After everything I had imagined could happen on our mission to find the Lyre, to save humanity from the clutches of the Dragon-borns, watching my sister fall to her death off the side of a mountain had not been one of the outcomes I had pictured. Her panic-stricken face tore through my chest and aimed straight for my heart, gripping it in its claws, as I watched Haera attempt to hold onto something to stop her fall.

It was no use. Every rock she reached out for crumbled underneath the pressure of her descent. There was nothing she, Larc or me could do, but watch as she fell.

My mind was so filled with my screaming cries of my sister's name and the tears clouding my eyes that when I saw a clear, shimmering beam, I thought death had reached out to claim her. When the glimmering rope wrapped around her torso and halted her fall, I had to blink to banish my tears.

Larc extended the transparent magic from his hand, the tendrils of power dancing in the early morning sun, and gritted his teeth as he hauled Haera back up to where we were stuck on the mountainside. The magic rope flickered in and out of existence, its hold lessening on my sister by the second.

"Grab onto the rocks and climb!" The Dragon-born yelled as the weight of Haera began to tug him down the mountainside too.

I pressed a hand into his back, forgetting about his shredded wings, and pushed him back to where he had been, keeping him steady. When my sister was as safe as she could be, the clear strands retracted back into his palm.

"Are you okay?" Larc asked between fits of coughs. When he pulled his face away from the crook of his arm, blood was noticeably splattered on the fabric of his shirt and the corners of his lips.

I reached out with my magic to heal what was causing the blood, but I found nothing. Whatever it was, it wasn't an injury I could heal.

"No, I'm not okay." Haera's voice and hands trembled as she forced herself to take deep breaths, curses leaving her mouth between each breath. "What the fuck was that?"

"Something that just saved your life," Larc replied as he began to climb again. He tested each piece of rock he moved his limbs to in case it were to fall before using it to hold his weight. "We need to get moving. I shouldn't have used my power, the royal guards will be able to track me to our current location now."

The clear strands had been magic of some kind? I had never heard about Dragon-borns having magic before. Did every soldier have that power? If so, Silverwood Village and all of the other human villages and kingdoms had no hope of survival unless we got out hands on the Lyre.

"Are you even okay to climb after using that?" I questioned as I still held tightly to Haera. If I let her go, I feared she would fall down the mountainside again and I doubted Larc would be able to conjure another burst of his magic after it cost him so much. "It looks like it drained you a lot."

"I better be, otherwise, we'll get snatched off the rocks by Dragon-borns." Panic coated his words — something thick and unmissable. "Now, get moving before they arrive."

Implementing the method that Larc used to test if the rocks were safe, I began to climb up too, keeping an eye on Haera who took a much slower pace than before. "Didn't you say that the Dragon-borns were more interested in the Lyre than you right now? Why are you panicking so much?"

"Yes, I did say that. However, once they sense that my power is in the general direction of where the Lyre should be, it's over for all of us."

"So, we're just ignoring the fact that Larc summoned a rope of wind out of nowhere?" Haera gritted her teeth as she continued up.

"Would you like to stop to have a civilised discussion about my power and the intricacies of how it works while soldiers track us down to kill us?" When he didn't receive a response in the second he paused, he continued, "I didn't think so."

My sister rolled her eyes but kept her pace with me. It wasn't too much longer before Larc stopped in his tracks.

"I think there's a path above us."

"A path? That has to lead to the Lyre, right?" There couldn't be anything else on the mountain it could lead to except endless piles of snow, so it had to be the Goddess's artefact.

"There's only one way to find out," Haera quipped, pushing herself to get further up the mountain. Now that we knew there was a resting point nearby, the ache in our muscles and the pain forming on our palms were much more noticeable.

After Larc got onto the path, he reached out his hand to help my sister and me to get up too which we welcomed. He winced as we climbed up with his assisted strength and a few more coughs had splotches of blood appearing on his lips. What sort of power did he have that caused such a thing?

In the thought of magic, my own flared to life and reached out towards the scrapes and bruises littered over Larc and Haera's bodies. The wounds on their hands sealed over without a fuss, but the cuts along my sister's body from her fall took a little more focus to heal.

As we sat back to catch our breath, my eyes raked my sister again for any more sign of injury — a broken bone or perhaps the sign of a twisted ankle — but thankfully I discovered no such thing. The only noticeable concern I saw was that her satchel was open.

"Haera, did anything fall out when you fell?" I asked, motioning towards the bag on her back.

Her eyes widened in panic as she removed the leather from her back and combed through the contents inside. When she was finished she sat back on her haunches, an angry tear slipping down her cheek. "A few weapons have, including one of father's hunting daggers."

If certain death wouldn't meet us at the bottom of the mountain with the threat of every crumble of stone, I knew Haera would leap off the edge of this path to retrieve the blade. Though, we all knew there was no saving it now.

"Have you got the time to have the civilised discussion now?" Haera pushed, distracting herself from the loss she had just realised. Despite the Dragon-born having saved her life, she appeared to be even more suspicious of him.

Larc's eyes searched the skies for any sign of soldiers headed our way, then they returned to the path ahead of us. "We can't risk it. Not while the Lyre is within reach." He offered his hand to me to help me off of the ground and I gratefully accepted it. "Though, I guess I can say I got it from my mother and it's nowhere near strong enough to be good for anything." Larc extended his hand to help Haera up too. I bit my tongue as I knew she was bound to refuse his help, but after a moment of hesitation, my sister accepted it too.

"Good for nothing except for saving people falling off of mountains," I pointed out with a smile.

"Thanks for that, by the way." Haera scowled at her words, as if the very notion of appreciating something that a Dragon-born had done for her made her stomach roll.

"You're welcome," Larc replied with a nod.

I had to hide the smile that forced its way into my lips before my sister attempted to get it off of me. Their interaction wasn't too big a step, but the roots of trust were beginning to wind around Haera.

While I was basking in the notion of Larc and Haera getting along, the tug of the Lyre wrapped around me and dragged my attention away from them, pulling me to a stop.

Two warm hands placed themselves on my shoulders to stop Larc from walking into me. "What's wrong?"

"The Lyre is close," I breathed. The rush of power thrumming beneath me was intoxicatingly strong, a need to reach it blooming in my chest. "It's still under us, but it's much closer now."

We continued up the path, our pace quickening as we got further up, eager to reach the artefact we had been searching for, but we slowed again when blue sparks floated through the air around us. The same flickers of light we had seen swarmed around the tower we had found were here too. They clung to the surrounding rocks and to the path under our feet, coating the area in a comforting glow.

Finally, after our endless journey, we were here.

At the end of the path, a narrow cave entrance seemed like it had been carved into the mountain. The stone was neatly arranged as if a pattern might have once surrounded the hole that led into the consuming darkness on the other side, but it had now been worn away by centuries of erosion.

We had been incredibly lucky that the entrance was up here and not down at the bottom where we had started. If luck hadn't been on our side, there would have been no way to get back down safely before the other Dragon-borns reached us.

Now, we just had to reach it and destroy it before they showed up.