The cave mouth yawns before us like the entrance to oblivion.
I stand at the threshold, Ghatak's hand still wrapped around mine, and stare at the world beyond. The sunlight—if you can call it that—filters through a haze of ash and dust, painting everything in shades of gray and rust. The sky is wrong. It should be the deep violet of Draconis' atmosphere, streaked with the aurora-like shimmer of our planet's magnetic fields. Instead, it's a sickly orange, choked with clouds that look more like smoke than weather.
This is wrong.
"Astraea," Ghatak murmurs, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. "We don't have to—"
"Yes, we do," I cut him off, my voice sharper than I intended. I soften it with effort. "We need to know."
He nods, and together we step out of the cave.
The first thing that hits me is the smell.
Death. Decay. The acrid stench of burned stone and charred bone, mixed with something sweeter and more insidious—the rot of organic matter left to decompose for centuries. I gag, pressing my free hand to my mouth, and Ghatak's grip on my other hand tightens.
"Breathe through your mouth," he says quietly. "It helps."
I do, and the taste is almost worse than the smell, but at least I don't vomit. Small victories.
The second thing I notice is the silence.
There should be sound. Birds. Insects. The rustle of wind through trees. The distant roar of waterfalls cascading down the mountain slopes. Vernike was always alive with noise—a symphony of nature and magic intertwined. But now there's nothing. Just the whisper of wind through ruins and the crunch of our footsteps on debris.
We're standing on what used to be a plateau—a wide expanse of flat stone that served as a landing pad for dragons in flight. I remember this place. I used to race my siblings here, diving from the peaks above and seeing who could land with the most grace. Laverna always won. She had a natural elegance that the rest of us lacked.
Laverna
The thought of one of my sisters sends a spike of pain through my chest, and I shove it down. I can't afford to break. Not yet.
The plateau is cracked now, fissures running through the stone like spiderwebs. Chunks of rock have broken away entirely, leaving jagged gaps that drop into darkness. And scattered across the surface—
Bones.
Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. Dragon bones, massive and white, picked clean by scavengers and time. Some are intact enough that I can identify them—a skull here, a ribcage there, the delicate structure of a wing membrane stretched between finger bones. Others are just fragments, shattered and scattered like discarded toys.
"Gods," I whisper.
Ghatak says nothing. His face is a mask of stone, but I can feel the grief radiating through our bond. It's a cold, heavy thing, settling in my chest like lead.
We walk forward, picking our way through the bones. I try not to look too closely, try not to imagine the dragons these belonged to. But it's impossible. Every skull I pass could be someone I knew. Someone I loved.
Mother. Father. My brothers. My sisters.
The plateau slopes downward, leading to what used to be the main settlement. I can see the ruins from here—buildings reduced to rubble, towers collapsed into heaps of stone, the grand temple of the Void Clan nothing more than a crater in the earth.
"How long do you think—" I start, but my voice cracks. I clear my throat and try again. "How long do you think we were asleep?"
"Long enough for this," Ghatak says, gesturing at the devastation. "Centuries, at least. Maybe more."
Two thousand years, I think, remembering the emptiness where my family's bond should be. Two thousand years of silence.
We reach the edge of the settlement, and I stop, staring at what remains of my home.
The buildings are skeletal. Walls stand in jagged fragments, roofs caved in, windows gaping like empty eye sockets. Vines have overtaken everything, thick and thorny, weaving through the ruins like veins. Some of the structures are burned—blackened stone and melted metal, evidence of fire so intense it fused the materials together.
And everywhere, everywhere, there are bones.
Not just dragon bones. Smaller ones too. Humanoid. The servants and allies who lived among us, who called this place home. They're mixed in with the rubble, half-buried in dirt and ash, their skulls staring up at the poisoned sky.
"This wasn't just a battle," I say, my voice hollow. "This was extermination."
"Yes," Ghatak agrees. His hand slips from mine, and he moves forward, crouching beside a pile of rubble. He brushes away dirt and ash, revealing something metallic beneath. When he pulls it free, I see it's a sword—or what's left of one. The blade is broken, the hilt scorched, but I recognize the craftsmanship.
Void Clan work. My father's forge.
"They fought," Ghatak says, turning the broken sword over in his hands. "They fought hard."
"And they lost," I finish bitterly.
He looks up at me, his silver eyes unreadable. "We all lost, Astraea."
I want to argue. Want to rage at him for his calm acceptance, his stoic composure. But I can't. Because he's right. Whatever happened here, it didn't discriminate. Void Clan, Chaos Clan—it doesn't matter. They're all dead.
We're all that's left.
The thought should be comforting. Should make me feel less alone. But instead, it just makes the weight in my chest heavier.
I turn away from Ghatak and walk deeper into the ruins. My feet carry me without conscious thought, following paths I walked a thousand times in my youth. The streets are unrecognizable now—cracked and overgrown, littered with debris—but muscle memory guides me.
I'm heading toward the palace.
Or what's left of it.
The royal residence was built into the mountainside, a sprawling complex of halls and chambers carved directly from the stone. It was a masterpiece of draconic architecture—soaring ceilings, intricate carvings, windows that caught the light and refracted it into rainbows. My mother used to say it was the most beautiful place on Vernike.
Now it's a tomb.
The entrance collapsed, the massive doors—carved from a single piece of obsidian—shattered into fragments. I climb over the rubble, ignoring Ghatak's warning shout behind me, and squeeze through a gap in the debris.
Inside, the darkness is absolute.
