Previously:
“Wait—” Ryn started.
Eskarith’s foreclaw closed around them with the same gentle care he’d shown catching them mid-fall. Secure without crushing. Then launch—stone dropping away as he climbed, the ridge falling into distance.
Through fractured channels came impression rather than words now, just raw concept: Away.
Somewhere quiet, somewhere removed from witnesses and pressure from the Council, and the eyes of the Flight Circle.
Somewhere the broken thing between them could either be repaired or put to rest.
-
Read Mountain Bond Part One - The Severance or Get it as a free ebook |
Start from the beginning of Part II or Read the previous chapter |
Discover more about the Dragon-Human Bond and the Crimson Desert
XIV.
The mountains spread below them, morning sun painting peaks in gold and orange.Crystal veins scattered throughout visible ridges caught light and threw it back in fragments.
Ryn had flown these routes with Kivith. Had raced through valleys, chased thermals, sculpted mist into art that dissolved within hours.
Being carried like this felt… different.
Eskarith’s wings beat steady and powerful, each stroke carrying them further from Stormcrest’s familiar peaks into territories Ryn recognized less and less. Remote mountain country where riders rarely ventured, where stone remained unmarked by clan presence, where privacy existed because distance made it so.
Ryn tried to speak, to ask where, to protest or—
The bond pressed firm against their consciousness. Not words. Not even images anymore. Just weight, disappointment, a pressure that said silence and not now.
This wasn’t a negotiation anymore.
They flew east first, then banked southeast, following ridge lines that marked the boundary of clan territories. The wind changed as they climbed higher—thinner, colder, carrying the scent of ice from distant peaks.
In the far distance, where the Dragon’s Spine ridges lowered and disappeared in the east, the Mists rose like a wall, swallowing anything in sight. Perpetual. Impenetrable. Marking the edge of the continent.
Ryn had never been this far east. Skyrider clan patrolled the Mists’ edge, but even they didn’t venture deep into the banks. The sight of that grey wall made the distance suddenly feel real—how far Eskarith had taken them from everything familiar, everyone who might intervene.
No one would find them here.
-
The Quieting existed in a fold of the mountains that most riders had forgotten.
Eskarith descended into a narrow valley where stone rose vertical on three sides, creating natural shelter from wind and weather. The cave entrance a dark mouth in the eastern cliff face—wide enough for his bulk, high enough that approach required flight.
The landing was gentle. Eskarith set Ryn down on the stone shelf outside the cave mouth, then settled himself at the entrance. His wings folded, tail curling around his body until his massive form blocked most of the opening.
Guardian, Ryn thought. Or guard. Hard to tell the difference from this side.
Ryn stood on shaking legs. The flight had taken most of the morning, and their muscles had cramped—the sun was high now, the stone warm with it, but at that altitude fighting the cold still took effort.
Through the bond came a single word: Wait.
Then Eskarith launched again, without warning, the sudden powerful downstroke displacing enough air to send Ryn stumbling backward against the cave wall. His massive form dropping away from the shelf, then soaring toward the northwestern peaks back toward Stormcrest.
Gone.
Ryn stood alone in the suddenly oppressive quiet, their mind spinning. Had he left them here? Was this the end—abandoned in remote territory with no way to return, left to survive or fail on their own merits? Or was he coming back? And if he was, when? Hours? Days?
The bond still existed within them. Ryn could feel it—could feel Eskarith. Distant now, more and more every passing second. But present.
That was something.
They looked to the western sky until they could not see him anymore, then stepped inside.
The temperature dropped immediately. Stone cold, the kind of chill that lived in places where sunlight never reached directly. Their breath misted, curling in the still air. Footsteps echoed in the darkness. As their eyes adjusted, more details emerged.
The main chamber was enormous, high-ceilinged. The walls showed evidence of ancient water flow—smooth curves where underground rivers had carved passage over ages. Natural crystals grew from ceiling and walls, uncharged by storms, just mineral formations catching what little light reached them, and scattering it in pale fragments.
