Call - Of Dragons Dragon Trail 28-3

She ran.

Elara looked at Valdris. The Great Drake lowered his massive head, his snout brushing her chest. “You held the line. That is enough, little one. Now go. I will hold the Maw open.”

She had three seconds to decide. The evacuation flare was already burning. Her legion was retreating through the last stable portal.

“I’m not severing anything,” Elara whispered. She drew her dragonbone blade and signaled the legion. Call Of Dragons Dragon Trail 28-3

The ground trembled. A emerged from the central chasm—twice the size of the others, its crystal not on its head but replacing its left eye . It began to sing.

The explosion threw her ten yards. She landed hard, ribs cracked, but the Matriarch collapsed—and its death-cry triggered the third Keystone.

“Sing back,” she commanded her remaining mages. “The Hymn of Unbroken Stone. NOW.” She ran

Valdris rose. Not fully healed, but angry . His one good wing spread wide, and he breathed a cyclone of emerald fire that incinerated two final waves of shard-wyrms before they could emerge.

“Focus fire on the central thorax!” she shouted. “The crystal there is their anchor!”

Elara placed her forehead against Valdris’s scales. “I’ll find you. In the next Trail. In the next life. I’ll find you.” “You held the line

From the eastern fissure, six shard-wyrms slithered forth, their tails scraping glyphs of decay into the stone. Elara’s archers loosed volleys of void-tipped arrows, but the creatures’ hides refracted light, turning each arrow into a prismatic ghost.

Elara felt it too: the burning of her home village, the faces of those she couldn’t save. But Valdris’s heart-flame pulsed beneath her feet—warm, stubborn, alive.

Valdris shuddered. A low, ancient voice echoed in Elara’s mind: “They came for my heart-flame, little one. Do not let them take it. If the Keystones fail… sever my spine. Let me die a drake, not a husk.”