I summon a sphere of chaos magic, letting it hover above my palm. The purple light flickers and dances, casting long shadows on the walls. The hallway beyond is intact, mostly, though the ceiling has caved in places and the floor is littered with broken stone.
I move forward, my footsteps echoing in the silence.
The palace is a maze, but I know it by heart. I navigate the corridors without hesitation, passing rooms that were once filled with life and laughter. The dining hall, where we gathered for feasts. The library, where I spent hours poring over ancient texts. The training grounds, where my siblings and I sparred until we collapsed from exhaustion.
All empty now. All silent.
I reach the throne room and stop.
The doors are gone, torn from their hinges. Beyond them, the vast chamber stretches out, illuminated by the faint glow of my magic. The thrones—two massive seats carved from black stone and inlaid with silver—are still there, though one is cracked down the middle and the other is covered in dried blood.
Mother's throne. Father's throne.
I step inside, my breath catching in my throat.
The floor is stained. Dark patches that could be blood or ash or both. And in the center of the room, directly between the thrones, is a pile of bones.
Two skeletons, intertwined.
I don't need to examine them to know who they are. I can feel it, the echo of their presence lingering in the stone. My parents. The King and Queen of the Void and Chaos Clans. They died here, in this room, defending their thrones.
Defending me.
The grief hits me like a physical blow, driving me to my knees. I press my hands to the floor, my fingers digging into the stone, and I scream.
It's not a sound of sadness. It's rage. Pure, incandescent fury that rips through me like wildfire. My magic surges in response, chaos energy exploding outward in a shockwave that cracks the walls and sends debris flying. The thrones shatter. The floor splits. The ceiling groans and begins to collapse.
And then Ghatak is there, his arms wrapping around me, pulling me against his chest. His void magic rises to meet my chaos, the two forces intertwining and neutralizing each other. The destruction stops, the energy dissipating into the air.
"Breathe," he murmurs against my hair. "Astraea, breathe."
I do, gasping for air, my body shaking with the effort of reining in my power. The bond between us pulses, warm and steady, anchoring me.
"They're gone," I choke out. "They're all gone."
"I know," he says, and his voice is so gentle it breaks something inside me.
I turn in his arms, burying my face in his chest, and I let myself cry. Not the silent tears of earlier, but deep, wrenching sobs that tear through me like knives. Ghatak holds me through it, his hand stroking my hair, his presence a solid anchor in the storm of my grief.
When the tears finally subside, I pull back, wiping at my face with the back of my hand. "I'm sorry," I mutter.
"Don't be," he says. He cups my face in his hands, his thumbs brushing away the remaining tears. "You're allowed to grieve, Astraea. You're allowed to feel."
"I don't want to feel," I say bitterly. "I want to destroy it! I want to find whoever did this and tear them apart piece by piece."
"We will," he promises, and there's a darkness in his eyes that matches my own. "But first, we need to understand what happened."
I nod, taking a shaky breath. He's right. Rage won't bring my family back. But knowledge—knowledge can be a weapon.
We leave the throne room, and I don't look back at the bones. I can't.
Ghatak leads me through the palace, his hand never leaving mine. We explore room after room, finding more evidence of the massacre. Bloodstains. Scorch marks. The remnants of magical battles were so intense; they left permanent scars on the stone.
In one of the upper chambers—my mother's study—we find something that makes my blood run cold.
A message, carved into the wall in jagged letters:
THE VOID CONSUMES ALL. THE CHAOS STARTS HERE.
"Sadie," Ghatak says, his voice flat.
I turned to him. "Do you remember her?"
"Fragments," he admits. "I remember... a coup. A betrayal. The Great Elder of the Void Clan—she wasn't what she seemed."
"What was she?" I demand.
"A demon," he says, and the word hangs in the air like a curse. "A wrath demon, disguised as one of us. She orchestrated the civil war. Turned the clans against each other."
The pieces start to fall into place. The political tensions I remember from before I cast the spell. The whispers of dissent, the accusations of treachery. It wasn't organic. It was manufactured.
"She wanted us to destroy each other," I say slowly. "And we did."
"Not all of us," Ghatak says. He gestures to himself, then to me. "We survived."
"Because we were hidden," I counter. "Because we were asleep."
He doesn't argue. He can't.
We leave the palace and make our way back to the settlement. The sun—or what passes for it—is setting, casting the ruins in shades of crimson and gold. It's beautiful, in a twisted way. The kind of beauty that only exists in the aftermath of destruction.
"How far does it go?" I ask as we walk. "The devastation. Is it just this settlement, or—"
"It's planetary," Ghatak says quietly. "I can feel it. The void energy that used to pulse through Draconis—it's gone. Snuffed out. Whatever Sadie did, it didn't stop with our clans."
I stop walking, staring at him. "You're saying she killed everyone?"
"I'm saying she tried," he corrects. "Whether she succeeded..." He trails off, his gaze distant.
I follow his line of sight and see what he's looking at. In the distance, beyond the ruins of the settlement, there's a structure still standing. A tower, tall and black, silhouetted against the dying light.
"What is that?" I ask.
"The Spire of Echoes," Ghatak says. "A repository of knowledge. If there are answers anywhere, they'll be there."
I nod, a plan forming in my mind. "Then that's where we go next."
He looks at me, and for the first time since we left the cave, I see something other than grief in his eyes. I see determination.
"Together," he says.
"Together," I agree.
We stand there for a moment, hand in hand, staring at the tower in the distance. The world around us is dead, our people exterminated, our families gone. But we're still here. Still breathing. Still fighting.
And that has to be enough.
For now.