The sound of warning horns echoed throughout the forest as wyvern riders darted between the trees to get to their mounts. The deep bellows started to overlap as more outposts took up the call, as full-blooded dragons roared overhead, sounding the alarm.

Eira's fingers fumbled with the straps of her riding harness as she sprinted between the trees, her boots sliding on patches of wet leaves. The proverbial hornet's nest had been kicked all around her as the entire forest had erupted into chaos. Riders wrestled with their mounts, trying to secure saddles and harnesses on already agitated creatures. One particularly irritated wyvern thrashed its head, nearly taking out its handler with its horns as he struggled to get its battle armor in place.

"Get those beasts in the air!" someone shouted as Eira ducked under a wing.

She vaulted over a fallen log, narrowly avoiding a collision with another rider who was sprinting in the opposite direction. More horns joined the desperate chorus — not the deep bellows to take off, but the shorter, sharper calls signaling for immediate scramble.

This was different from the organized response they'd drilled for. There was no time for proper formations, no chance to gather intelligence or coordinate their defense. The absolute chaos of this ordeal told Eira everything she needed to know — they were here.

The otherworlders had finally come.

Through gaps in the canopy, Eira caught glimpses of shadows launching skyward as the elements that were on standby took off. Leaves and broken branches rained down as wings beat against the forest ceiling, riders not even waiting to clear the trees before urging their mounts higher.

Eira had no time to properly organize her people or even hear what it was they were even taking off for. Whatever the dragons caught wind of had spooked them enough to trigger every goddess-forsaken alarm in the region and dragged everyone south towards this supposed rift where the otherworlders had appeared. But the dragons' infectious urgency that spread through the ranks caused an outright panic. It was like a domino effect as draconic roars led to horns blowing to get the wyverns airborne for miles.

Eventually, Eira reached Skadi, who was as agitated as the rest, growling and snapping at anyone who strayed too close. But the moment he caught sight of Eira, his restless energy focused, and he immediately stilled himself for armoring. Eira slid to a stop beside the armor plating she'd left propped against a tree and immediately got to work.

"Good boy, Skadi," she cooed, running a hand along his neck as she worked. "Such a good boy." The wyvern rumbled in response as she quickly but methodically secured straps and checked enchanted buckles.

"Wings out," she commanded, and Skadi immediately complied, spreading his impressive wingspan. Eira darted around her mount, fingers probing every joint and scale, checking each piece of armor. She wouldn't risk missing something like a loose strap or misaligned plate just because they were in a hurry. Any one of those things could either leave a gaping hole in her at best or send her tumbling to her death at worst.

Satisfied with her inspection, Eira vaulted onto Skadi's back, securing her helmet with one hand while harnessing herself to the saddle with the other. "Now!" she commanded when secured before laying flat against his armored neck.

Skadi arced his wings in preparation for take-off as mana gathered around him. His legs coiled beneath him, and his muscles tensed while orienting upward. He kicked off the ground with an explosive burst, snapping his wings outward as he released the built-up energy in one powerful downbeat. The resulting gust propelled them violently toward the dense canopy above. But, just before the thorns and branches bombarded his rider, Skadi's wings curled inward, creating a protective shield around Eira as they punched through to join the massive aerial armada.

Despite his efforts, a few whip-like limbs still found their mark, leaving stinging cuts and bruises against Eira’s exposed skin. Skadi, however, had taken the brunt of the assault, his armored hide deflecting the worst of it. Together, they plunged into absolute bedlam, where dragons dominated the airspace above as their massive forms climbed higher and higher. At the same time, streams of wyverns surged upward from the forest below, struggling to keep pace with their larger, more powerful cousins.

Eira's eyes darted frantically between the already airborne wyverns, searching for her flight's distinctive red and yellow wing markings. She'd be damned if she was going to charge into whatever in the infinite hells awaited them without some semblance of organization or structure. The last thing she wanted was to get into some chaotic scrap with no wingman to back her up or a flight to protect her flank.

