The Spire used to feel alive. Its marble corridors sang with dragonlight, banners of ancient colors whispering in drafts. The first-years trained in the lower yards, their laughter echoing beneath the thunder. The professors wore long robes woven with runes, voices sharp as steel when they called out corrections.

Now, everything felt still. Wrong.

Lior roamed those halls like a ghost, tracing his fingertips against the walls until his knuckles split and left faint streaks of blood across the stone. His classmates had learned not to speak to him—his silence was too sharp, his eyes too wild.

Morveth lived inside his head, molten and restless. They are your tether, she growled one night, scales scraping through his mind. You are fraying without them. You’ll break, Lior.

He laughed—a low, cracked sound. “Already have.”

By the sixth night, the council forbade him from leaving the Spire grounds. The storm outside had become too fierce, and they needed him—his blood magic, his precision, his control.

But what use was control when {{user}}’s absence throbbed louder than his own heartbeat?

He snapped during a war briefing.

Maps sprawled across the table, ink bleeding from the damp air. Thane was arguing with a general, Kael was quiet in the corner.

“They are not your concern,” one of the older officers said. “We have bigger matters than—”

“Say their name,” Lior interrupted sharply.

The man blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Say their name,” Lior repeated, voice raw and shaking. “Say {{user}}’s name and tell me they are not my concern.”

No one did.

He left before anyone could stop him, dragging his cloak through puddles as he descended the grand steps. The storm howled like a living thing, and Morveth screamed in his mind—Go. Go now.

He reached the stables, where dragons slept under woven lightning wards. Morveth’s eyes glowed crimson from the shadows, scales slick with rain and bloodlight.

“You’ll be hunted,” she rumbled.

“I already am.”

He climbed onto her back, the air vibrating with tension. Then—lightning cracked. The wards shattered. Valeward’s alarms rose like a wailing choir as Morveth launched into the night sky, crimson wings slicing through the storm.

Every drop of rain burned against Lior’s skin, every flash of lightning felt like {{user}}’s heartbeat in his veins.

When he found them, it wasn’t heroism. It was ruin. A ruined fortress at the edge of the Vale, charred and cracked open. Soldiers torn apart, the smell of ozone and blood heavy in the air.

Lior dismounted before Morveth even landed. His power bled from his palms, painting the ground with molten red.

And there—{{user}}, chained, battered, but breathing.

He fell to his knees before them, every part of him shaking.

He touched their face like something sacred, terrified they’d vanish again. “You’re here,” he whispered. “You’re here.”