Elara broke into a grin so wide it looked dangerous. She offered zero explanation.

Gav looked at Elara’s smile, then Serena’s pink, possessed eyes. He couldn’t decide which one was more alarming.

"Everyone can watch this one," Elara said, her voice carrying a command that was entirely hers. She looked at the mages. "Except the three of you."

The reaction was instantaneous.

Maelor turned to her with the outrage of a man told he couldn’t attend his own birthday party. "Excuse me?"

"Turn around," Elara said.

Aeron stared at her, mouth slightly open. Hyran’s brow furrowed so deeply it threatened to become permanent.

"This is an unprecedented discovery on an uncharted continent," Maelor said, his voice climbing register by register. "I have waited my entire career for a moment of this magnitude. You cannot possibly expect me to face a wall."

"I can, and I do."

"I have seven published works on pre-Accord ward architecture."

"And you’ll have your back to this one. Turn around."

All three mages turned with the collective enthusiasm of children told recess was cancelled. Maelor’s jaw was clenched so hard a tendon stood visible in his neck. Aeron looked personally wounded. Hyran exhaled through his nose like a man choosing peace under extreme duress.

Serena spoke in Glaciovox, her voice layered and low, carrying a resonance that had nothing to do with volume.

Elara moved without translating. She took Hale’s hand in silence, guiding him forward and pressing his palm flat against the frozen wall. Then she leaned close and mouthed: Stay. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

No sound. The mages heard nothing.

Hale held still, fingers spread wide against the ice, watching Serena with the quiet trust of a man who had learned when to ask questions and when to stand where he was told.

Serena spoke again in Glaciovox, the syllables rolling through the corridor, ancient and glacial. Midway through, the language shifted.

Draken-Vorah.

The transition was seamless, one tongue bleeding into the next, and the effect was immediate.

Dexmon’s eyes flared gold.

Beside him, Fin’s eyes flared gold at the exact same moment.

They turned to face each other with the slow precision of men recognizing a frequency they had heard in another life. Dex looked at Fin. Fin looked at Dex.

"Brother." The word left both of their mouths at once, spoken in voices that were theirs and older than theirs, layered with something that predated Drakenfell by centuries.

Dex gripped Fin’s forearm. Fin gripped his. A warrior’s greeting, locked and held, the kind of clasp that carried wars and crowns and grief and an eight-year-old boy in borrowed clothes who said yeah to a question about dragons. They pulled into each other, free arms closing around the other’s back in a single, hard embrace.

Gav watched the entire display with his arms folded. "That was weird the first time they did it. And it’s weird this time."

Runes ignited across the wall where Hale’s hand was pressed. Blue Glaciovox script raced upward from his fingertips, and gold Draken-Vorah layered over it, the two languages overlapping and intertwining, burning bright enough to illuminate the corridor in a shifting mosaic of ice and fire.

Elara’s eyes flared silver.

She spoke in Draken-Vorah, her voice clear and commanding. "Remove your hand."

Hale pulled back. He exchanged a glance with Gav, both of them cataloguing everything and understanding half of it.

Where his hand had been, the ice rippled. The surface shimmered, its frozen solidity wavering, becoming something else entirely.

Serena walked through it.

Her body passed into the wall the way a hand slips into still water, the ice yielding around her, parting without cracking, swallowing her whole. One second she was there. The next she was gone, consumed by the glacier, her white hair the last thing to vanish.

Fin stepped forward, jaw locked, and called after her in Draken-Vorah. "Natalia, wait."

Dex gently touched his arm, speaking in Draken-Vorah. "Don’t worry. She has ten seconds before it explodes."

Fin’s shoulders were rigid. Then he turned slowly to Dex.

Dex raised both of his hands, smirking. "What?"

"Asher," Fin said, speaking to Dexmon. "If you smirk at me one more time, I will tell Natalia about your first shift."

Dex’s smirk vanished. "You wouldn’t."

"Try me."

Dex glanced at the wall where Serena had vanished, then back at Fin. His gold eyes glinted, and when he spoke again in Draken-Vorah, the cadence shifted. Lighter. The dragon king’s voice was still there, but Dexmon’s smirk was underneath it, bleeding through like sunlight through a crack.

"I’ll tell her about the time you jumped off the Velanthor balcony."

Fin’s gold eyes cut to him. "You did it five minutes later."

"I looked. Onyx was below me."

"Onyx was a hundred feet to the left."

"He adjusted."

"You fell for six seconds before he caught you. I counted."

"And yet here I stand." Dex’s mouth curved.

Fin’s jaw flexed. The gold in his eyes flickered, the memory settling into Finnick’s body the way a wave settles into sand, absorbed and reshaped. "If she is in there longer than a minute, I’m going through that wall."

"I know you are. And I’ll be right behind you, exactly the way I was a hundred feet to the left of Onyx." Dex paused. "Adjusting."

Fin closed his eyes and exhaled hard through his nose.

Gav leaned toward Hale. "For the record, I have no idea what they are talking about."

"I think I know more than they think I know," Hale said quietly. But he didn’t elaborate.

Behind them, Hyran was staring at Maelor’s back. The realization hit him like a door swinging open. Elara had said the three mages couldn’t watch. Three. He was a descendant of the dragon king. This was a conversation in Draken-Vorah. Elara had lumped all three of them together so the real exclusion stayed hidden and Maelor cooperated.

Which meant Hyran and Aeron had been collateral.

He turned around.

Aeron did a double take so fast his neck should have cracked. His eyes went wide, darting from Hyran to the glowing runes on the wall to the shimmering surface where Serena had disappeared.

Hyran pointed at the back of Maelor’s head. Then pressed a finger to his own lips.

Aeron’s entire face lit up. He turned around with the stealth of a man who had been sneaking looks at forbidden texts since his first year of study and had never once been caught.

The ice rippled again.

Serena stepped through the wall the same way she had entered, the frozen surface parting around her like liquid, reforming behind her into solid glacier the instant she cleared it. In her hands, cradled against her chest, she held a dragon egg.

Light blue, streaked with silver, pulsing with a faint inner glow that matched the runes still burning on the wall.

Dexmon spoke in Draken-Vorah, and the gold in his eyes burned brighter. The layered voice returned, the Dragon King and Dex occupying the same throat, and the words carried the weight of a reunion that spanned lifetimes.

"Another, reunited with his bonded." His mouth curved. "If you touch it now, cousin, you’re carrying it."

Hale’s eyes shifted. Silver bled through his irises, bright and luminous, matching Elara’s exactly.

Serena held the egg out to him. He took it with both hands.