But through the chaos, Eira eventually spotted a few wyverns with the same colors painted on their wingtips. Their riders' heads swiveled frantically as they, too, began to search for their flight mates.

Banking Skadi into a wide turn, Eira flew against the grain to stand out from the mass of ascending riders. Once she caught everyone's attention, she pulled on the control handles, signaling Skadi to rear back hard and flare his wings. She displayed her colors and the commander's banner prominently against the bright sky as he hovered momentarily, causing every other wyvern to turn out of the way to prevent a collision.

The maneuver had its intended effect. Against the mass of ascending wyverns, Skadi's obsidian scales made them impossible to miss. His dark form hung there like a hole in the sky, commanding attention amidst the sea of colors. In response to Eira’s little stunt, beats twisted and turned to avoid collision before continuing their ascent while riders riders snapped their heads toward them letting out a slew of curses. But Eira could care less about their irritation — she needed her people, and her gambit had paid off.

One by one, wyverns bearing her unit's colors broke from the chaos to join Eira’s formation. The red and yellow markings on their wings flashed in the late afternoon sun as they took up their positions next to her. But as she counted that heads that fell into formation, Eira saw that only a little more than half had made it airborne. It wasn’t ideal, but with the dragons agitation growing more obvious by the second, they couldn't afford to wait. The rest would have to catch up when they could.

Drawing in a deep breath to steady herself, Eira gathered mana into her right hand. The familiar tingle of power spread through her arm, until her limb and both of Skadi's wingtips glowed with a bright, ethereal red. Then the wyvern commander made a deliberate circular gesture, signalling her subordinate riders to form up and follow as she restarted her ascentto catch up with the rest of the horde.

Eira’s heart hammered in her chest the formation began their climb. Their tight, disciplined formation stood out sharply against the chaotic swarm around them as the moved as a unit rather than a scattered mess of individual riders. Where other flights struggled to maintain any form of cohesion, her people moved as one.

Above them, the dragons' behavior only caused her anxiety to intensify. These weren't the Juveniles or even sometimes Young Adults she usually shared airspace with during patrols and training flights. These were elders and even a few ancient dragons — massive beings whose wingspans could eclipse entire villages. Their scales bore the signs of centuries, and their presence made the air feel like lead. The great beast's agitation sent ripples of unease through the smaller wyverns as they snarled and snapped at each other.

Never in Eira's life did she think she'd see so many massive dragons in one place. Now, she already prided herself on maintaining a professional composure, but Eira couldn’t help but gawk at the congregation, flying frantically toward whatever awaited them. Most riders went through their entire careers without seeing more than one or two beings of such power and age, but here she was, flying within a whole flock.

But even her wonder at the elder dragons paled compared to what came next. Eira’s carefully maintained decorum shattered completely as her jaw dropped when unfathomably large ancient seraphic dragons cut through the sky above her flight. Their iridescent scales left trails of glowing magical essence in their wake, and the air seemed to shimmer.

Eira only saw them from a distance as they worked at an altitude she couldn’t even fathom going to. To see one this close was incomprehensible. Skadi, an already sizable beast, was barely the size of a single feather on their massive wings.

Stolen novel; please report.

And this Seraphic dragon wasn’t alone. Just under a dozen of these legendary creatures powered through the sky in their own tight formation, and their ancient wings carried them past not just the wyverns but even the larger, scaled dragons as if they were standing still. To see just one of these beings of myth, let alone multiple, made Eira's blood run cold.

With a shake of her head, Eira forced herself to focus and tightened her grip onto Skadi’s control handles. Now was not the time to just sit there and gawk. If creatures of such power were this agitated, whatever awaited them had to be beyond dangerous and she couldn't afford to be distracted by awe, no matter how magnificent the sight above her was.

Glancing back, she noticed more of her unit were trickling in, drawn to the only organized formation in this aerial chaos. While still not at full strength, their numbers had far exceeded her expectations. Then again, being the sole disciplined unit in this frenzy made them stand out like a beacon as it attracted wyvern riders outside of her flight.

