Twelve leagues became a test of will over flesh.

They ran through terrain that wanted them dead—ice fields that cracked underfoot, frozen streams that offered no purchase, rocks slick with morning frost. Ember's shoulder blazed where Vorthak's construct had scored her. Cinder's leg dragged, the one that had buckled when she landed. Pyra's breath wheezed through a chest that had taken Syltharax's tail.

Kindle ran slowest. Each step pulled at ribs that ground bone on bone. Blood leaked between her teeth where she'd bitten through her lip to keep from screaming. Her flames guttered like candles in wind.

The curse-headache built. Four bodies for too long. Ash's distributed nature sharpened their tactics but couldn't compensate for the missing fifth that made them whole. The pain crept from background noise to active distraction.

Two leagues in, Kindle stumbled.

Pyra caught her before she fell. "Easy."

"Not easy." Kindle's voice came thin. "Nothing's easy."

They stopped in a shallow ravine where wind couldn't reach. Cinder leaned against rock, breathing hard. Ember checked their position against the sun. Behind schedule. Way behind.

"We can't keep this pace," Cinder stated what they all knew. "Not as four. Not with her like this."

Kindle tried to straighten. Failed. "I can manage."

"You can't." Pyra's usual humor had died somewhere back in Syltharax's valley. "Look at you."

"I'm looking." Kindle spat blood. "What's your solution?"

Silence stretched. They all knew the solution. Hated it. But the math was brutal and simple.

"We integrate again." Ember said it quiet. "Down to three."

"No." Kindle's protest came automatic. "We barely managed six hours last time. The curse—"

"Will hurt worse than those ribs if we don't." Cinder pushed off the rock, limped close. "You're slowing us down. Every minute we lose means more coalition soldiers die."

"So I'm a liability now?"

"You're injured." Ember touched Kindle's shoulder, gentle where everything else today had been violent. "Not your fault. Just reality."

Kindle looked between them. Her flames flickered blue-white, the color of hope mixed with fear. "How long do we have left? Ten dragons. If we're already this far behind—"

"We'll be faster as three." Pyra's certainty carried weight. "Stronger. We'll make up the time."

"Will we?" Kindle laughed, wet and painful. "Or will we just burn out before the last dragon falls?"

No answer came easy. The curse waited patient. It always won eventually.

"I'm scared." Kindle said it simple, honest. "Being integrated means trusting you to carry my piece. What if—"

"We've done it before." Ember squeezed her shoulder. "Ash is still here, still part of us. You will be too."

"Until we're not." Cinder's bluntness cut clean. "Until it's just one of us standing over dragon bones, wondering if it was worth it."

Pyra punched Cinder's arm. Hard. "Stop helping."

"Someone has to say it."

Kindle closed her eyes. Pain and exhaustion warred across her face. When she opened them again, something had shifted. Decision made, even if she hated it.

"Do it fast. Before I change my mind."

They formed a circle in the ravine's bottom, wind howling above. Kindle stood center. The other three faced inward, flames building not for violence but for something older. Connection. Unity. The thing the curse had broken and they'd learned to force back together through will alone.

"Any last words?" Pyra tried for levity. It fell flat.

"Yeah." Kindle's grin came bloody but genuine. "Don't fuck it up."

Fire erupted. Not wild but controlled, reaching between them like threads of light. Kindle's form blurred at the edges, became flame itself, blue-white that burned cold and hot together. Her essence scattered, distributed, absorbed into three bodies that stood ready to receive her.

Ember felt Kindle flood through her consciousness. Optimism mixed with fear, hope threaded through determination, the particular way she saw problems as challenges instead of obstacles. It settled like sediment in water, became part of the foundation their thoughts built on.

The power came next. Raw force that doubled their flames, sharpened their speed, turned them from fast to faster. Ember's shoulder stopped throbbing. The curse-headache receded, pushed back by temporary reprieve that wouldn't last but didn't need to.

Just needed to last long enough.

Kindle's body became pure flame, then nothing. Three stood where four had been.

Pyra flexed her hands, flames roaring white-hot. "Okay. That's better."

"Much better." Cinder's injured leg worked properly again, shared healing from distributed essence. "Let's move."

They ran. The landscape blurred faster than before, distance becoming something they conquered instead of endured. Ten leagues vanished in minutes that felt like heartbeats.

Force Gamma's position appeared as smoke and screaming.

Dragon Morfex died in thirteen minutes.

The forest terrain worked against him. Trees provided cover, let the three approach unseen until fire erupted from three directions simultaneously. The dragon tried to retreat, wings beating hard to gain altitude.

