The shadow fell first, a sudden eclipse of the canyon’s grey light that turned the air cold. Arianda looked up. The roc’s wingspan blotted out the sky, each beat of its massive pinions a thunderclap that shook dust from the canyon walls. It banked, a predator’s elegant turn, and fixed its yellow eyes on the caravan below.

“To the wagons! Now!” Diego’s voice cut through the frozen silence, not a shout but a command that vibrated in the stone underfoot.

The trainees scrambled, a frantic rush of bodies and small, crying dragons herded toward the relative shelter of the supply carts. Arianda clutched Zariel to her chest, his silver scales—hidden beneath crimson dye—pressed hard against her racing heart. She watched as the wardens moved forward, not with panic, but with a terrible, focused speed.

Balor was first. The stout earth-warden planted her feet, hands slamming to the ground. Fist-sized rocks tore themselves from the canyon floor and shot upward in a relentless barrage. They pinged against the roc’s feathered breast like gravel against a slate roof. The beast didn’t flinch.

Christofer stepped forward, his hands weaving a tapestry of flame. A jet of white-hot fire roared upward, engulfing the creature’s head. The roc shrieked, a sound of annoyance more than pain, and shook its head, scattering the fire like water.

Sherief’s loose green robes billowed as he raised his staff. He pulled at the air, trying to twist it into a violent, localized storm beneath the roc’s wings. The winds howled, but against the vastness of the creature, they were a gust against a mountainside. His face tightened with strain, the veins in his neck standing out. “Not enough,” he grunted, the words torn away.

Serena’s graceful hands traced patterns in the air. Above, the moisture coalesced into hailstones the size of apples. They fell in a punishing volley, clattering against the roc’s back. It ignored them, beginning a steep, deliberate dive toward the center of the caravan.

Sherief’s eyes narrowed, calculating. He dropped his staff, planting his hands on his knees. “Gale! To me! We thin it out—spread the air too thin to hold it. Hope the Wright brothers’ understanding is as good as they claimed.”

The green rabbit was at his side in a blur. Together, they focused not on attacking, but on erasing. Under the roc’s left wing, the air suddenly lost its substance, molecules violently shoved aside. The great wing beat down, met nothing solid, and faltered. The creature lurched, entering a clumsy, tilting glide.

Arianda saw it from the wagon. The struggle in the air, the way the roc fought not against blows, but against emptiness. Her mind, always observing, connected the pieces. “The air!” she called out to the huddled trainees around her. “Sera, Nyra—we can help! Don’t push the wind, spread it. Make it thin. Like he’s doing!”

She didn’t wait for agreement. Closing her eyes, she reached for the air not as a weapon, but as a space to be cleared. She felt Zariel’s own affinity brush against hers, a supportive hum. Around her, the other air-inclined trainees followed her lead, their efforts hesitant at first, then strengthening into a coordinated pull.

The effect was instantaneous. The vacuum under the roc deepened, widened. The massive beast shuddered, its controlled glide collapsing into a sheer drop. It hit the canyon floor with a sound that was less an impact and more the world cracking open. Dirt and rock geysered upward. The ground shook, knocking several trainees from their feet.

Before the dust could clear, Balor was moving again. With a roar of effort, she thrust her hands upward her Ox beside her assisting her. The earth around the stunned roc erupted, swallowing its legs, heaving over its body in a wave of stone and soil, entombing it up to its neck. The roc’s shriek was muffled, furious.

Christofer and his dragon, Juniper, moved in unison. Twin streams of concentrated fire seared into the earthen mound, not attacking the beast directly, but superheating the rock that held it. The stone glowed cherry-red, then white-hot, melting into a viscous, molten shell. The smell of burning feathers and scorched stone filled the air, and the roc’s cries became screams of genuine agony.

“Now, Serena!” Balor yelled, her face slick with sweat.

Serena and Azure stepped forward, the blue tiger’s horn gleaming. Where Christofer’s heat ended, their cold began. A wave of profound frost shot from their hands, hitting the molten rock. Steam exploded outward in a scalding cloud, hissing and roaring. The rock crackled, hardened, turned brittle and dark, trapping the roc in a prison of rapidly contracting, super-heated stone.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of cracking rock and the roc’s pained, weakening struggles from within the tomb. Diego walked to the front, brushing dust from his white tunic. He let out a low whistle. “That,” he said, a hint of his usual cheer returning, “is how you take down a roc. Though this one is of unusually magnificent proportions. I’ll send a messenger to Zarinthar. They’ll want to harvest this.”

A sharp, splitting *crack* cut him off. It came from the earthen mound. A fissure raced up its side, then another. The hardened shell was buckling from the inside. The trapped roc, driven mad by pain and confinement, was not finished.

The final, splintering crack echoed through the canyon like a gunshot. The hardened shell of rock exploded outward, and the roc erupted from its prison in a shower of steaming, blackened shards. Its feathers were scorched and matted, its wings ragged, trailing tatters of membrane and bone. It could not fly. It could only scream—a raw, deafening sound of pure agony and rage—and charge.

It moved with terrifying speed for something so broken, a loping, earth-shaking gallop straight for Diego, who stood between it and the wagons.

Diego sighed, a soft, almost disappointed sound. “Hate to do this myself,” he muttered, and then he was moving.

Sebastian was a white blur at his side. The roc’s massive beak, large enough to shear a horse in half, stabbed downward at Diego’s torso. Diego didn’t dodge backward. He stepped sideways, a casual pivot that let the beak whistle past his chest, close enough to stir the fabric of his white tunic. In the same motion, he planted his lead foot and drove forward, his body coiling and unleashing.

His fist connected with the side of the roc’s head, just below its furious yellow eye.

