Rebecca watched the sparkle from the gold on her table. Maybe I can use just a little. Her brother left a pile of temptation behind. She had told herself that she didn't need the help, that she could figure it out on her own.

  The job hall had nothing for the seventh day in a row. Her class in logistics was a boon and guaranteed her a job, too bad that job was on another planet. She couldn't participate in that. The scars were too fresh. She watched every day as her brother cracked a little more. The system had taken something from her that she didn't know if she would ever get back.

  She would not help conquer a world she had never seen.

  Last night, when she returned, the locks had been changed.

  McAllisters, when it came down to it, had an abundance of tenacity. Others called it stubbornness, but they didn't get it. How could they? Whichever it was, tenacity or stubbornness, she had scaled the rain-slick brick without hesitation, boots slipping once, fingers burning from friction, hauling herself through her own window with a quiet satisfaction that made the effort worthwhile. If they wanted her out, they would need more than inconvenience.

  The cube in her living room had begun humming three nights ago. A low vibration that seemed to originate somewhere. It felt like Dane.

  In his note, he had written that whatever she did, the cube was the most important object on the planet.

  More of his delusions, she had told herself.

  And yet she had cleared the room around it and found herself watching it some nights like an animal that wasn't quite tamed yet.

  If it mattered to him, she would protect it.

  Reality tore open, and something stepped through.

  He was taller than her ceiling and ducked his head as he stepped through the portal. He had razor-sharp teeth that had long been stained with blood. His scales were a dark matte black that drank in the light rather than reflecting it. Heat radiated from him in slow, steady waves that thinned and produced a faint shimmer around him. A curved saber rested at his hip, its metal old and tarnished from heavy use, and where his level should have been, there were only question marks.

  "What do you want?" Rebecca asked and was proud that her voice did not tremble.

  The Dragonkin did not answer.

  His gaze drifted past her to the cube. It was hard to read the Dragon's expression because they were so alien to her.

  He began to mutter to himself in a language she didn't understand.

  Lyra woke with her father's voice still in her ears.

  He had been standing over her again, broad shoulders filling the doorway of her childhood bedroom, the old wooden practice blade resting against his palm as if he had never put it down. You should have chosen steel. His voice had not been angry. It was never in the dreams. Just certain. Steel doesn't waver.

  Sometimes, in his dreams, he told her he was proud.

  Those were worse.

  She lay still in the dark, staring at the ceiling, letting the remnants of his voice fade into the quiet. The building around her was silent.

  But there was a pit in her stomach.

  She had learned to trust that feeling. It was the same hollow drop she felt the night her mother didn't come home. The same tightening in her chest when Chronowell began to unravel. And now it was there again.

  Something was wrong.

  Her mage armor went on without thought. Straps pulled tight. Plates settled into place. She didn't rush, but she didn't linger either. The feeling in her gut hadn't faded since she woke up.

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  She checked on the twins first.

  They were sprawled on the couch with a bowl of popcorn between them, some bright illusion flashing across the wall. One of them glanced over when she stepped inside.

  "You in?"

  "I'm good," she said.

  They shrugged and went back to the movie.

  She stepped into the stairwell.

  The feeling got worse. By the time she reached Rebecca's floor, the air felt different.

  She came around the corner and saw the red notice on the door. that read in bold letters EVICTION.

  Lyra almost turned away.

  Then she felt it.

  The air around the door was burning like a spatial rift. Like standing too close to a furnace. Her first thought was of Dane. That idiot finally decided to come back.

  The idea brought anger before relief.

  But something was off.

  Dane's presence had always felt warm. Even after what happened to Chronowell, the only change was that the warmth was behind spikes now.

  This was bigger and sloppier; whoever was beyond the door wasn't trying to mask their aura, and it was a strong B rank one.

  She pressed her hand to the door. And frost curled down along her spine into her hand. She had to use more mana than she had thought. The door began to groan and crack under the temperature change.

  Frost crawled across the hinges, and she drove her shoulder forward. The door burst inward in a crack of splintering wood and ice.

  Cold rushed into the room, slamming into the heat.

  Steam rolled between her and the figure inside.

  Rebecca stood near the center of the room.

  And in front of her stood something that did not belong there.

  "Step away from her," Lyra said, her voice level, the cold already gathering along her spine and bleeding outward in currents that traced faint veins across the floorboards. She did not chant. The mana moved because she willed it to move, bending without resistance, shaping the air around her.

  Rebecca stepped slightly to the side but did not retreat. "Lyra, wait."

  "Move."

  "He hasn't attacked."

  Lyra did not look at her. Her attention remained fixed on the Dragonkin, watching the subtle shifts in posture, the minute adjustments in balance that betrayed intent. "That doesn't mean he won't."

  The Dragonkin's gaze settled fully on her now, and she felt the weight of it in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. He was not measuring her strength the way lesser opponents did; he was reading her, noting the absence of chant, the control, the way her breathing did not change despite the heat.

  "You are weak," he said at last, his voice low and resonant.

  "That doesn't mean I can't hurt you," Lyra replied.

  For a moment, nothing moved.

  Then his attention drifted past her again, returning to the suspended cube, which had begun to fragment into shards. The violet distortion deepened as if responding to his focus, the hum shifting pitch in a way that made Lyra's teeth ache.

  "I have no choice," he murmured, more to himself than to either of them.

  Rebecca's voice cut through the thickening air. "He hesitated before you got here. He didn't attack me."

  The Dragonkin had seemed confused,

  "Why are you here?" Lyra asked.

  His eyes did not leave the cube.

  "Her."

  The shards began to rotate slowly in the air, gravity bending inward toward a center that had not existed moments before. The distortion thickened, swallowing the edges of furniture and wall alike, the hum deepening until it felt like a second heartbeat inside her chest.

  Lyra felt the shift a breath before it became visible. Mana around her twisted, not outward in attack but inward, drawn toward that growing center. She reached instinctively to counter it, cold surging in controlled resistance, but this was not a force she could push back.

  The air compressed hard, and her ears rang. Rebecca swore softly. Even the Dragonkin stepped, wings flexing slightly as the pull intensified.

  "Rebecca," Lyra warned, though she didn't know what to say.

  The floor folded in on itself.

  Space collapsed inward like fabric drawn tight at the center of a fist, walls bending and dissolving into violet light. Sound vanished first, then heat, then the sensation of gravity itself.

  For a breathless instant, there was nothing but pressure and the awareness of being moved.

  Then stone met her boots.

  Cold dust filled her lungs.

  Violet haze hung low against a broken skyline of fractured arches and collapsed towers. They were in Chronowell.

  Lyra stumbled as she absorbed the impact and straightened slowly, the air here pressed against her skin in a way she had not felt since the day Dane sealed it. The hum was no longer contained in a cube; it lived in the stone itself, faint but present, like a scar that had never fully closed.

  Rebecca stood a few paces away, eyes wide as she took in the devastation.

  The Dragonkin remained upright and still, gaze sweeping across the ruins with something that looked less like surprise and more like recognition.

  "He sealed this place," Lyra said quietly, though the words were meant more for herself than either of them.

  "I know a Dragon God's thrown when I feel one, where is the king?" the Dragonkin replied, stepping forward with all of his weight, boots grinding against fractured stone.

  "He is not a king,"

  The Dragonkin's eyes widened at the statement. "I will not tolerate anyone speaking of an elder Dragon that way," he began to draw the saber.

  Lyra began to gather the water from the air, drawing it out and preparing for the fight.

  The Dragonkin twitched. "Wait, I sense something else here."

  From somewhere behind them, deeper within the broken corridors of Chronowell, came the unmistakable sound of metal striking stone.