As they flew, the sun beat down on them in an oppressive manner, obstructing the rider's sigh with a particularly nasty glare. However, despite the relentless rays of the late afternoon sun, the biting chill of their speed cut through Eira's riding leathers. Her body was cramped against the harness, forced into an unnatural position that made every muscle protest. The only thing protecting her from the full force of their velocity was the way Skadi's scales and spines created a windbreak around her position. Still, the cold found its way through, a constant reminder of their incredible speed.

Eira lowered her head and closed her eyes, trying to focus on anything except her protesting body. Every few minutes, she'd look up to check their progress, and each time she was shocked by how far they'd went. "We're moving awfully far out..." she muttered with a tinge of concern creeping into her voice.

Looking down, she noticed the forest below showed no obvious signs of their forces — no fog banks concealing troops, no magical barriers, nothing. For a moment, she thought they might be passing over the druids' grove but quickly dismissed the idea. The treants would have already started pelting them with tree trunks or debris if they'd strayed that close to their domain.

The realization that they must have flown much further south than she initially thought threw Eira through a loop. When the alarms first sounded, she'd assumed they were scrambling for an imminent attack, but they'd been flying for well over half an hour now. As her attention finally pulled away from the ancient beings above, something caught her eye on the horizon—something that made her stomach twist with unease.

A section of the sky looked... wrong. Eira squinted against the glare, focusing on the anomaly and saw a perfectly shaped sphere of what appeared to be early morning darkness an untold amount of miles in the distance. The aberration was so subtle she'd almost missed it, like a smudge on an otherwise pristine painting and the longer she stared, the more unnatural it seemed. It was as if that part of reality itself had been replaced with something else.

"What in the infinite hells..." she whispered, tilting her head in confusion.

Her grip on Skadi's control handles tightened unconsciously. Was this some new kind of spell? Some magical experiment they hadn't encountered before? Whatever it was, she knew this was the very thing that had spooked the dragons.

But… if this strange phenomenon was the source of whatever was happening, why weren't they flying directly toward it? Their formation was running almost parallel to it. As a matter of fact, they were slowly backing away as if giving it a wide berth. They were still going in their general direction, but it felt like they were chasing something.

Something that had escaped from that eerie aberration in reality.

Looking up to try to make sense of their course, Eira focused on the seraphic dragons now at an even higher altitude. The great beasts were accelerating even as if moving to intercept something far out of the horde's reach.

The wyvern commander narrowed her eyes, scanning the unsettled skies for any sign of hidden foes. In an instant, the world changed. the feathered titans reared back, bleeding off speed and conjuring a cascade of multi-colored barriers that shimmered with hues like stained glass. Each iridescent wall appeared far in front of the seraphic dragons for only a breath before exploding into glittering shards as if absorbing the force of a hundred invisible arrows. One after another, the barriers broke in swift succession, scattering their fragments into the wind while the sounds of thunderous impacts resounded shortly after the dazzling display.

Eira’s mouth fell open in shock when something equally as jaw-dropping caught her attention at the corner of her eye. One of the scaled dragons just above her jerked violently as if struck by an invisible hammer. Its pained roar shook the sky as its massive body thrashed in agony and dropped several hundred feet. As it fell, its tail and wings swept through a formation of riders below, sending wyverns and their pilots tumbling to the ground before it righted itself and growled in anger.

Snapping her head around wildly, Eira looked to see if anyone else had witnessed what had just happened and saw that everyone was equally disturbed. But before anyone could even process that they were under attack, true horror unfolded before them. Dozens of wyverns at the head of their formation simply... came apart. Some were violently blown in half, showering those close behind them with viscera, while others sprouted massive holes in their bodies as if struck by invisible giants' arrows. Both riders and mounts alike fell from the sky in pieces. There was no warning, no visible attack — just sudden, inexplicable carnage.

