Cryu Stormwing smelled wet dirt inside the Sky Temple, and dirt did not belong here. He crouched on a cloud terrace and watched a smear of muddy prints track past the pale stone arches. The temple had stood on these clouds long before he came to guard it. He still did not know what it had been. He only knew what waited in its deepest chamber: the Storm Heart, an ancient power asleep for centuries. Whoever woke it became the true guardian. No electric dragon had ever tried and lived. Cryu meant to try anyway. But first he had to catch whoever was walking his halls. He followed the prints through the outer passage, where luminous stone arches curved overhead and mist pooled at his claws. The tread was deep and uneven. A boot, not a barefoot pilgrim. Two prints in, he saw a red fleck pressed into the mud. He touched it with a claw. Grit from the salt flats, stained with something like rust. Nobody crossed the salt flats by accident. Somebody had sent this trespasser a long way. The prints turned toward the inner arch. Cryu's chest tightened. Beyond that arch stood the reliquary alcove, and inside it the crystal that held the last charge needed to wake the Storm Heart. If the trespasser broke it, the awakening ended before it began. He took the shorter route, up along a cloud ledge, and dropped down in front of the alcove. A hooded figure stood with one gloved hand already reaching for the crystal. Its faceted points threw pale blue light across the walls, and lightning veins pulsed inside it like a heartbeat. "Step back," Cryu said. The figure ran. Cryu called the smallest thread of lightning he could hold and lashed it at the floor between them. Stone cracked. The trespasser skidded, turned, and bolted through a side arch that opened onto empty sky. They jumped. A dark shape swept up from below and caught them, and both were gone into the clouds. Cryu did not chase. He went back to the alcove. The crystal was whole. On the tile below it lay a folded scrap of cloth the trespasser had dropped. Cryu opened it with one claw. A black seal was pressed into the wax. Thorns around a crown. He had seen that mark once before, on a warning a wizard friend had left at his gate. Thardwin's words came back short and plain. She is hunting anything old enough to matter. If she finds your temple, she will take it. Madness Everthorn knew about the Storm Heart now. Cryu closed his claw around the seal. The crystal was safe tonight. But the secret was not. He had to wake the Storm Heart before she came for it herself, and he had to do it soon.

Cryu stood at the broken arch where the trespasser had jumped. Wind tore the clouds sideways. Rain came in flat sheets. Somewhere below, the dark shape that had carried the intruder was circling back. He could hear it in the wrong beats of the storm, a heavy wingstroke that did not match the wind. He went to the alcove and pulled a small iron dish from the ledge behind the crystal. The dish held a coil of black smoke, sealed under wax. His old master had left it for him. Break the wax, and the smoke would drift toward any living heat moving through storm air. It was the one tool he had for hunting a thing he could not see. He cracked the seal with a claw. The smoke rose in slow curls, thick and inky, edged with faint purple. It hung for a breath, then bent sharply east and streamed out through the arch. Cryu jumped after it. He flew low under the cloud shelf. The smoke pulled ahead of him in a thin ribbon. Lightning was still weak in his chest from the last fight, but he held a small charge ready. The ribbon curved down. It curved down again. It pointed at a black spike rising from a lower cloud bank, a narrow watchtower with slit windows lit red from inside. He had never seen it before. It had not been there a week ago. The dark shape sat folded on the tower's roof like a bat at rest. A figure stood in the open top, hood back. Purple eyes. Cryu knew the face from the seal on the cloth. Madness Everthorn. "You came fast," she said. "Good. I wanted to see you." He hovered. "Get off my sky." "Your sky." She almost smiled. "The Storm Heart is not yours yet. I can reach it before you wake it. I wanted you to know that." The dark shape unfolded. It launched at him. Cryu twisted and threw the charge he had been holding. Lightning cracked across its wing and it screamed and veered off into the rain. He did not chase. He drove down at the tower instead. Madness raised one gloved hand. A ring of thorn-marks lit around her feet. Cryu's wings locked. He could not beat them. A binding sigil. He fell past the tower, hit a cloud shelf hard, and slid. By the time the sigil broke, the tower stood empty. The dark shape was gone. The smoke had thinned to nothing. Cryu climbed back to the temple with one wing dragging. He had seen her face. He had learned she had a base within a short flight of his gate. He had also learned she could pin him out of the air whenever she chose. He landed at the alcove and set a claw on the crystal. He could not wait for a better moment. He had to move on the Storm Heart now.