When Du Wei woke, his neck felt ready to snap. The slightest instinctive twitch of his head sent pain lancing through it.

Awareness seeped back by degrees. He lay pressed against cold, muddy earth, but one fact soon became clear: he was still alive.

He did not dare move at once. First he lay still and took stock of his arms, legs, and the rest of his body. Only after finding no serious injury did he inch his way upright.

His head was still spinning. His last clear memory was of the wounded dragon giving out beneath them—and of that silly girl, without a shred of an eighth-level mage's dignity, bursting into tears and crying for her mother.

At the last moment, the dragon had wrung out a final reserve of strength. Its wings had beaten frantically, just enough to steady their fall, but not enough to keep them aloft. With two people clinging to its back, it had hurtled toward the ground.

After that, only fragments remained in Du Wei's mind: falling, a deafening crash, trees...

He rubbed his eyes hard and looked around, then sighed.

The enormous dragon lay nearby in a crater gouged through what had once been woodland. Its fall had flattened trees in every direction. The creature itself seemed mostly unharmed—dragon scales were every bit as tough as rumor claimed—but the gash in its wing looked worse than before. Flying on it for so long must have torn the wound open further.

Now the dragon slept, its crimson hide and scales giving off a faint glow.

Even asleep, the massive creature exerted a crushing pressure at this distance. Perhaps humans simply carried an instinctive fear of such dangerous beasts.

Every breath rumbled like a storm, trailing black smoke from its nostrils and jaws. At the memory of the previous night's battle, excitement stirred in Du Wei despite himself.

He had watched a battle of astonishing scale unfold before his own eyes, vivid and terrifyingly real. No special effects from the movies of his previous life could compare.

Unfortunately, the icy beauty had proved right in the end.

Softhearted Vivian had feared the battle would harm innocent people, so she had poured an enormous amount of magic into a transportation array and shifted the battlefield to distant Halfhorn Mountain. She had saved countless lives—and spent so much power that she had no longer been a match for her sister.

At first, the two formidable mages had commanded their dragons in an even contest, fire against frost. But as Vivian's magic waned, the balance had tipped, and she had lost.

The girl was kind almost to a fault. Even in flight, she had remembered to haul him along. She certainly had a conscience.

Besides, she had saved the lives of many of his men last night. In hindsight, perhaps he had been too harsh with her.

Du Wei sighed and looked at Vivian, who lay on the ground nearby. Her eyes were closed, her lids trembling beneath long lashes. Fortunately, she appeared uninjured, and her breathing was steady.

He walked over and gently patted her cheek. Still asleep, the young mage pursed her lips and mumbled indistinctly, "Mama... Papa... I'm... poor little Vivian..."

So she did not stutter in her sleep.

Du Wei smiled. She was still only a child.

Surviving the fall had left him rather more grateful to the silly girl. He patted her cheek again. "Hey. Wake up. Come on."

Vivian's eyes finally fluttered open. She found Du Wei's face inches from her own, shrieked, and sprang upright. Both hands flew to the collar of her robe as she scrambled backward, eyes round with suspicion, as though certain he meant to take advantage of her.

Du Wei nearly laughed at the sight. He obligingly backed away. "Honorable Mage, you're finally awake. I'm afraid we're in rather bad shape."

Vivian shook her head and at last came fully awake. Suddenly she cried, "M-my dragon!"

She spotted the sleeping crimson flame dragon, leaped to her feet, and raced over. Clinging to one of its claws, she burst into tears. "My Blazing Sun... B-Blazing Sun... the Blazing Sun my t-teacher gave me!"

At the sight of its wounds, she frantically searched inside her robe—only to produce an empty pack. Du Wei had already extorted its entire contents from her.

With no magical materials left, Vivian spread her arms and rattled off an incantation. A thread of milky-white light spilled from her hands, so faint that even Du Wei, who knew nothing of magic, could tell something was wrong.

Vivian froze. Drawing a deep breath, she grew solemn and repeated the spell one deliberate word at a time. The white light strengthened a fraction, and the flesh beneath it began to knit. It was some kind of healing spell, but the glow extended barely beyond her palm.

Compared with the dragon's enormous body, such a feeble healing spell was nowhere near enough.

