The obsidian under Gunther’s boots was no longer cool. It was heating, a slow, dangerous warmth bleeding up through the soles. The air, once choked with the Pyre Lord’s sulfurous presence, now tasted of dust and cracking stone.

  “Platform’s gone,” Jacob grunted, peering over the island’s edge at the churning, cooling magma moat. His left arm hung useless, the shoulder a swollen, angry purple beneath his torn tunic.

  Sihar knelt by a chunk of shattered throne-bone, her fingers tracing the rough edge. Her face was ash-streaked, her expression distant. “The magic holding this place together is unspooling. The anchor is gone.”

  “We noticed,” Gunther rasped, wincing as she pressed her hand against her ribs. She scanned the cavern. The great archway they’d entered through was now a jagged maw, half-collapsed, blocked by a cascade of fallen rock. The distant, vaulted ceiling groaned, sprinkling them with gravel. The light from the magma was dying, the cavern sinking into a deepening, hellish twilight.

  “Think,” she said, more to herself than the others. “The Pyre Lord didn’t fly. He walked. There has to be another way out. A servants’ passage. A waste chute. Anything.”

  A thunderous crack echoed, not from above, but from the walls. A web of fissures raced up the cavern’s side, glowing with residual heat before dulling to black.

  “Over there,” Sihar said suddenly, pushing herself up. She pointed not to the walls, but to the base of their own obsidian island. Where it met the solid rock of the mountain’s heart, a deeper shadow lurked, partially obscured by a fallen buttress of petrified dragon scale. “A draft. I feel it. Cold air.”

  It was all the hope they had. Jacob moved first, a stumbling jog that turned into a pained slide down the gentle slope of the island’s edge. Gunther followed, every breath a knife-twist. The ‘draft’ was a narrow, arched opening, no taller than a man, carved directly into the living rock. It exhaled a breath of stale, mineral-chilled air a stark contrast to the forge-heat of the throne room.

  “This is it,” Jacob said, ducking his head to peer inside. “Tight. Dark.”

  “Dark is better than buried,” Gunther replied, pulling a small, flickering witch-light from a pouch at her belt. The pale blue glow did little to push back the gloom, but it was enough to see the first few yards of a steep, descending stairway carved from the same black basalt.

  They entered in single file: Gunther with the light, Sihar, then Jacob guarding the rear. The sound of the dying throne room vanished behind them, replaced by the scuff of their boots, their ragged breathing, and the ever-present, deepening groan of the mountain. The stairs spiraled down, the walls slick with condensation. The air grew colder, damper. This was not a ceremonial route. This was utility. A forgotten artery.

  They descended for what felt like an age, the only measure of time the growing burn in their thighs and the increasing violence of the tremors that shook the passage. Dust and small stones pattered down from above. Then, the stairs ended abruptly at a rough-hewn landing and a T-junction of tunnels. Both directions stretched into identical, swallowing darkness.

  “Which way?” Sihar whispered, her voice loud in the confined space.

  Before Gunther could answer, a tremor stronger than any before slammed through the mountain. The wall to their left buckled inward with a sound like grinding teeth. Rock dust billowed, choking them. From the right-hand tunnel, a distant, unearthly screech echoed, high-pitched and full of molten rage.

  “That’s not the mountain,” Jacob said, his good hand going to the hilt of his broken sword.

  Another screech, closer. Accompanied by a skittering, scratching cacophony, like a hundred knives being dragged over stone.

  “Magma-wyrms,” Gunther spat, the memory of the Pyre Lord’s lesser kin surfacing. “The collapse must have stirred the deep warrens. They’re panicking.”

  The scrabbling grew into a tide of sound, flooding the right-hand tunnel. Gunther shoved Sihar toward the left. “Go! Now!”

  They ran. The left tunnel was lower, forcing them into a crouch. Gunther’s witch-light bounced madly off the close walls, revealing twisted, melted formations the scarring of ancient dragon-fire. The screeches behind them multiplied, a chorus of fury and fear gaining fast.

  The tunnel dipped, then opened into a wider, cylindrical chamber. In the center, a deep, dark shaft plunged into nothingness. Spanning it was a single, narrow bridge of fused stone and ancient, blackened wood. On the far side, another tunnel mouth promised escape.

  The bridge was less than two feet wide. No railings. Below, only a void and a faint, distant red glow that pulsed with the mountain’s death throes.

  “Over!” Gunther commanded.

  Sihar didn’t hesitate. She stepped onto the bridge, arms out for balance, and moved with a swift, delicate grace, her feet finding sure purchase on the uneven surface. She was halfway across when the first of the magma-wyrms spilled into the chamber behind them.

  They were smaller than a man, but not by much. Their bodies were serpentine, armored in overlapping plates of cooled, crackled lava. No eyes, just gaping maws lined with razor-sharp crystalline teeth, glowing from an inner furnace. They moved in a scuttling, insectile surge, a dozen or more, their heat washing into the chamber.

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  Jacob turned, planting his feet at the bridgehead, his broken sword held low. “Go, Gunther!”

  “Like hells,” Gunther growled. She let the witch-light fall, splashing the chamber in jagged blue shadows, and raised her hands. Her magic was a guttering candle after the conflagration of the Pyre Lord fight, but she had enough for this. She focused on the tunnel mouth they’d just exited, on the ceiling just inside it.

  “Riven-stone, break and fall!” she shouted, her voice raw.

  A concussive thump echoed in the confined space. The ceiling of the tunnel entrance collapsed in a roar of dust and shattered rock, sealing it shut. Three wyrms were crushed. Two more, faster, had cleared the entrance and now skittered toward Jacob.

