The storm thickened as they ran—not with chaos, but with intention. Lightning condensed into threads that hovered in the air like suspended nerves. Wind funneled downward from the clouds, shaping invisible corridors through the broken landscape. Everything on this world seemed to be gathering, converging, sharpening toward a single, inevitable collision.
Danny felt it more than he saw it.
The sigil stone's pull was no longer a tug. It was a cry. A warning. A plea.
…bearer… hurry… failing…
He stumbled mid-stride.
Shadeclaw grabbed his arm, steadying him. "Stay with us."
Danny tried. He really did. But something inside him—something deeper than the stone, deeper than the whisper—was stirring. Like an old engine groaning back to life. Like a memory of light he had forgotten he still carried.
The storm responded to him.
Wind wrapped around his legs with the gentleness of a guiding hand. Lightning brightened overhead. The cracked ground beneath him vibrated in pulses that matched his heartbeat.
Swift saw it first. "Danny—your energy levels are spiking again."
Jake peeked over a stone ridge and shrieked as lightning struck right beside him. "HIS WHAT IS DOING WHAT?!"
Jade grinned wild. "Oh yeah. I know that look."
Shadeclaw turned just as Danny's eyes began to glow—golden irises brightening until the whites flooded with light.
"Danny?" Mira said quietly, ears flattening. "What are you feeling?"
He couldn't answer.
Because the thing rising inside him wasn't a thought.
It was a necessity.
Creation isn't gentle.
Creation isn't passive.
Creation is the act of existence dominating void.
And Danny had spent his entire life smothering it.
Not now.
Not when something was strangling a sigil stone.
Not when an Elemental Lord was accelerating ahead of them on a lightning corridor.
Not when every instinct he had screamed that if he didn't reach the canyon first, something irreversibly catastrophic would happen.
He stopped running.
The storm stopped with him.
Wind froze. Lightning paused in midair. Even the rumbling earth fell silent.
Shadeclaw turned fully, stepping toward him—cautious, protective. "Danny. What are you doing?"
Danny inhaled.
The world inhaled with him.
Then he released the breath.
Golden light exploded outward.
It poured from his eyes, his skin, the space between atoms. His silhouette blurred, expanding and stretching as scales rippled over skin in shimmering sheets of molten brilliance. Wings burst from his back in vortexes of radiant force—vast, batlike membranes that ignited the air with creation-flame.
Claws unfurled. A tail swept out behind him, carving trenches into the rock. His horns curled upward like gilded crescents. His chest blazed with a sun's heartbeat.
In seconds, Danny was gone.
And in his place stood a full Golden Dragon.
Not half-formed.
Not wounded.
Not restrained.
Complete.
Shadeclaw shielded his eyes as the dragon's radiance washed over him.
Mira stepped back, awe and fear and admiration twisting across her face.
Swift whispered, "So this… this is the unrestrained form."
Jake fainted into a B.E.A.R. suit.
Jade pumped a fist. "FINALLY!"
Bumble screamed with joy. "GLORIOUS!"
Danny raised his head—horns scraping the storm-wind—and roared.
It wasn't a roar of rage.
It wasn't a roar of battle.
It was a roar of existence, of a being reclaiming its rightful shape.
The sound split the storm.
Clouds detonated outward in concentric rings. The lightning corridor Tempestron had used shattered. Wind reversed course, drawn toward Danny as if the atmosphere itself bowed to him.
Creation burned gold across the sky.
Then Danny moved.
He didn't flap his wings.
He erased the space between himself and the canyon with a single beat—creation folding reality inward like a shortcut. The plateau flashed beneath him in streaks of broken light and storm. The stormborn creatures that tried to form in his wake were vaporized by the trail of golden fire he left behind.
In seconds, the team—and the world—were far below him.
Shadeclaw shouted after him, voice ripped away by the wind.
Swift called his name, helpless to match the speed.
Jake wailed that they couldn't follow.
Jade laughed in disbelief.
Mira sprinted forward instinctively, claws digging trenches into stone—
But Danny was already gone.
A single flare of gold arced across the sky toward the canyon like a shooting star aimed with precision.
And farther ahead—
Tempestron noticed.
The storm around the Elemental Lord faltered for the first time.
His throne wavered.
He looked over his shoulder.
His eyes widened.
"Impossible."
Danny slammed past him—
not striking, not attacking—
but outpacing him so thoroughly that Tempestron's lightning trail destabilized and collapsed behind him.
The elemental lord snarled, rings glowing hot. "You dare—"
Danny didn't even hear him.
He was already diving toward the canyon floor where the sigil stone pulsed faint golden light beneath layers of broken earth.
Creation flared in his chest.
…bearer… hurry…
He would.
He would reach it.
He would save it.
Except—
Tempestron wasn't alone in the sky anymore.
A second storm corridor snapped open behind him—one he didn't create.
The wind screamed upward.
Mira, who had run too far ahead of the others, was suddenly lifted off her feet as a vortex spiraled beneath her. She clawed into the ground, fighting the pull—but it wasn't natural wind.
It was controlled.
Rings of air formed around her wrists and ankles like shackles made of transparent steel.
She snarled, slashing wildly—but her claws skidded off the air-rings.
Shadeclaw roared her name and sprinted, shadows trailing behind him in streaks—
But Tempestron was faster.
His storm-throne pivoted midair, circles of lightning forming around his free hand as he reached toward her.
A tornado-lance of compressed wind snapped downward, wrapping around Mira like a coiling serpent.
She was ripped into the air with a scream, spiraling upward toward him.
"No!" Shadeclaw roared, leaping for her—
but a burst of lightning struck between them, forcing him back.
Tempestron caught Mira with one outstretched arm, securing her against his side with storm-bindings that tightened around her limbs and torso.
She snarled, snapped, tried to bite him—
but the air-rings held her jaw shut.
Shadeclaw's howl shook the plateau.
Swift's eyes widened in horror.
Jade swore violently.
Jake screamed.
Bumble beeped in alarm like an ambulance.
Every cadet froze.
Tempestron smirked.
"You cannot beat me in a race toward the sigil stone," he called down, voice echoing across the broken land. "But you can be baited."
Mira thrashed, golden eyes blazing with fury. "LET ME GO!"
Tempestron tightened the storm shackle around her.
"Oh, I will," he said softly, eyes flicking toward Shadeclaw. "When your pack follows me into the den of the other Elemental Lords."
The storm split open behind him—a portal of spiraling lightning and screaming wind.
He stepped backward into it, dragging Mira with him.
Shadeclaw sprinted forward, claws out, shadows blazing—
But he was too late.
Tempestron vanished into the storm corridor.
Mira disappeared with him.
The portal snapped shut.
Silence.
Just the storm and Shadeclaw's breath, ragged and feral.
Then—
Danny's roar tore the sky apart.
A full Golden Dragon, high above the canyon, wheeled midair and turned back toward the team—
and saw Mira was gone.
The storm trembled at the fury in his eyes.
And the ground beneath Shadeclaw cracked under the pressure of his despair turning into pure, killing intent.
Tempestron had made his move.
Now the Elemental Lords awaited them.
The race for the sigil stone had become a rescue mission.
And the full wrath of a Golden Dragon…
and a Shadow Wolf…
had just been awakened.