The deep shelters hummed with desperate life.
Owen moved through the tunnels, past huddled families, past wounded dragons lying on stone floors, past hatchlings who didn't understand why the world had suddenly become darkness and whispers. The shelters had been designed for exactly this...emergency evacuation, long-term survival, waiting out catastrophe. But no design could prepare for the weight of what had been lost.
Three hundred dragons remained. Three hundred out of thousands. The rest were dead on the battlefield above, their bodies cooling under a sky that no longer belonged to them.
Chronara sat apart from the others, her ancient eyes fixed on nothing. She'd been like that for hours—since the last survivors sealed the shelter doors, since the celestials' victory chants faded into distant echoes.
Owen sat beside her.
"You can feel it too," she said quietly. "The pressure. The weight."
"Yes."
