The Winged Shadow
The northern island hung broken in the sky, its jagged edges dripping molten stone. Jacob counted twelve heartbeats before recognizing the winged silhouette rising from the ruins.
"Lysandra?" Tara squinted through the blizzard. "But she's right—"
The body in Jacob's arms disintegrated.
Ash swirled upward, coalescing into the hovering figure from the sky. Her thorned crown burned violet, wings forged from Shard-fragment feathers casting prismatic shadows across the snow. The real Lysandra—or what remained of her—spoke with a voice that cracked glaciers:
"You thought you saved me? You only completed the ritual."
The Price of Truth
Alaric's corpse lay half-buried in ice, his starspawn eyes frozen milky white. Tara pried a crystalline shard from his talons.
"Memory core," she muttered. "Let's see what squid-face was hiding."
The projection revealed:
Lysandra's birth in a Shard-fueled lab, genetically engineered to stabilize the fragments.
Silas, decades younger, arguing with Alaric: "The Crowne girl isn't a tool—she's a time bomb!"
A star map labeling the floating islands "Project: Ark-7".
Jacob crushed the core underfoot. "We need to reach the other islands."
Tara nodded toward Lysandra's hovering form, now carving runes into the sky. "And her?"
"She's coming."
The Storm's Bargain
Silas's storm-cloud familiar materialized at dusk—a writhing mass of lightning and guilt.
"He lives," it hissed in the dead mage's voice. "Trapped between realms. Bring me to the eastern island's core, and I'll show you how to kill godlings."
Tara trapped the cloud in her reforged hammer. "Try anything funny, and I'll smother you in a sock drawer."
The cloud dimmed. "Mortals used to show proper respect to ancient storms."
The Duskwarden Defector
They found her at the valley's edge—a woman clad in blackened Duskwarden armor, her face obscured by a helm shaped like a screaming raven.
"Call me Wren," she said, tossing Jacob a pulsating Shard fragment. "And before you ask: Yes, I betrayed the cult. No, I won't beg forgiveness. Yes, you need my airship."
The vessel floated behind her, its balloon made from stitched Starspawn hide.
Lysandra's shadow passed overhead, her wingspan now blotting out the moon.
Wren ignited the engines. "Welcome to the real war."