The sky within the eye of the storm was a churning vortex of emerald and ash.
Fafnir tumbled through the air, his wings snapping open to catch a violent updraft. Below him, Zephyrion—the brother he had raced across a continent to find—looked like a ghost of the Great Winds. The majestic, translucent scales that once caught the sun were now matted with a thick, oily sludge. The black rot didn't just leak from his eyes; it pulsed through his veins like a necrotic heartbeat.
"Zephyrion! Stop!" Fafnir's roar was laced with the heat of the Ember, but the Wind Dragon didn't flinch.
Zephyrion's jaw unhinged, and a sphere of compressed, localized vacuum formed in his throat. It whistled with a sound like a thousand screaming souls. With a violent jerk of his head, he unleashed it.
Fafnir barely banked in time. The blast grazed his shoulder, and the skin instantly turned blue with frostbite as the heat was ripped from his body.