  The big man met the first with a grunt of effort, not swinging the shattered blade but driving its point like a spear into the gap between two neck plates. The magma-wyrm thrashed, a hiss of steam jetting from the wound, before going still. The second lunged at his legs. Jacob kicked it, his boot sole sizzling at the contact, and sent it skittering back.

  “Gunther, the bridge!” Sihar’s shout came from the far side.

  More scrabbling came from the other side of the rockfall. They’d find another way around. They always did.

  Gunther stepped onto the bridge. The void yawned beneath her, a cold updraft plucking at her clothes. She kept her eyes fixed on Sihar’s form, a silhouette against the faint light of the far tunnel. Behind her, she heard Jacob’s pained shout and another wet, steaming thud.

  She was three-quarters across when the tremor hit.

  It wasn’t a shake. It was a lurch. The entire chamber seemed to drop a foot. The bridge, stressed beyond its ancient limits, screamed in protest. A central support beam of petrified wood splintered with a crack like a lightning strike.

  The bridge listed sharply to the left.

  Gunther dropped, her stomach lurching, fingers clawing at the stone. She caught herself, her body slamming against the slanted surface, legs dangling over the abyss. She hung there, breath knocked out, the distant red glow swimming in her vision.

  “Gunther!” Sihar was on her knees at the far edge, arm outstretched, but she was too far.

  Jacob was at the near side. The last wyrm lay dead at his feet. He saw Gunther dangling, saw the bridge groaning, its remaining supports buckling. Without a word, he ran.

  Not to the bridge.

  To the side of the chamber. To a jagged, protruding spur of rock the size of a wagon wheel. He dropped his sword, braced his good shoulder against it, and pushed.

  Muscles corded in his neck. A terrible, grinding sound tore from his throat, a mix of effort and agony from his shattered shoulder. The rock didn’t move.

  The bridge groaned again. Gunther felt her grip slipping, the stone slick with her own sweat.

  Jacob roared. It was a sound of pure, animal defiance. He drove forward with everything he had, legs pumping against the floor. With a grating shriek of stone on stone, the massive spur shifted, then tipped. It fell forward, not toward the bridge, but past it, tumbling into the void.

  For a second, nothing. Then it struck the far wall of the shaft, just below the bridge’s far anchor point.

  The impact was colossal. The entire chamber shuddered. The bridge, already unmoored on Gunther’s end, now had its far anchor shattered by the impact of the massive rock. It pivoted violently, no longer a bridge but a falling slab.

  Gunther was thrown upward by the whipping motion. She flew through the air, a short, terrifying arc, and crashed into the rocky ledge at Sihar’s feet. Sihar grabbed her arm, hauling her back from the edge as stone and timber rained into the abyss.

  On the other side, Jacob stood alone. The bridge was gone. A ten-foot gap of sheer nothingness now separated him from safety. The chamber trembled again. More cracks snaked across his side of the chasm.

  “Go!” he bellowed across the gap, his face a mask of soot and determination. “The whole mountain’s coming down! Go!”

  Gunther staggered to her feet, Sihar’s support the only thing keeping her upright. “No! Jump, Jacob! You can make it!”

  Even as she said it, she knew it was a lie. The gap was too wide, the ledge too unstable for a running start. With one good arm, it was impossible.

  Jacob shook his head. A strange, weary smile touched his lips. “Told you I’d see it through. Now get those people home.” He turned his back to them, facing the sealed tunnel, as if expecting more wyrms, or the mountain itself, to come for him.

  “Jacob!” Gunther’s shout was ripped away by another subterranean roar.

  Sihar’s hand was iron on her arm. “He bought it. He bought the time. Don’t waste it.”

  She pulled Gunther, stumbling, into the far tunnel. Gunther’s last glimpse was of Jacob, a solitary, broad-shouldered shape against the crumbling rock, before the tunnel curved and darkness took him.

  The new passage climbed. It was arduous, a relentless upward slope strewn with rubble. They ran, walked, crawled, driven by the thunder at their backs and a grief too vast and immediate to feel. The air began to change. The stink of sulfur faded, replaced by the clean, cold scent of damp earth and pine.

  Ahead, a pinprick of gray light.

  They pushed toward it, their strength fueled by desperation. The light grew, resolving into a ragged hole choked with roots and hanging vines a natural fissure in the mountainside. They scrambled out, collapsing onto a steep slope of scree and hardy mountain grass.

  It was night. A real night, with a sky full of stars and a waning moon. The air was freezing, biting at their lungs. They were high up, on a rocky shoulder of the mountain. Below, the foothills spread out like a rumpled cloak.

  Behind them, inside the mountain, a final, deep-throated boom echoed, muffled by countless tons of rock. Then a long, sighing rumble that seemed to go on forever. A great plume of dust and steam erupted from a higher peak, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, before settling into an ominous, settling silence.

  The Pyre Lord’s stronghold was gone. Buried.

  Gunther lay on her back, staring at the cold, indifferent stars. Her body was a map of pain. Her ribs screamed. Her hands were bloody claws. But the physical pain was nothing. It was a quiet anchor.

  Sihar sat beside her, her arms wrapped around her knees, shivering violently. She wasn’t looking at the mountain. She was looking east, toward the distant, unseen villages they had sworn to protect.

  After a long time, she spoke, her voice thin in the vast night. “We have to tell them. The cult’s source of dragons… it’s cut off.”

  Gunther closed her eyes. She saw Jacob’s weary smile. She heard his last command. Get those people home.

  She pushed herself up onto her elbows, every movement an act of will. The horizon to the east was beginning to lighten, a thin band of pale gray beneath the stars.

  “Yes,” she said, the word tasting of ash and resolve. “We tell them. And then we find the next one.”