Shadow engulfed her world.

Not darkness—she'd flown through moonless nights, through clouds so thick they might have been solid. This was absence, a hungry void that swallowed sensation itself. Her wings beat against nothing. Her lungs drew in air that tasted of endings.

Then pain bloomed across her back as something struck from behind, sending her spinning through the null-space. She lashed out blind, felt her talons catch and tear through substance that wasn't quite flesh. The shadow realm shuddered, and suddenly she could see again—or thought she could.

The sky had become a chessboard of light and dark, reality fracturing where Xellos's power touched it. She hung suspended between squares of day and night, watching her own reflection fragment across a dozen different possibilities. In one, she fell burning. In another, shadows puppeted her corpse. In a third, she knelt before him in chains of darkness.

"Illusions," she spat, spreading her wings wide. Wind answered her call, real and true, shredding the false visions like paper before flame.

The true Xellos materialized behind her, those not-wings spread wide. "Everything is illusion, Harpy Queen. Even your precious strength."

His shadows came as a wave this time, not strikes or spears but an ocean of darkness that sought to drown. She climbed hard, muscles screaming protest as poison and exhaustion warred for dominance in her veins. The wave followed, rippling, trying to engulf, to trap her within its amorphous bulk.

She rolled at the apex of her climb, tucking her wings to drop through a gap in the shadow-tide. It passed over her, cold beyond winter, and for a moment she felt something vast and alien notice her passage. Then she was through, diving toward clearer air while the wave dispersed into streamers of fading dark.

Xellos waited below, having never moved from his position. "You're slowing."

Truth in those words. Her left wing responded a heartbeat behind her right. The poison had reached her flight muscles, turning grace into struggle. Each wingbeat cost more than the last, each dodge came closer to failure.

She formed a wind spear between her primaries, hurled it with all the force she could manage. He deflected it with a casual gesture, shadow batting aside compressed air. But the effort had cost her—darkness crept at the edges of her vision, and not from his power.

"The poison works well," he observed, rising to match her altitude. "Morrian craftsmanship. They assured me it would drop even a Lord of the Eldergrove, given time."

"You talk," she gasped between wingbeats, "like you've already won."

"Haven't I?"

She dove at him, hoping to close distance before he could react. But her movements had become predictable in exhaustion. He flowed aside, and his counter-strike—a whip of solid shadow—caught her across the spine. She tumbled, managed to right herself, but not before losing precious altitude.

The forest below had become a battlefield unto itself. Where their conflict had passed, trees lay shattered. Craters marked spots where wind spears had missed their mark. The clearing where they'd started had expanded to twice its size, courtesy of their violence.

He pressed his advantage. Shadows erupted from his form in all directions—some as spears, some as grasping hands, some as formless hunger that sought to devour light itself. She wove between them, but each dodge came later, each escape closer to failure.

A shadow-hand caught her ankle, jerking her into an uncontrolled spin. She tore through it with her free talon, felt cold fire flare up her leg. Another hand caught her wing-arm, twisting it in directions it had never been designed to go. She felt the ligaments stretch, start to tear.

If she'd been stronger, healthier, she might have fought free. If she'd been less fatigued, she could have regained the air. But poison had done its work, sapping her vitality until even basic movements cost too much.

Still, she fought. Snarling, talons lashing, wind lancing, she fought. She'd known exhaustion before, in battles that spanned days. She'd known poison, in struggles where it mattered more to strike first than to dodge. She'd known pain, in her losing duel against Ebonheim.

None of that mattered now. Her world narrowed to talon and shadow, strike and counter-strike, to the heat in her veins and the cold spreading through muscle and bone.

"Your subordinates have abandoned you," Xellos noted, descending in a controlled spiral that mocked her struggles. "Your strength fails. Your body betrays you. What remains, Harpy Queen, but pride?"

She answered with action. The last of her feather-blades launched in a spread pattern that filled the air between them. He dissolved into shadow, let them pass harmlessly through, reformed behind her with those not-wings spread wide.

Pain exploded across her shoulders as shadow-claws raked deep. She spun, brought her wing spur up in an arc that would have opened him throat to navel, but struck only dissipating darkness. He'd already moved, already positioned for the next strike.

This one took her in the stomach—a spear of condensed shadow that punched through feather and flesh alike. She folded around it, gasping, and only instinct saved her from the follow-up strike that would have taken her head.

