Jelam. Battered, bleeding. In the outer ring. The copper token dug cold edges into her palm. “Rhovgar!” Her voice, still rough from the Wyrm’s internal inferno, was an urgent plea. Tashna pointed toward the stone screen. “He’s out there. Drevok threw him in.” His eyes, the color of solidified lava, narrowed, understanding dawning. A low growl rumbled in his chest, not of anger, but of fierce protectiveness. He didn’t question, didn’t hesitate. With a roar that shook the cavern, his form blurred, his bones groaning, stretching, reforming with the snap of shattering granite. Smoke billowed around him, obscuring his humanoid shape, then receding to reveal the true majesty of his scaled being. He was immense, a creature of obsidian and crimson, his vast wings unfurling to scrape the cavern ceiling. His head, crowned with sharp horns, lowered, his breath a blast of heated air against Tashna’s face. “Climb.” His voice rumbled through the marrow of her shins. “Hold fast.” Tashna didn’t need to be told twice. She scrambled onto his broad back, her fingers digging into the rough, hardened scales at the base of his neck. Rhovgar launched himself skyward, his powerful wing beats generating a gale that swept through the cavern, propelling them out through the shattered opening the Wyrm’s death had created. Sulfurous draft whipped around them, biting and hot. Below, the outer perimeter fractured into splintered ledges, basalt needles, and eddies of grit. Tashna scanned desperately, her heat vision cutting through the gloom, searching for Jelam’s familiar energy signature. There. A small, struggling cluster of heat. Five figures, larger and more aggressive, closing in on a smaller, weaker one. Drevok’s trackers, clad in boiled hide and notched iron. “There!” she yelled over the wind, pointing a trembling finger. “Down there!” Rhovgar banked sharply, a streak of midnight and flame against the bruised sky, plummeting towards the conflict. The mercenaries, intent on their prey, didn’t see the descending doom until it was nearly upon them. Jelam, pushed against a rock face, a fresh gash bleeding down his temple, looked up, his jaw slackening before his fingers clawed toward her. Before Rhovgar's talons scraped rock, Tashna dropped. She hit the scree between the killers, kicking up chalky soot. Five iron blades whipped round. “The Ash-Bringer!” one snarled, his eyes fixed on the fiery tips of her hair. “Drevok’s bane!” Her name, once a curse, now tasted like power on her tongue. The wind howled around them, stirring the omnipresent dust. Tashna drew in the soot-laden draft, letting the volcanic heat coil through her veins. “You come to claim my kin?” Her voice stayed low, shearing beneath the wind’s whistle. “You lay hands on my blood?” The lead tracker lunged with an obsidian blade. Tashna didn’t flinch. She simply extended her hand, palm open. The ambient ash, fine as flour, swirled, then danced, answering her will. It thickened around the lunging fighter, sealing over his mouth and nostrils. He choked, stumbled, his hands flying to his mouth. But the ash didn’t just choke him. It hardened. Inside his very lungs, it solidified, like rock setting in fresh air. His eyes bulged, a gurgling sound escaping his lips, before he collapsed, his body going rigid, then still. The remaining trackers backed toward the cliff face, boots sliding in the grit. “You dare come for my brother?” Tashna repeated, her voice rising, infused with a dangerous, rhythmic cadence. Her gaze swept the remaining four. “Breathe the soot.” One by one, they gasped, they clawed at their chests, their movements becoming increasingly frantic, then stiff, as the very air they breathed turned to stone within them. They dropped, not with a scream, but with a silent, terrifying finality. Only their vacant stare remained, catching the glare of the magma vents. Rhovgar landed heavily behind her, flaring his wings like shields. Jelam, tears streaming down his dust-stained cheeks, stumbled towards her, collapsing into her arms. She held him tight, her own blood thrumming with a violent mix of relief and fury. He was safe. For now. Then, the broadcast rune flickered again, not the raw feed, but a pre-recorded projection of Drevok himself. His face, projected large and shimmering in the hot air, was a mask of desperation and fear, but his voice, amplified, still rasped with his familiar bark. “Tashna! Heel! Submit! Release him! He belongs to Kholvas! You are an exile—you hold no rank!” His throat hitched, his sneer coming undone. Tashna’s head snapped up. She didn’t look away. She didn’t look down. She squared her shoulders, refusing the old instinct to duck her chin. The hesitation that had ruled her since youth curdled into heat beneath her ribs. She raised the copper key. Runes along the glyph flare-post sparked, catching her frequency and blasting her tone across the amphitheater galleries above. “I am Tashna,” she said, letting the low rumble of the volcanic floor carry every syllable. “I am banished no longer. I claim this rock. I claim my brother. And I claim my mate.” She met the projection without flinching. “You are a broken Alpha, Drevok. Your rule is cinders. And your pack will answer to me.” An iron horn shrieked across the chasm, rattling the shale underfoot. A rasping speaker cut through the subterranean hum. “WARNING! FINAL ERUPTION PHASE INITIATED! TOTAL INCINERATION IN FIVE MINUTES!” Magma surged against subterranean vents, rattling the rocks. Basalt seams split open red and smoking; the perimeter locks had sheared.

The Ash-Bringer's Decree