boy scream himself hoarse against a sky that had already decided its victor.

And she smiled.

Because she knew the truth.

Sierra wasn’t gone.

Not yet.

She had been claimed.

The air split once more, fire opening like a curtain, and Gloria sank to her knees as the figure emerged fully.

Vorath Kane.

Dragon King. Ruler of ruin. Father of shadows.

His wings unfurled behind him, dripping darkness like rivers. His eyes, molten gold, burned holes into the night. The very ground shook under his presence.

Gloria bowed low, trembling not with fear, but with triumph.

“My lord.”

Vorath’s gaze slid past her, fixing instead on the empty air where his daughter had stood.

A cruel smile curved his mouth.

“She will return to me,” he said, voice cutting through ruin and smoke alike. “Body, blood, and soul. She was always mine to begin with.”

The fire flared, blotting out the stars.

The ruins of the academy smoldered, towers reduced to black skeletons. The forest groaned, half-ash, half-alive, caught between worlds.

And in the silence, Malick’s broken voice carried on the wind — desperate, furious, raw.