Pyra caught his tail mid-flight. Her flames carved through muscle and bone, severed it completely. Morfex crashed through canopy, taking trees with him. Hit the ground thrashing, his roar shaking birds from branches half a mile away.

Coalition forces rushed in while he was disoriented. Spears found gaps between scales. Battlemages threw everything they had at exposed flanks. The dragon's blood steamed where it hit snow, melted it to slush that froze again around his thrashing limbs.

Ember and Cinder struck together, coordinated assault that punched through his chest from opposite sides. Their flames met in the middle, cooking him from inside out. His heart burst like overripe fruit dropped from height.

Force Gamma's commander stared at the corpse, then at three women who'd killed a dragon faster than his soldiers could form proper assault lines.

"Thank you." He managed it through shock.

They were already running.

Dragon Ythgara fought on frozen lake.

The ice became her weapon and her doom. She used it to slide, to gain speed, to create barriers that slowed the coalition advance. Her breath froze the lake solid enough to support her bulk, created walls twenty feet high that channeled soldiers into kill zones.

Force Delta was pinned, taking casualties from strafing runs they couldn't counter. Their commander had lost an arm to frost breath, kept fighting anyway, kept his soldiers organized through blood loss and pain.

Until Ember shattered the lake.

Fire concentrated beneath the surface, melting support structures, turning solid to liquid. Ythgara plunged through, her weight carrying her down into water that froze around her as she thrashed. She tried to break free, wings beating against ice that reformed faster than she could shatter it.

Pyra and Cinder drove down after her, flames superheating water until it boiled. Steam rose in clouds that scalded exposed skin. The dragon's thrashing slowed, stopped. She drowned in ice of her own making.

Twenty-two minutes start to finish.

Force Delta had lost thirty soldiers before they arrived. The three stood at lake's edge afterward, steam rising around them, and felt the weight of those thirty deaths like stones in their gut.

But they couldn't stop. Couldn't process. Just run and kill and run again.

The day became a blur of fire and blood.

Dragon Velthros in the ruins—fifteen minutes. His conversion attempts failed against coalition wards. He kept trying anyway, couldn't understand why his greatest weapon had been neutralized. His ice creatures fell to disciplined formations that had learned from previous battles. The three burned him down while he was still trying to understand why his advantages didn't work anymore. His death came confused, almost pathetic.

Dragon Nethrix in the canyon—nineteen minutes. He tried ambush tactics, ice creatures hidden in narrow passages. Caught Pyra with a frost giant's club that should have broken her spine. The impact drove her to her knees, left her gasping. She burned the giant to steam anyway, stood up despite ribs screaming protest, and kept moving. Kindle's distributed optimism wouldn't let her stay down. Nethrix died confused why small things wouldn't break properly.

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Dragon Azureth on the plains—twelve minutes. No terrain to hide in, nowhere to run. The coalition forces hadn't even finished forming up when the three arrived, flames streaming behind them like comet-tails. Azureth saw them coming from two miles away, tried to flee. Cinder caught him anyway, flames reaching across impossible distance to drag him from the sky. He hit the ground already dying, Cinder's fire having burned through his wings mid-flight.

Four hours in, the curse-headache returned.

Not gentle. Not gradual. Just there, sudden and vicious like something with teeth. The headache became an ice pick through each skull. Shared pain amplified three ways, each of them feeling the others' agony as clearly as their own.

Vision blurred at the edges. Coordination slipped. But they kept moving because stopping meant dying and dying meant failing.

Dragon Sylmara in the swamp died in ten minutes. Force something—Ember had lost track of which letters went with which dragons—watched three figures attack with mechanical precision. No mercy. No hesitation. Just flames and death. Sylmara's corpse sank into bog water that boiled from residual heat, creating steam that hung in the air for hours after.

Dragon Korvath in the highlands died in eight minutes. His roar of challenge became a death scream so fast the coalition forces barely had time to charge. They found his corpse still smoldering, three women kneeling in the snow beside it breathing like they'd run from the world's edge.

The curse dug deeper.

Ember misjudged a distance between highlands and the border, hit rock face instead of clearing it. Broke her nose on impact, kept flying anyway through blood that froze on her face. Pyra's flames guttered for three critical seconds during the next engagement, nearly got her killed by an ice construct's spear. Cinder stumbled mid-sprint between battles, caught herself, tasted blood where she'd bitten her tongue.

They were breaking down. Bodies pushed past limits, held together by will and distributed essence and desperation.

But they couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. Not with two dragons left.

Dragon Thazrim at the border tried to negotiate when he saw them coming.

"Mother said—"

Ember's fire cut through his throat mid-sentence. Seven minutes. His last expression carried surprise that negotiation hadn't worked, that these small burning things didn't care what Mother said.

