Page 41 of Ashfall

“We’ll handle the line,” he says. “Get moving. He was spotted near the obsidian ridge.”

I nod once and reach for Ember’s hand. “Stay close. This ends today.”

She squeezes back. “Wasn’t planning on letting you have all the fun.”

We shift mid-run, our bodies stretching and reshaping, bones cracking, skin hardening, wings tearing free as fire pours through us. The ground falls away as I surge upward, the wind roaring past my ears, and my wings unfurl with the familiar rush of power that never stops being intoxicating. The beast in me howls with purpose.

Beside me, Ember explodes into the sky, her dragon form radiant—a blaze of molten gold and wildfire fury. Her eyes catch the light like sun on blade-edge, her scales flickering between heat shimmer and raw flame. She doesn’t fly—she commands the air around her.

We launch into the smoke-streaked wind, slicing through ash and updraft like twin missiles. The air is thick with soot and heat, updrafts buffeting us from below, making every wingbeat a battle and a dance. My muscles burn with the effort, but it feels good—right.

Below us, the Blackstrike Unit fans out in tight formation, a coordinated arc of movement as they brace to confront the encroaching blaze. They look tiny from up here, but they move like giants—like the last line holding back the end of the world.

Ember banks left, brushing her wingtip against mine. “You smell like sex and war.”

A low growl rumbles in my chest. “You’re the one who blew fire into my skin.”

“I regret nothing.”

The canyon splits wide beneath us, jagged and blackened like a scar torn through the world. Rivers of ash wind through its depths, glowing faintly with ember veins that pulse like dying hearts. The heat rising from below is brutal—oppressive even at this height—warped air distorting the edges of stone and sky alike.

Then I see him.

A shape, at first—wrong, heavy, dragging shadow where there should be light. Then wings. Then the rest. Malek rises from the smoke like a nightmare born from fire—massive, twisted, haloed in flame and malice. His eyes gleam with that same unbearable hunger, and that grin—too wide, too sharp—cuts across his face like a fresh wound that never healed. He looks worse than before, darker somehow, like every second in the shadows twisted him deeper into something unnatural.

I don’t wait. I dive, fire spilling from my jaws in a blistering arc. Ember follows, our flames dancing together in perfect rhythm. Malek meets us midair, his fury rolling off him like stormfronts. The stench hits me first—acrid, rotted, thick with the reek of corrupted magic.

Claws clash. Wings thunder. Fire tears across the sky.

“He’s drawing it!” Ember’s voice shouts in my head. “Feeding the fire with his rage.”

“Then we starve him.”

We strike in tandem, relentless and synchronized—two storms crashing into one. Our claws rake across his hide in coordinated sweeps. Our fire blends midair, forging a wall of heat and light that presses Malek back again and again. He’s brutal, unpredictable, his movements wild and jagged, like he’s barely containing something inside him that wants out.

He spins midair and lashes out, catching Ember’s flank with a blast of corrupted flame. I roar and dive, biting into his exposed wing. He howls and twists, trying to wrench free, but we don’t give him room. Ember recovers in a heartbeat and flanks him, her body a streak of gold fury, her flame answering mine with a roar of vengeance.

Then, without warning, he folds his wings and drops. Not retreating—luring. He slams into the canyon floor hard enough to send a shockwave rolling up through the stone. Flame explodes outward from the impact point, not natural, but summoned—twisting, dark, fed by something foul. It punches into the air, sparking a new firestorm that surges up and tries to swallow us whole. The blaze roars with Malek’s rage, and the canyon becomes a furnace of chaos.

For a heartbeat, I think Ember might falter. The fire lashes around her, wild and furious, the wind trying to rip her from the sky. Her wings shudder under the pressure, and the heat is so intense it warps even her golden glow.

But then I see it—the difference in her stance, the way her wings flare wider, defiant. Her jaw locks. Her eyes burn—not with fear, but with focus, with fury, with absolute control. Power ripples outward from her in a golden shockwave, parting the inferno like it answers to her alone.

She doesn’t just withstand the fire.

She bends it.

Commands it.

Becomes one with it.

She is the fire now?—

—and it knows who it belongs to.

“I’ve got the fire,” she says through the bond, her form flaring gold. “Take him.”

I hesitate only a second, just long enough to feel the bond between us pulse steady—solid—in the chaos. Her wings beatwith iron determination, cutting clean arcs through smoke and ash. Her flames don’t just redirect the inferno—they sculpt it, curve it back on itself, a burning serpent snapping at its own tail. The fire obeys her. She’s got it. She owns it. And I know—deep in my bones—I can trust her with this storm.

---