Behind Rhine, Fogshadow Marsh burned.
The ogres were dead. The rookies were screaming. Somewhere back toward Kingi Village, an evacuation bell would be ringing soon.
Rhine didn’t wait to hear it.
He cut through the smoke in the Shadow Realm, moving where no footprints could betray him. When he finally surfaced back into the real world, the air tasted of salt instead of rot.
A cliffside cove opened below him. Waves slapped black rock. And perched on the stone like she owned the horizon sat a dragon.
Skye’s eyes glinted as Rhine approached. “Nice job with the acting. You ran like you meant it.”
“I did mean it,” Rhine said, catching his breath. “You set half the county on fire.”
Skye’s throat rumbled, something between a laugh and a growl. “It’ll burn a day. Two, if they’re unlucky. But no one will be following your trail through that chaos.”
Rhine paused. “You’ve been watching.”
“Of course I’ve been watching.” Skye lowered her head until her breath warmed his face. “You’ve had eyes on you since you left Windrest City. Black-and-White Academy eyes. And other eyes.”
Li’s eyes, Rhine thought.
Skye shifted, scales scraping stone. “Come on. I’m not here just to play arsonist. I found something.”
…
They crossed open water under a sky that never quite decided on day or night.
Rhine rode the wind in Skye’s shadow, the sea far below like a sheet of hammered iron. After a time, an island rose from the mist—small, lonely, and wrong.
It was always dusk here.
The sun hung low, frozen on the edge of the horizon. The beach glittered like it had been poured from a jeweler’s tray.
Gold. Coins. Broken crowns. Chains. Cut gems that caught the half-light and threw it back in cold sparks.
Rhine stared. “You’re kidding.”
Skye landed with a thud that sent sand—golden sand—skittering. Then, as if transforming were the most casual thing in the world, she flowed into human shape: black hair, sharp eyes, an expensive-looking dress that didn’t belong on a deserted shore.
She spread her hands toward the island like a stage performer. “Welcome to my new property.”
Rhine blinked. “Your property?”
“I got here first.” Skye lifted her chin. “Therefore, I’m the landlord.”
Rhine let out a slow breath, fighting the urge to laugh and the urge to run. “This doesn’t feel like a joke. This feels like bait.”
Skye’s smile thinned. “It’s bait. I just don’t know for what.”
She pulled a book from nowhere—Rhine recognized it instantly.
The Lost Book.
“A new page appeared a few days ago,” Skye said. “It gave me this island’s coordinates. It didn’t mention… all this.” She kicked a gold coin with the toe of her boot. It clinked and rolled into a pile that could’ve funded a war.
Rhine frowned, eyes scanning the unnatural treasure. “So the gold came later.”
“Maybe,” Skye admitted. “Maybe it was always here and my ancestors just didn’t write it down.”
Rhine accepted the book when she offered it. The page was written in a harsh, elegant script—dragon language.
He read it anyway.
Skye’s expression flickered with surprise. “You can read that?”
Rhine didn’t look up. “Apparently.”
Skye stared at him for a second, then huffed. “Right. Of course you can. At this point, if you told me you could breathe underwater and bargain with storms, I’d just nod.”
Rhine kept reading. The new page was brief—like a warning carved in haste:
An island hidden in the Endless Sea. An island that never sees daylight, forever trapped in dusk after being polluted by something unknown. A message to the black dragons’ descendants: watch it, guard it, remember it.
One line that made Rhine’s skin prickle.
The primordial dragons were not extinct.
More than a hundred eggs still slept somewhere in the Endless Sea.
Rhine shut the book slowly. “That… changes everything.”
Skye’s gaze went distant, older than her face should’ve looked. “It explains everything. Why my clan was hunted. Why Marsas betrayed the Black-and-White Academy and stole this book. Why my parents died.”
“Marsas,” Rhine repeated, tasting the name. The traitor. The one who’d kept dragging shadows across his life.
Skye’s eyes sharpened again. “Marsas wasn’t alone. She had help—other dragon bloodlines. They wanted what the black dragons guarded.”
Rhine glanced at the mountains of treasure. “So they dumped hoards here?”
“Or they used this island as a vault.” Skye’s voice cooled. “Either way, it means they found it. And if they found it, they’ll come back.”
Rhine handed the book back. “If this place is polluted… what polluted it?”
Skye didn’t answer right away. She looked toward the island’s interior, where the air seemed thicker, like the dusk itself had weight.
“Something that can stain an island so hard it forgets daylight,” she said finally. “Something I don’t want to meet alone.”
Rhine swallowed. For all the gold, the shore felt… wrong. Like a corpse dressed in jewelry.
Skye tapped the book’s cover with a finger. “There’s more. Older notes. About outsiders.”
“Outsiders?”
Skye nodded. “My ancestor wrote that not every being who could read dragon script was a dragon. There was a race once—golden-eyed. They weren’t born from the Weaving Mother, but they understood her words. One of them helped the black dragons, long ago.”
“The Weaving Mother,” Rhine echoed.
Skye’s tone turned reverent for a heartbeat. “A goddess to humans. A primordial dragon to us.”
Rhine didn’t comment. He was too busy feeling the ground shift under his assumptions.
Skye exhaled, the seriousness returning like a drawn blade. “I came here because I needed you to see this. And because I’ve been preparing for what comes next.”
“What comes next?” Rhine asked.
Skye’s smile returned—sharp, satisfied. “Dragons.”
Rhine stiffened. “You have a plan to deal with dragons?”
“I do.” Skye’s eyes gleamed. “I caught a few people at sea. Forced them to do some work for me. They were asking about you—about ‘Rhine’—all the way back in Windrest City.”
Rhine’s heartbeat ticked up. “Who are they?”
Skye tilted her head, amused by his sudden tension. “They claim they’re like you.”
Rhine’s mouth went dry. “Players?”
Skye nodded once. “Players.”
She turned toward a narrow path that led off the glittering beach and into the island’s dusky interior.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go meet your kind.”