Dragon Xalethor held the northern approach. The last lesser dragon. He knew what was coming. Had watched eleven of his siblings die through whatever connection dragons shared. His mental pressure rolled across the battlefield before they even arrived, heavy as winter storm.

"You're killing yourselves for them." His voice carried resignation mixed with genuine confusion. "Why? They're not worth this pain."

"They're worth more than you." Pyra's answer came between gasps that pulled at her damaged chest. "That's enough."

Xalethor died in six minutes. Might have lasted longer if he'd fought instead of talking, but philosophy had no place in slaughter. His corpse cooled in frozen mud while coalition forces stared at three women who looked less human after each battle.

Ember knelt in his blood afterward, pain rolling through her in waves that made the world tilt sideways. Cinder leaned against the dragon's corpse, breathing hard, each inhalation pulling at something torn inside. Pyra sat in frozen mud, head between her knees, flames so dim they barely cast light.

The curse felt like drowning. Like being torn in three directions simultaneously. Like every nerve ending had been dipped in acid and set on fire and left to burn.

Coalition forces approached cautious. They'd learned to be careful around the three, who'd transformed from allies to something else entirely. Something that killed with efficiency that looked more like force of nature than combat.

"That's twelve." Someone said it quiet, reverent, like speaking too loud might break whatever impossible magic had made this day real. "Twelve dragons in one day."

Ember tried to respond. The words wouldn't come.

Everything hurt too much for words. Her throat was raw from breathing superheated air. Her hands shook. Blood ran from her nose where she'd broken it, mixed with mud and dragon gore until she couldn't tell what was hers anymore.

They needed to reconstitute Kindle and Ash. Needed to be five again, properly balanced instead of this overstretched triad.

"We need them back." Ember forced the words through a throat raw from breathing superheated air.

Pyra and Cinder didn't answer. Their pain came sharp across the link. Even their nonverbal presences were strained, like violin strings wound one twist from breaking.

They went a short distance away, out of sight behind ridges and rock. It wasn't modesty—they were beyond that—but there was intimacy in becoming whole, vulnerability that didn't belong exposed in public view.

They stood together, three who'd been five, who'd been four, who'd become three through necessity and determination and the desperate math of war.

Fire built between them. Not much. Barely enough. But it reached outward, calling, pulling essence back from wherever integration had scattered it.

Kindle's form blazed into existence first. She materialized gasping, stumbled, caught herself against Pyra's shoulder. Her ribs were whole again, the shared healing undoing injuries that should have taken weeks to mend. But her eyes carried the weight of watching through distributed consciousness, of feeling everything while being nothing.

"Ow." She coughed a laugh. "Been a minute, huh?"

Ash came slower, her reformation taking long seconds that stretched. Her forehead wrinkled as if concentration could pull her back together faster. When the last sparks of fire became flesh, she gave them a thumbs up that said everything necessary in one simple gesture.

The convergence happened in stages. Twelve armies gathered three leagues south of Belavar where a natural valley offered shelter and high ground for defense.

Commanders rode at the heads of their columns. Jorin Karska, his face bearing fresh frostbite scars. A woman whose name Ember couldn't remember but whose left arm ended in bandages. Thale, walking instead of riding, his sword still dark with blood he hadn't bothered cleaning.

Valerian arrived with the command section, his robes singed, his usual composure cracked around the edges. He dismounted stiff, age showing in ways it usually didn't. Viktor Grehm followed, clutching ledgers like they could impose order on chaos. Lysander Moreth rode last, his polished armor scored and dented, the golden crest tarnished.

Officers erected a command post using salvaged materials. Maps came out, marked and updated. Runners sprinted between arriving forces, coordinating positions and casualty counts.

The five sat on a fallen log, too exhausted to stand, eating whatever food someone had shoved into their hands. Hard bread. Dried meat. Water that tasted like melted snow run through mud puddles.

Kaelin found them there, boots mucky with winter battlefield's residue. The Guild leader had ridden with Force something, Ember couldn't remember which. Blood spattered her usually immaculate clothes. Her hair had come loose from its braid.

"Twelve dragons." She said it flat, stated fact rather than congratulation. "You actually did it."

Cinder shook her head. "We did our jobs. Like everyone else."

"You did more than anyone."

"That's—" Pyra started to say something, stopped.

The battle had drained the humor from her. Ember saw Pyra's exhaustion in the way her sister-self's hand trembled when she reached for her water cup, in the lines at the edges of her eyes that were more pain than laughter.

"Did we win?" Kindle asked it quiet. "Really win?"