Ryn walked deeper, found where the main chamber split into smaller passages. They explored cautiously. Most led to dead ends or narrowed to spaces too small for humans. One opened into a secondary chamber—smaller, more sheltered. The kind of space that felt meant for sleeping, for protection.
They returned to the main chamber and stood in the center of vast emptiness, listening to their breathing echo back from stone walls.
Alone.
Eskarith’s presence in the bond still steadily moving north. Whatever he was doing, it would take time.
Ryn sat on cold stone and pulled their knees to their chest. Wrapped arms around shaking legs.
Then reached for the bond. Tentative. Testing.
Eskarith?
Nothing came back. Eskarith wasn’t answering. Either couldn’t hear through the distance, or was choosing not to respond.
Ryn tried again. Please—
Still nothing.
They pulled their hands into their lap, looking at their torn palms. Blood had dried in dark streaks across their skin, mixing with dirt and stone dust. The wounds should be cleaned. Should be wrapped.
For want of anything else to do, Ryn stood. Began exploring again, this time looking for water. The cave had been carved by underground rivers—there had to be water somewhere.
They found it a side chamber. A small pool in the corner, fed by slow seepage through cracks in the stone. The water was clear, cold when Ryn dipped their fingers in. Mountain melt finding its way down through layers of rock.
They knelt beside the pool, carefully washing the blood from their palms. The water stung in the torn skin, but the cold helped. They cupped their hands, brought water to their mouth. Drank. The taste was clean, mineral-sharp. Their body accepted it gratefully, and then reminded them of other suddenly pressing needs.
Some time went into wrapping their hands, and then Ryn found they had exhausted any option for distraction and curled up again. The chasm yawned inky and endless at the forefront of their mind.
When Ryn’s consciousness brushed against it, vertigo hit. A pulling sensation in their chest like standing too close to a cliff edge and wondering what it would be to fall, like the emptiness itself was trying to drag them forward.
Trust.
The word tasted bitter.
I can’t do this anymore.
I won’t do this anymore.
Eskarith himself threatening a severance. After everything he’d said just two nights ago about what it would mean to them—both of them, for the bond to be broken.
Ryn’s hands clenched tighter around their knees as the implications spiraled through their thoughts.
Their mindscape thorn apart, Kivith’s memories lost, years of recovery ahead for Eskarith himself, for whom bonding again would become nearly impossible.
And for Ryn—Ryn who’d just survived losing Kivith, who’d barely recovered before forming an emergency bond with Eskarith—another break now would likely kill them, or destroy their mind.
Eskarith knew this. Had told them this. Had made it clear that breaking the bond was unacceptable.
So what did it mean that he was threatening it now?
Maybe the damage Ryn had caused was so deep that Eskarith saw no reason in working on this bond anymore. Maybe Ryn had broken something so fundamental that even the risk of killing them was acceptable now.
They rose and started pacing the small chamber. Three steps one way. Turn. Three steps back.
Or—
Or the rupture during the fall had already done most of the damage. Maybe the bond was already so fractured, so unstable, that it wouldn’t take much to dissolve it anymore. Maybe it would just take a nudge. One final push to send the whole structure collapsing.
Ryn stopped pacing. Stood frozen in the center of the chamber.
Their chest hurt and their throat closed at the thought, they could hear a raspy wheezing noise and it took a moment for them to realize they were the source of it. The cave walls seemed to waver at the edges of their vision, darkness pressing closer. They braced one hand against cold stone, swaying, the other arm wrapped tight around their chest as if the pressure could hold their splintering thoughts together.
Their hands shook where they gripped stone and self, and cold sweat broke out across their skin despite the cave’s chill.
Had Eskarith reached the end of his patience? Was he willing to accept Ryn’s death as the price of ending this failed bond? Did he truly not care anymore?
No. No, impossible.
They sank back down to the stone floor. Curling into themselves, shivering. Time lost meaning. Maybe they dozed—brief snatches of consciousness fading into grey nothing that might have been sleep or might have been their mind giving up.