She pulled free, leaving feathers and blood on the dissolving spear. Her body wanted to curl around the wound, but stopping meant death. She forced herself higher, each wingbeat agony, each breath tasting of copper.

"Magnificent," he said again, keeping pace without apparent effort. "But magnificence without power is just another word for futility."

Shadow erupted from six points around her simultaneously. Not from him—from the air itself, as if he'd seeded the sky with traps while she struggled. She twisted between the first two, took the third across her ribs, managed to deflect the fourth with a desperate wind-burst. The fifth caught her squarely, a spear of solid darkness that punched through her left shoulder.

She screamed—rage more than pain—and wrenched herself free. Blood ran hot down white feathers, mixing with the purple stains of poison. Her left wing went numb from shoulder to primary tips.

The sixth shadow spear took her through the thigh.

She fell.

Not the controlled dives of before, but a graceless tumble as her body betrayed her. The ground rushed up, promising an end to pain in crushing impact. Wind wouldn't answer her call—she couldn't focus through the agony of two impalement wounds and spreading poison.

Xellos descended beside her, keeping pace with her fall. "You were magnificent," he said, and might have meant it. "But magnificence without power is just another word for futility."

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The treeline approached, individual branches becoming visible. In seconds she'd hit, and all her centuries would end against indifferent earth.

Something inside her refused.

Not thought, not plan—older than either. The thing that had made her queen screamed defiance at the approaching end. That scream found expression in sudden transformation, in power she'd held back out of pride, out of desire to win with skill alone.

Crimson light erupted from her form.

Her feathers shifted like seasons changing in heartbeats—azure fading to white, white burning to gold, gold deepening to heart's-blood red. The transformation swept through her in waves, each pulse driving poison from her veins, sealing wounds, returning strength that had fled. Her wings spread wider, caught air that suddenly obeyed again.

She pulled out of the fall mere lengths above the canopy, leaves crisping in the heat of her passage.

The sky welcomed her return with winds that sang her name. She rose on thermals that existed because she wished them to, supported by air that had become extension of will rather than mere medium. When she turned to face Xellos, her eyes held the cold focus of raptor-kind given divine expression.

He hung motionless, those not-wings beating their impossible rhythm. "Skylord's Grace. I wondered when you'd stop playing."

She moved.

Distance became meaningless. She existed at Point A, then Point B, with nothing between but the suggestion of motion. Her talons raked across his chest before his shadows could respond, opening lines that wept darkness instead of blood. By the time he brought his defenses around, she'd already struck from three other angles, each attack landing before the previous had registered.

"Too slow," she said, and her voice carried harmonics that shattered clouds.

He lashed out with a wave of shadows. She flew through them, the darkness parting before her like water before the prow of a ship. Where shadow touched crimson feathers, it burned away to nothing. She emerged from the other side wreathed in flames that were almost white, almost pure.

The next exchange lasted seconds and centuries.

She struck from above—he blocked with crossed shadows. She vanished, reappeared behind, talons seeking his spine. He dissolved into darkness, reformed to her left, shadow-blades singing toward her neck. She caught them on her wing spurs, the impact sending shockwaves through the air, and her counter-strike opened his shoulder to the bone.

They separated, circled, came together again.

This time she led with wind given form—not blades or spears but a solid wall of compressed air that hit like a titan's fist. He raised shadows to meet it, but the wind carried something more now, threads of fire that ate through darkness like acid through cloth. The barrier shattered. The fist connected. He flew backward, caught himself on those unnatural wings.

Blood—or something like it—ran from his nose. "Interesting."

She gave him no time to recover. The air itself became her weapon, pressure differentials creating invisible blades that attacked from every angle. He spun, shadows whirling around him in a defensive sphere, but she was already inside his guard. Her teeth found his throat, would have torn it out if he hadn't dissolved at the last instant.

He reformed twenty lengths away, one hand pressed to the bleeding line across his neck. "You've improved."

"You've slowed."

She closed the distance in a heartbeat, but he was ready this time. Shadows rose from below—not his, but called from every tree's shade, every hollow where light failed to reach. They rose like a forest of grasping hands, forcing her to climb or be overwhelmed.

She climbed, and he followed, their battle carrying them toward clouds heavy with unshed rain.

