The sky folded inward.

  That was the only way Sei could describe it—pressure collapsing from every direction as the dragon committed, wings drawing tight as it descended in a final, merciless arc.

  Heat crushed the ground. Stone screamed.

  Sei tried to move.

  His legs didn’t answer.

  His lungs burned like paper held too close to flame, every breath scraping, shallow, useless. The healing thread he’d been maintaining for hours snapped—not violently, but quietly, like a tendon finally giving out.

  Rhen stood alone in the open, massive frame braced despite the tremor running through him. He didn’t look back. He didn’t flinch.

  Eva shouted Sei’s name.

  Brannic shouted something else—orders, warnings, prayers.

  Sei heard none of it.

  All he felt was emptiness.

  Not fear. Not resolve.

  Just the hollow certainty of having nothing left to give.

  I can’t—

  The dragon roared.

  The sound punched through Sei’s skull, rattling bone and thought alike. His vision tunneled, dark closing in at the edges. He reached out blindly—toward Rhen, toward the sky, toward anything—

  —and nothing answered.

  Then something else did.

  Not loud.

  Not violent.

  A pulse moved through him like a remembered motion.

  Green light spilled from his hand.

  Not a flare. Not a blast.

  It flowed—liquid, precise—coalescing into shape with impossible intent. The glow narrowed, sharpened, drawing inward until it formed a blade of translucent emerald light, edges so clean they seemed to erase the air around them.

  Sei’s eyes flooded black-purple.

  Veins along his arms darkened, glowing faintly beneath the skin like ink pressed against glass.

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  His expression went empty.

  And Sei fell unconscious.

  But his body did not fall.

  It rose.

  Smoothly. Soundlessly. Too controlled to be natural.

  Eva froze where she stood.

  Brannic’s breath caught in his throat.

  This wasn’t power erupting.

  This was something taking over.

  The dragon’s shadow swept across the ground, vast and suffocating—but then it stuttered.

  A wave of green energy rippled outward from Sei, not explosive but compressive, collapsing heat inward like a surgeon pressing down to stop bleeding. Flames distorted. The air screamed once and folded.

  The dragon faltered mid-dive.

  For the first time since Sei had seen it, the creature hesitated.

  Sei moved.

  Not away.

  Forward.

  He crossed the distance between stone and sky in a blur of motion that made Eva’s breath leave her lungs. No wasted step. No flourish. Just purpose.

  He placed himself between Rhen and annihilation.

  The Scalpel hummed—low, inviting, wrong.

  Then Sei struck.

  Not the head.

  Not the chest.

  Not the heart.

  The blade cut upward along the dragon’s right wing—not slashing wildly, but opening it, tracing the membrane where power and lift converged. The strike was impossibly clean, the green light passing through scale, sinew, and structure like they were diagrams instead of flesh.

  The dragon screamed.

  Not in rage.

  In pain.

  The sound shattered the valley, raw and broken. The wing buckled mid-beat, the membrane collapsing inward as if its own anatomy had betrayed it. One massive limb spasmed uselessly, air slipping through torn control surfaces.

  The dragon veered violently.

  Its flight turned jagged—erratic, unbalanced—each wingbeat uneven, lurching as it fought gravity it could no longer command.

  Blood—dark, steaming—sprayed across the sky, hissing as it struck stone below.

  Rhen stared, stunned.

  That wasn’t magic, his mind supplied, cold and certain.That was anatomy.

  The Scalpel drank.

  Green light deepened, pulsing once—twice—then shuddered as Sei’s body trembled hard, like a vessel pushed past tolerance.

  The dragon retreated—not gracefully, not dominantly—but fleeing, its wounded wing dragging it into a spiraling ascent, flight uneven and desperate. It disappeared into the clouds jaggedly, roaring in fury and memory.

  It was alive.

  But it would never forget this.

  The blade dissolved.

  Green light collapsed inward.

  Sei’s body finally gave in.

  He dropped.

  Hard.

  The ground caught him without mercy, dust blooming around his still form. His eyes remained dark, veins still faintly glowing as the last remnants of the Scalpel bled away.

  Silence followed.

  Not relief.

  Aftermath.

  Rhen took a single unsteady step forward, then stopped. He looked down at the unconscious man who had stood between him and extinction.

  Slowly, carefully, Rhen knelt.

  Up close, the healer looked smaller than ever. Fragile. Human.

  And yet—

  He didn’t save me, Rhen thought, something cold and unfamiliar twisting in his chest.He cut the world so I could keep standing.

  Far above, the clouds closed over the dragon’s retreat.

  Crippled.

  Wounded.

  Remembering.

  And on the ground below, the cost of refusing to let something die lay unconscious, breathing shallowly—his hand still faintly warm, as if the blade had never truly left it.