The Great Gate of Mount Dread stood open to the void for the first time in five thousand years.
High upon the eastern precipice, the Grand Rift-Arch—a colossal ring of interlocking obsidian pillars carved with the primordial constellations—roared with unstable celestial energy. A swirling vortex of violet ether and golden starlight churned within the circle, vibrating with such intensity that the mountain’s foundations hummed beneath the boots of the assembled host.
Ten thousand armored warriors of the Night Court filled the terrace in absolute, breathless silence.
The Black Vanguard sat mounted upon their armored Night-Drakes, their lances tipped with freezing void-frost. Behind them stood ranks of high-fae archers, shadow-sorceresses, and heavy sentinel phalanxes clad in black dragon-scale. Above the vanguard fluttered the twin banners of the realm: the silver crescent of House Vance and the blazing golden sunburst of the Sunblood.
At the head of the host stood Kaelen and Seraphina.
Kaelen’s armor had been swiftly repaired by the royal smiths, the cracked dragon-steel reinforced with cold-forged adamantine bands. His wounds were bound and his broken ribs mended by the royal healers, though his jaw remained tightly clenched in lethal, focused anticipation. His eighty-foot shadow-wings arched high into the stormy sky, casting a towering, protective canopy over his queen.
Beside him, Seraphina was a vision of radiant, terrifying majesty.
Her white dragon-scale battle armor gleamed under the twin moons, her sunstone recurve bow strung and slung across her back. At her hips rested newly forged daggers of white solar crystal, humming with quiet plasma heat. Her twenty-foot wings of starlight burned with blinding brilliance, illuminating the dark ranks of the immortals who now looked to her not merely as their sovereign, but as their vanguard.
"The tear over your mortal city has widened to three miles across," Kaelen said, his deep baritone cutting through the deafening hum of the gate. "The Ashen Maw has deployed heavy siege-carriers along the lakefront. They are harvesting mortal ether to awaken the slumbering titan beneath the streets."
"Then we strike with total, overwhelming force," Seraphina replied, her amber eyes burning with fierce, uncompromising resolve. She turned her head, looking up into his molten silver gaze. "The mortals have no weapons that can pierce abyssal armor, Kaelen. Every second we delay is thousands of lives lost."
Kaelen’s expression softened for a fleeting heartbeat. He reached out, his clawed gauntlet gently cupping her chin, his thumb brushing across her lower lip with possessive tenderness.
"They won't die, Seraphina," he growled softly, leaning down until his lips hovered a fraction of an inch from hers. "Because I am bringing an entire empire to burn the earth clean for you."
He pressed a fierce, bruising kiss to her mouth—a seal of shared fate, of blood and starlight bound across dimensions. When he pulled away, the warmth between them ignited into an inferno of synchronized power that sent a concussive shockwave rippling across the terrace.
Kaelen drew Gloom-Weaver, turning to face the ten thousand warriors of Mount Dread.
He raised the broadsword high, the blade erupting in a pillar of blinding abyssal lightning that pierced the clouds.
"Warriors of the Night!" Kaelen’s sovereign roar reverberated off the peaks, echoing into the very marrow of the mountain. "For five millennia, we have guarded the dark from behind our walls. Today, the darkness marches into the light! We cross the Veil not as conquerors, but as executioners! Leave no fiend standing! For the Night Court! For the High Queen!"
"FOR THE QUEEN!" ten thousand voices roared back in a deafening, unified thunderclap that shook the snow from the crags.
Seraphina vaulted onto the saddle of Gloom-Fang, her golden wings flaring wide as she took the reins. Kaelen swung up behind her, his powerful arms wrapping around her waist, anchoring her against his chest as the elder-drake let out an ear-splitting screech of bloodlust.
"Fly!" Seraphina commanded.
Gloom-Fang leaped from the precipice, plunging straight into the swirling, multi-dimensional vortex of the Grand Rift-Arch.
A blinding tunnel of fractured light, screaming temporal winds, and warped gravity swallowed them whole.
Then, the dimensional barrier shattered.
Gloom-Fang burst out of the stormy clouds into the humid, sulfur-choked night air of Chicago.
Below them, the familiar skyscrapers of the Loop were illuminated by raging fires. The iconic skyline was swarming with hundreds of abyssal flyers, their leathery wings beating against the glass of the Willis Tower. Across Michigan Avenue, sirens blared in frantic pandemonium as the terrified mortal city watched ten thousand immortal dragons erupt from the heavens.
Seraphina drew her bow, her amber eyes blazing with vengeance.
"Welcome to Chicago, boys," she whispered.