Chapter 16 · Fall Into the Old World

The first thing Lio felt was Cael’s heartbeat.

It hammered against her palm where she pressed it to the black fissure in his chest. Too fast. Too deep. Each beat sent a tremor through the archive floor, shaking dust from the iron shelves and making the glass tubes overhead clink like nervous teeth.

Then the heartbeat stopped.

Cael’s body arched.

A sound tore out of him—not a scream, not entirely. Something vast and metallic pushed through his ribs, dragging heat and blue-white light into the room. The wound beneath his uniform opened like an eye. Inside it, beneath layers of blood and burning flesh, a black core rotated in a cage of silver bones.

The dragon-king core.

Lio stumbled backward. Her boots scraped across the tiles. In the reflection of the core, she saw her own face split into two images: Lio Wren, pale and breathless, and another woman beneath her skin with sharper eyes and a mouth trained to deliver sentences that ruined lives.

Elian Voss.

The name struck harder than the explosion beyond the archive doors.

"Don’t look at it," Oro growled inside her ribs.

For once, the dragon’s voice held no arrogance.