Lightning sparked between them—not from the storm but from the friction of their passage. She wielded wind like extensions of her body, creating cyclones that birthed more cyclones, turning the sky into a maelstrom with her at its heart. He answered with shadows that moved against the wind, that cut through her storms like swords through silk.

They met above the storm's heart. Her talons locked with his shadow-formed claws, neither giving ground. The clouds below began to rotate, pulled into their conflict.

"You feel it, don't you?" His face was inches from hers, those depthless eyes reflecting nothing. "The cost of transformation. The price of pushing beyond your limits."

She did feel it—a burning in her core where power demanded payment. But she had centuries of life to spend, and she'd spend them all before yielding.

She broke the lock by bringing her wings forward, the bone spurs seeking his eyes. He leaned back, but not far enough—one spur opened a gash across his forehead that immediately began weeping shadow-blood into his eyes.

Temporary blindness. She pressed the advantage, driving him down through the storm layer. Rain sizzled off her crimson feathers, turned to steam before it could touch her. He defended by instinct, shadows lashing out in all directions, but she read the patterns, found the gaps, struck again and again.

They burst through the cloud base locked in combat. Below, the forest fled their approach. Animals ran. Birds scattered. Even the trees seemed to lean away from the destruction they brought.

She was winning.

Each exchange confirmed it. His shadows came fractionally slower, his counters a heartbeat later. The wounds she'd inflicted weren't healing as divine flesh should. The blood—if it was blood—that ran from a dozen cuts spoke of damage that went beyond the physical.

She drove him earthward with a combination of strikes that left no room for counter. Talon, wing spur, wind blade—each attack flowed into the next, a symphony of violence that pushed him back, down, always down. When he tried to dissolve, she anticipated it, her winds catching him mid-transformation and forcing him solid.

They struck the earth with enough force to crater it.

She stood over him, one talon pressed to his throat, crimson feathers spread wide in victory display. "Yield."

He smiled, and darkness bloomed beneath them both.

The ground itself became shadow, swallowing her leg to the knee before she could react. She tried to pull free, but the darkness held like tar, crawling higher with each heartbeat. He rose, shadows lifting him despite the talon that drew a line of shadow-blood across his throat.

"You're not the only one who held back," he said, and his voice carried the echo of vast, empty spaces.

The air around him began to drain of color. Not shadow—something worse. A greyness that spread outward like infection, turning the vibrant sky to ash-tinted memory. Where it touched clouds, they dissolved. Where it reached birds, they fell lifeless.

She tore free of the shadow-trap, leaving feathers and skin behind, launched herself skyward. But the greyness followed, patient as death.

"Entropy," he said conversationally, keeping pace with her withdrawal. "The end all things move toward. Even queens. Even gods."

She gathered wind and fire, shaped them into a lance of pure destruction, hurled it with all her transformed might. It struck the grey field and... slowed. Not stopped, but drained, its vibrant energy bleeding away until only a shadow of the attack reached him. He brushed it aside like cobwebs.

The greyness expanded faster now, a sphere of ending that promised nothing beyond its touch. She flew backward, maintaining distance, but running out of sky. Behind her, the mountains loomed. Above, the sun itself seemed dimmer where the grey field touched its light.

She gathered power for one last strike, pulling energy from her transformation itself. Crimson feathers blazed white-hot, and she became a living comet aimed at his heart. If the greyness would drain her attack, she'd become the attack, moving too fast for entropy to claim.

She dove.

The grey field rushed up to meet her. She felt its touch—cold beyond cold, an absence that made her previous wounds seem like gentle caresses. Her feathers began to dull, crimson fading to pink fading to grey. Her strength ebbed, transformation flickering.

But momentum carried her forward. She'd committed everything to this strike. Either she'd break through, or she'd break.

Xellos raised both hands, shadows condensing into a spear of absolute darkness aimed at her heart.

Time slowed.

She saw the spear form, saw its point orient toward her breast, saw her own death reflected in its midnight surface. Too late to dodge. Too late to abort. The greyness had claimed too much of her strength, left her a fraction of her former speed.

The spear thrust upward.

A large iron club intercepted it, shattering shadow into a thousand fragments.

Ryelle stood between them, silver fire blazing around her form, divine strength having turned Xellos's killing strike into so much dispersed darkness. The avatar's eyes blazed with fury that put Liselotte's transformation to shame.

"Sorry I'm late," she said, her voice crackling with flames. "Shall we finish this together?"

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