The storm had teeth.
Lucerys felt them in every gust that slammed against Arrax’s wings, in rain that came sideways instead of down, in thunder that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
He held on with both hands fisted in the reins, chest pressed low against Arrax’s neck.
Just clear the clouds.
Above the storm.
Safety.
They broke through a heartbeat later, into a vast, silent black scattered with more stars than he’d ever seen from the ground.
For one suspended moment, it was almost peaceful.
Then the shadow came from the side.
He didn’t hear Vhagar so much as feel her — an absence of air, a wrongness in the sky — and then teeth, vast and ancient, closing around Arrax’s body.
There was no scream.
There wasn’t room for one.
The world broke apart around him, and Lucerys was falling, weightless, the sky and the sea and the lightning spinning into one long smear of nothing.
This is it, he thought.
I’m going to die.
His mother’s face.
Jace, and the words he hadn’t said before he left.
The rain, no longer cold.
The dark below, almost gentle now.
Then, impossibly, there was light.
Not lightning.
Something softer, golden, blooming open in the air in front of him, unbothered by the wind that should have torn it apart.
The gods, he thought.
Something.
He reached for it the way a drowning man reaches for anything.
His fingers closed around it — solid, warm, entirely wrong for a world made of falling — and a voice arrived.
Not spoken.
Simply known.
[Would you like to enter Void City?] He didn’t understand the words.
He didn’t need to.
Yes, he thought.
Anything.
Please.
The storm didn’t stop.
The sea kept rushing up to meet him.
But the light didn’t let go either, and somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, Lucerys Velaryon simply wasn’t there anymore.
• • Mary had the evening watch at the gate — the square behind her full of noise and light, laughter drifting over from Tsukasa’s booth, the whole city warm and unbothered on the other side of it.
She was refolding a stack of guest ledgers when the gate began to glow.
Not the usual gold.
This flickered, streaked through with storm-gray.
The gate opened, and Mary’s whole body went cold.
A boy.
Thirteen, maybe — western-featured, dark hair plastered flat with rain that shouldn’t exist inside Void City at all, one arm bent wrong, blood soaking through torn, storm-wrecked clothes.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven pulls.
“Ari-sama!!” The scream tore out of her before she decided to make it, loud enough to silence Tsukasa’s booth in the same instant.
She was on her knees beside him before she’d registered moving, hands hovering, afraid to touch anything so broken.
• • Ari had been lounging on the sofa, half-listening to the noise from the booth, when Mary’s scream reached her.
She was at the gate before the sound finished echoing.
She saw the boy, and her hands curled into fists.
Ari didn’t care for much.
There was exactly one thing that had always cut straight through her, no matter how little effort she put into everything else, and it woke now, fully, at the sight of a child’s body broken this badly.
She crouched beside him, two fingers at his throat.
A pulse — faint, but there.
System.
Bring out any healing items.
Now.
[Recommended: direct Void Point expenditure.
Note — your current level does not permit higher-tier healing items.] Then spend what we have.
Now.
Light gathered around her raised hand.
She swept it above him, slow, and the crowd watched the impossible happen — bleeding stopped, torn skin knitting closed in visible ripples, the bent arm straightening with a soft, sickening pop as bone realigned beneath skin already sealed whole.
Within a minute, the boy who’d arrived broken simply looked asleep.
He didn’t wake.
• • Near the back of the crowd, Harry, Naruto, and Anya stood pressed close together, saying nothing.
Naruto’s hands had curled into fists.
Harry had gone pale, staring at the boy with the particular horror of recognizing how easily it could have been him.
Anya said nothing at all, which for Anya was the loudest reaction there was.
Cinderella was there before any of them had to ask.
She crouched between the three of them, one arm around Anya, a hand on each boy’s shoulder, saying nothing that pretended the moment wasn’t frightening.
“He’s safe now,” she said finally.
“You saw what she did.” “I’ve never seen anyone almost die before,” Harry said quietly.
“I know,” Cinderella said, and didn’t pretend that made it easier.
• • Levi hadn’t moved.
He watched the boy’s body from the edge of the crowd, jaw tight, hands curling at his sides before he noticed them doing it.
A wall that hadn’t held.
A sky full of screaming.
Small bodies, wrong in all the same ways.
Gojo moved first.
He crossed the square without his usual grin, knelt, and gathered the boy up carefully.
He rose, looked at Ari.
“I’ll take him, Ari-sama.” Not a trace of his usual grin.
Ari looked at him a beat longer than the moment needed, and didn’t correct the honorific this time either.
“Kids’ center,” she said.
“Cinderella will meet you there.” Gojo walked off with the boy against his chest, and the square went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with awe.