"You killed twelve dragons in one day. That's about as close to winning as warfare gets." Kaelin pulled a flask from her coat, drank, passed it along. The liquor burned like liquid fire. "But yeah, there's more to it than just the dragons."

Valerian approached, his staff planted in mud for balance. The Archmage looked like he'd aged a decade. "The servitor armies. What happened to them?"

"Surrendered mostly." Kaelin accepted the flask back from Pyra, drank again. "The ones that didn't scatter outright. Each dragon death weakened the suppression field across the entire region. By the time we killed the fifth dragon, our mages could actually fight properly. Conversion attempts failed against our wards, but the servitors couldn't coordinate without dragon oversight. They just... stopped."

"All of them?" Thale joined the growing circle, his scarred face showing cautious hope.

"Not all. Some fought on, mostly the ones converted early. True believers in Nethysara's vision." Kaelin's expression darkened. "We subdued them where we could. Corwin's been moving between forces, breaking conversions. It's slow work. Draining. But it's working."

"How many?" Ember asked.

"Servitors? Maybe forty thousand total across all twelve territories." Valerian consulted notes one of his aides provided. "We've freed roughly eight thousand so far. The rest are either scattered, still fighting, or haven't been reached yet."

"And our casualties?" Cinder's pragmatism cut through exhaustion.

Silence stretched. Viktor Grehm stepped forward, ledgers clutched tight. "Preliminary counts. Eight hundred and forty-seven dead. Twelve hundred and thirty-three wounded, four hundred of those critical." His voice stayed steady through the numbers, professional distance maintaining composure. "Considering we engaged twelve dragons simultaneously across twelve battlefields, the losses are... acceptable."

"Acceptable." Pyra laughed bitterly. "Eight hundred people died today."

"Eight hundred people died so thousands didn't." Thale's correction came hard. "Those are the mathematics of war. You did your part. We did ours. People died because that's what happens in war, not because we failed them."

Pyra started to argue. Kindle rested a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"The suppression weakened progressively." Valerian changed subjects with strategic precision. "After the third dragon fell, our long-range communication spells started working again. By the sixth, we could coordinate between forces. After the ninth, magic functioned almost normally."

"Which means?" Kindle asked.

"Which means Nethysara's suppression field is likely personal, not drawn from her brood." The Archmage traced lines on the map as he spoke. "The lesser dragons are anchors. Removing them loosened her grip, but the center of power still emanates from Belavar."

Kaelin studied the lines. "So we didn't break her hold completely?"

"No." Valerian's answer carried no optimism. "But the web has been torn, and light is filtering through the cracks. The rest will have to be broken the hard way."

"Which means Belavar's servitor population might already be breaking free," Thale said, seizing on this one shred of hope. "Nethysara's greatest tactical advantage—her converted army—may be collapsing before we even reach the walls."

"Or she's consolidating them." Cinder's pragmatism cut through optimism. "Pulling every servitor into the city, using them as shields and soldiers for her last stand."

Silence settled over the pavilion. Both scenarios were possible. Both changed the assault plan in different ways.

"We march at dawn." Valerian decided. "Divination is being blocked, presumably by Nethysara herself. We'll know the situation when we get there. Adaptation has served us well thus far."

"She could hit us while we're resting," Thale cautioned. "Is camping here wise?"

"She hasn't hit any of our forces since the opening assaults." Kaelin's finger circled the map. "Not even during troop movement. My guess is Nethysara's arrogant. She's waiting to make some grand last stand, or at least strike at unified coalition forces rather than picking off scattered remnants."

"Arrogant or patient," Thale corrected her. "We have to hope for the former."

"Either way, we're marching in the morning." Valerian's voice echoed across the congregation. "Be ready."

The gathered commanders nodded. Some enthusiastic, others grim, all committed. They'd killed twelve dragons in one day. What was one more, even if she was the mother of them all?

"The army needs to see you." Valerian said it gentle. "They've heard what you did. Heard the reports. But they need to see you alive, standing, ready to fight tomorrow. Morale is fragile right now."

"We look like shit." Pyra gestured at blood and mud and exhaustion written across all of them.

"You look like you killed twelve dragons." Kaelin corrected. "That's exactly what they need to see."

They walked through the consolidating army together. Soldiers stopped what they were doing—tending wounds, repairing equipment, eating cold rations—and stared. Some saluted. Most just watched with expressions caught between awe and fear.

The five walked among them, let themselves be seen. Alive. Standing. Still strong. Maybe it was a false strength, drawn from fading reserves after an already long day, but that wasn't important.

Right now, it mattered that the army saw its champions standing together. Undaunted. Triumphant.

The gathered soldiers didn't cheer, but that was fine. Neither did the five. Triumph would come after tomorrow.

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