When they surfaced, the light quality in the cave had shifted. Later. How much later, they couldn’t tell.
The cold seeped up from the stone floor, working its way into their bones. They couldn’t feel their feet anymore, nor their tight or arm on the side they had been laying on. They focussed on flexing their fingers periodically, trying to keep blood flowing through hands that wanted to go numb like the rest of them.
Somewhere deeper in the cave system, water dripped with steady rhythm—one drop, then another, echoing off the walls.
The sound of wings brought them scrambling to their feet.
They had not felt him coming closer.
Ryn rushing to the entrance. Evening light now—the sun low, painting distant peaks in gold and orange that made the snow-covered summits look like they were burning. Eskarith’s form dark against the setting sun, banking toward the shelf. The displacement of air from his wings reached Ryn seconds before he landed, carrying scents that didn’t match the cave’s mineral stillness. Winter’s breath still clung to him—cold like fresh snow and frozen stone—but layered now with warm sandstone from Stormcrest’s aeries and the particular musk of other dragons, mixed with storm-charged atmosphere from flight through different air. Underneath it all, the acrid ghost of cinders.
Relief—he’d come back.
Then fear.
Ryn did not realize tears were marking their cheeks, until they tasted the salt.
Bundles were laid on the floor—furs and supplies wrapped in leather that creaked slightly in the cold, waterskins beaded with condensation, dried food carefully packed. The essentials, but more than Eskarith could have gathered by himself. Lysa’s practical touch showed in the selection—the specific herbs for pain, the particular weave of the warmest furs.
She’d probably tried to come herself, Ryn realized. The Flight Circle knew where they were. But Eskarith must have convinced them not to follow.
And Ryn hadn’t thought of them. Not during the fall, and not after, when shame and revelation had consumed everything. The Circle had watched them fall, had probably seen Eskarith catch them and fly away. Lysa, Kael—they’d have been terrified, confused, unable to help.
And Ryn had forgotten they existed.
Guilt joined the fear and relief, settling heavy in their chest.
Ryn helped wordlessly, carried what they could manage in the secondary chamber—furs spread in the most sheltered corner, food and water positioned within reach. Judging by the ration, this was meant to be an extended stay.
“How long—”
As long as it takes.
From the main chamber, Eskarith tracked them in the dimness, reading their exhaustion, their fear, the tremors that had yet to stop. He motioned Ryn to set up a fire, then lit it up.
Your body needs rest. A pause. But what lies between us needs work.
“The chasm.”
Yes.
“You can… fix it?”
No. You will.
You will, or the bond will break.
Ryn looked back at the furs, at the supplies arranged with care, at Eskarith’s bulk catching the shadows from the fire.
This was it. The reckoning. Fix what they’d broken or accept that it couldn’t be fixed. Not a rejection, then. Not yet.
“I don’t know how.”
You will learn. Firm, patient even now. Come into our shared mind. Let me show you what must be done.
Ryn dragged the furs closer to the fires and settled on them. The material was soft, warm—the scent of the leather wrapping and dried herbs used for storage lingered faintly.
They laid back and closed their eyes. Eskarith’s breathing created its own rhythm, lulling them into a doze, slow and deep, the sound of a mountain at rest.
Breathe, Eskarith said. Let the physical world fade. Find the bond between us.
Ryn reached through and the physical world began to dissolve around them. No stone beneath their body. No cold air. No lick of fire. No exhaustion pulling at their limbs.
Everything fading into the mindscape.
Into the work that needed doing.
Into the chasm.
The moment Ryn brushed against its edge, they were plunged into ice-water. An unrelenting cold that burned through every nerve. Pressure crushing them down to a single point of awareness.
Then nothing at all.
Endless, terrible nothing that swallowed them whole.
-
to be continued…
Read Mountain Bond Part One - The Severance or Download it as an ebook |
Start from the beginning of Part II or Read the previous chapter |
Discover more about the Dragon-Human Bond ||
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