The impact wasn’t loud. It was a deep, wet *thump* that traveled up through the ground. The roc’s head snapped sideways with impossible force. Its entire colossal body followed, lifted off its feet and thrown sideways. It skidded across the canyon floor, plowing a deep, ragged furrow in the dirt and stone, coming to a shuddering halt twenty yards away in a cloud of dust.

Before the dust could settle, Sebastian was on it. The white tiger leaped, a graceful arc of lethal intent, and landed squarely on the roc’s heaving neck. His powerful jaws clamped down. There was a sickening crunch of cartilage and scale giving way. Sebastian shook his head once, a brutal, efficient motion, and tore free.

The roc’s final screech was a wet, bubbling gasp, its eyes wide with an animal understanding of the end. It thrashed once, a weak, convulsive spasm.

Diego walked over, his steps unhurried. He looked down at the dying beast. He drew his fist back and brought it down, not with a wild swing, but with a precise, piston-like drive, directly onto the center of its skull.

The thrashing stopped. The light fled the roc’s eyes. Silence rushed back into the canyon, thicker and heavier than before.

Arianda realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out in a shaky rush, her fingers digging into the rough wood of the wagon side. Zariel trembled against her, a low, distressed hum vibrating through his small body. Around her, the other trainees were utterly still. Simon’s mouth was slightly open. Lilith had both hands pressed over Moss’s eyes. Kira stared, his face pale beneath his tan.

Diego straightened, wiping a speck of dark blood from his knuckle onto his trousers. He looked at his handiwork, then at the stunned wardens and the silent wagons. “Well,” he said, his voice cutting the quiet. “That’s that.”

Sebastian padded back to his side, licking his crimson-stained muzzle once before sitting, composed, like a statue beside his partner.

The normalcy of it was the most shocking part. The casual violence, the effortless power, the way Diego now brushed dust from his sleeve as if he’d just moved a piece of furniture. Arianda’s mind, always observing, tried to fit what she’d seen into the cheerful merchant she knew. The pieces didn’t fit. The man who joked about dye and told stories by the fire had just killed a mountain-sized monster with his bare hands.

Sherief was the first warden to move. He walked over to the body, his staff tapping the ground. He prodded the roc’s ruined wing with his foot. “Magnificent specimen,” he grunted. “Waste.”

“Not a waste,” Diego said, his cheer returning, though it sounded thinner now, stretched over something immense. “The scales, the bones, the sinew. Zarinthar’s crafters will make use of every bit. Swan, my love, the messenger falcon, if you please.”

Swan, her face serene, nodded. She closed her eyes, and a soft green glow emanated from her palms. Salem, the green rabbit, hopped to a nearby rock and began a complex series of gestures with its paws, weaving the air into a focused, whistling thread that shot upward and vanished into the grey sky.

“They’ll send a harvesting crew,” Diego announced to the group. “We camp here tonight. Balor, if you could clear a proper space? Christofer, Serena—let’s get a real fire going. The rest of you, tend to the dragons. They’ve had a scare.”

His commands were gentle, but they brooked no discussion. The wardens moved to obey, the familiar routines of setting camp a stark contrast to the carnage mere feet away.

Arianda didn’t move from the wagon. She watched as the others slowly disembarked, their movements stiff. Simon finally shook himself, climbing down and offering a hand to Lilith. Kira followed, his usual bravado absent, his steps careful as he approached Raltz, who was puffing small, nervous smoke rings.

Her eyes found Diego again. He was standing with Swan, his back to the dead roc, pointing toward a flat area of the canyon. He laughed at something she said, the sound normal, warm. But Arianda saw the way his shoulders were set. The absolute stillness in Sebastian beside him. The way the other wardens gave him a wider berth than usual, their glances flicking to him with a new, wary respect.

Sherief appeared at the wagon’s edge. He looked up at her, his brow furrowed. “You directed the air,” he stated. It wasn’t a question.

Arianda nodded, her throat tight.

“Good,” he said. The word was blunt, but his eyes held a flicker of something else. Assessment. “Instinct was correct. Theory was sound. You connected the pieces.” He paused. “Now get down. Your dragon needs water. You need to move.”

His pragmatism was an anchor. Arianda climbed down, her legs feeling like water. Zariel nuzzled her neck, his mental presence a soft, worried brush against her thoughts. *Safe?* the feeling asked.

“Yes,” she whispered aloud, her hand stroking his crimson-dyed head. “We’re safe.”

But as she turned to fetch a waterskin, her gaze was drawn back to the vast, feathered mound in the dirt. Safe because something else was dead. Safe because Diego was far more than he seemed. The world, she understood with a cold clarity, was not just layered. It was sharp. And the people in it were weapons.

She filled a bowl for Zariel, her hands steadying as she performed the simple task. Around her, camp began to take shape. Balor raised a low, circular wall of earth. Christofer kindled a fire in its center. The ordinary sounds of unpacking, of murmured conversation, slowly pushed back the silence.

But the shadow of the roc, and the shadow of the punch that killed it, lay over them all. It was in the way Leo kept flexing his hands, staring at his fists as if seeing them for the first time. It was in the hushed tone Sera used when she asked Nyra if she’d seen it. It was in the way Simon, when he finally came to stand beside Arianda, didn’t make a joke. He just stared into the growing flames, his face unreadable.

“He didn’t even use magic,” Simon said quietly.

Arianda shook her head. “No.”

“What does that make him?”

She had no answer. She looked across the fire at Diego, who was now showing Swan a map, his finger tracing their route, his expression one of focused planning. The merchant. The guide. The man who could shatter a mountain’s predator with a single blow.

The fire crackled, casting dancing light on the canyon walls, unable to reach the dark shape lying just beyond the circle of stone and warmth.