The scene repeated itself across the sky like a grotesque theater play. Waves of invisible attacks tore through their ranks, leaving only carnage in their wake. Eira found herself trembling as her head snapped from side to side, desperately searching for any sense of direction. But there were no orders coming, no battle plan being formed, and no tactical maneuvers — how could there be when you were against an enemy you couldn't even see?

Looking at her fellow commanders, she saw the same panic mirrored in their body language. Even the most seasoned riders seemed lost and hopeless in the face of yet another volley from invisible enemies. The devastating attack tore through their formations, and for a heartbeat, all felt eerily silent when something Eira would have considered impossible caught her eye. Just above the masses of wyverns, Eira caught the sight of a juvenile dragon suddenly going rigid. There was no struggle, no roar of defiance; the mighty creature simply stiffened and dropped from the heavens like a stone. And when it crashed through the canopy, the impact shook the earth.

At that moment, the truth hit Eira like a physical blow. One of the most powerful beings in their world had been snuffed out as easily as a candle’s flame. It appeared the Duchess hadn't been chasing shadows nor jumping at phantoms. Whatever they were fighting were swatting wyverns out of the skies like flies and slaying dragons.

Eira’s survival instincts screamed as another wave of attacks lit up the sky. Explosions bloomed like deadly flowers, catching those that were foolish enough to fly close together, turning riders and mounts alike into red mist.

“DIVE!” Eira screamed, channeling power into her arm until it glowed like a beacon. Her hand cut sharply downward in a desperate command as she wrenched Skadi’s control handles. The wyvern responded instantly and pitched his nose almost straight down, beating his wings with all his might. Eira’s vision blurred at the edges from the sudden maneuver. Her body strained against the harness, and gravity fought to hurl her from the saddle.

Then she saw it — for just a fraction of a second as a white, elongated shape with tiny fins, moving faster than anything she'd ever seen, shot past her faster than she could even comprehend. If Eira had delayed for just a moment longer, her and Skadi’s fate would have been sealed. But that didn’t mean she was spared from any of the aftereffects. A thunderous crack soon followed after the projectile and hit Eira like a hammer, sending Skadi into an uncontrolled spin. Her world became a blur of sky and forest as the sound wave scrambled her senses. She could feel Skadi thrashing, trying to regain control, but the control handles had slipped out of her hands.

Up became down as Eira flipped head over heels, causing her to lose all sense of orientation in the chaotic tumble. While violently swinging around, her grip on Skadi slipped, and the very harness meant to secure her now whipped her around like a ragdoll. She let out a desperate screech while flailing blindly for anything to hold onto, but her searching hands found only smooth scales. To make matters worse, each impact against Skadi’s body robbed her lungs of air before the harness flung her back into empty space, only to jerk her to another bone-jarring stop.

Fortunately, Skadi managed to pull out of their death spiral, leveling off just before they brushed the treetops. The abrupt shift slammed Eira into his flank, forcing a gut-wrenching “oof” from her lips and leaving her dangling like a puppet on a single string. The world was still spinning, but when she realized she wasn’t dead, her raw survival instinct kicked in. Eira scrambled back onto Skadi’s saddle as if pursued by demons while her fingers clawed for purchase on his armored hide.

As her vision steadied, Eira looked up to see she wasn't alone in her desperate dive. Not only was her unit diving, but nearly every wyvern rider in the sky was following close behind, breaking formation to get as low as possible. Those who didn't were met with fire and brimstone. Explosions were so powerful that Eira felt them in her bones, blooming in every inch of the sky.

The message was clear— if you stayed high, you died. But even hugging the treetops wasn't guaranteed safety. Riders were still being picked off left and right, sending their bodies and their mounts tumbling into the forest below. The projectiles that missed turned the forest itself into kindling, either exploding trees into splinters or boring holes clean through as if struck by a giant's arrow.

It dawned on Eira that there was a very good chance she wasn’t going to make it out of this alive. The bone-rattling explosions, the deafening cracks of objects breaking the sound barrier, and the screams of those falling to their death all mixed into a hellish chorus that made her blood run cold.