She managed to half close a single scrape on the dragon's claw before she swayed and collapsed, white-faced. Shaking her head, she stared at her bare hands in disbelief.

"M-my... my m-magic... it stopped working!"

Du Wei stared. "What did you say?"

"My m-magic... doesn't w-work," Vivian whimpered.

Stopped working? Du Wei had been counting on her to heal the dragon and get them out of here.

The silent woods offered no clue where they were. They had fled blindly through the chaos and flown for nearly half the night without knowing their direction.

"Did you exhaust your magic? Are you short on spiritual power?" Du Wei asked carefully. "Try meditating for a while and restoring it."

"N-no. I can f-feel my magic, b-but I can't cast s-spells!"

Now Du Wei was at a loss as well.

After thinking for a moment, he frowned. "Your magic doesn't work? Try some other spells."

Vivian made several attempts. The results left them both bitterly disappointed.

For no discernible reason, Vivian's magical ability had plummeted.

She could conjure only one or two tiny fireballs before fire magic exhausted her. Advanced spells such as the Emerald Flame Shift were completely beyond reach. Even the lowest-level magic devoured most of her spiritual power, only to emerge at less than half its usual strength.

Now Vivian was truly terrified. Magic had been her sole gift since childhood, her extraordinary power the one thing she had always been able to rely on.

Now, ninety-nine percent of it had vanished. She stared at her hands, eyes wide, unable to speak for a long while.

Du Wei was equally puzzled. Unable to find an explanation, he could only suppose that the silly girl had been struck by some spell from the icy beauty during their battle, or perhaps had suffered some hidden injury.

Without her magic, Vivian's rabbit-sized courage shrank to that of a mouse. She could not string together a complete sentence. She only stared at Du Wei in terror while tears rolled down her cheeks. With no better answer, he softened his voice. "You must be injured... or perhaps your sister cast something on you. Don't worry. Your magic is so powerful that it will recover sooner or later. And you have a very powerful teacher, don't you? Your teacher will know how to restore it."

The mention of her teacher finally steadied Vivian. Her faith in that person was apparently absolute. She jumped to her feet. "I-I want to go b-back and see my t-teacher!"

"Good," Du Wei replied. "I need to return too. But we must be careful of your sister. She chased us all night, and we only shook her off near dawn. If we meet her again now that your magic is gone, we won't be able to resist her." He pointed at the dragon. "Can your dragon still fly?"

Vivian shook her head, then struggled through an explanation. A dragon's own magic would gradually mend its body even without outside help, but the process was slow, and Blazing Sun could not fly until it recovered.

With wounds this severe, it might need to sleep for a year or more before it healed.

So much for escaping on dragonback. Du Wei sighed and decided to scout the surroundings and work out where they were.

Ideally, he would reach the edge of the forest. With luck, he might meet one or two locals, ask for directions, and find the nearest town.

The dragon could not move and had to remain where it was to recover. Vivian flatly refused to abandon her precious Blazing Sun. Since Du Wei now felt indebted to the silly girl—and consequently rather kinder toward her—he gave in and went scouting alone.

He broke off a branch to beat a path through the undergrowth, picked a direction, and set out. For now, he meant to scout only the immediate area.

As it happened, Du Wei was both lucky and profoundly unlucky that day.

The plan was simple: leave the forest, find a local or two, and locate the nearest settlement.

The first part went smoothly.

In less than half an hour, he passed the final line of trees and found a vast expanse before him.

The sea.

At the sight of the beach, Du Wei froze.

Had they flown all the way to the coast?

He turned back without dwelling on the matter, but with every step his unease grew.

He broke into a run and did not stop until he reached Vivian and the sleeping dragon. Still gasping, he shouted, "Quick! Can you still use a flight spell? Get up there and look at the terrain around us! Hurry!"

Vivian stared, but seeing him panting and frantic, she obeyed.

With her magic crippled, the wind-based flight spell lasted barely a dozen seconds.

But a dozen seconds was enough.

Vivian rose high enough to see beyond the trees... then dropped from the sky, panic twisting her face.

Du Wei managed to catch her, though the impact sent them both tumbling to the ground with Vivian in his arms.

This time, she made no attempt to push him away. Her face had gone bloodless. She had found something far more frightening.

"W-we... we're on an i-island!"