QUICK LINKS: The Ballad of Falling Dragons Recap by Chapter P–12 | 13–30 | 31–47 | 48–62 | 79–96 | 97–E // Moonfall Book 1 Summary
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapters 63–78 Summary
This chapter-by-chapter summary of The Ballad of Falling Dragons by Sarah A. Parker contains spoilers.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 63
Kaan and Pyrok move through dense fog when the attack strikes. Stone pillars erupt from the ground and metal spikes lash out, neutralizing their magic. Traps snap shut and haul both men into the air in heavy nets.
Raeve drops in, cutting down several guards before casting a spell to muffle the sounds of combat. Kaan slices himself free just in time to stop a soldier from striking her from behind while she’s down and in pain. Pyrok crashes to the ground a moment later.
As Raeve, Kaan, and Pyrok form a defensive circle, Raeve warns that over a hundred more enemies are closing in. She chants in two elemental languages, and the ground liquefies into a deep mire. The army sinks beneath the surface and vanishes.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 64
Kaan offers jewelry from his pah’s ears to Borg in exchange for information. Borg refuses and instead takes one of Kaan’s memories of vengeance. The scene shifts to a past battlefield.
In the memory, Kaan’s dragon has just killed his pah’s mount. He finds his pah badly burned and paralyzed. Kaan drags him to a boulder and tells him his reign is over, adding that the crown will eventually go to Veya when Kaan dies. His pah tries to bargain with secrets, but Kaan refuses. He cuts out his pah’s tongue and beheads him with a dull saw.
Before leaving with the head and the crown, Kaan conjures a simple stone cup and places it in his pah’s lap. It’s a bitter echo of a kinder gift he once gave the man.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 65
Raeve admits to Kaan that she’s bound by a blood spell and was ordered to assassinate Ahvi. Kaan already suspected this from information a waif he keeps with him had shared. He asks her to explain the hidden runes on her skin and identify who’s behind them. When Raeve lets the name Arkyn slip, Kaan vows to find and destroy him. She panics because she never meant to say that name.
Ahvi tells the group he can break the blood bind, but the ritual must happen at the exact location where the bond was created. Raeve resists at first but reluctantly agrees and reveals that the blood bind was made in an old mining site south of Gore, near the border of the Undercity.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 66
Arkyn chains Kyzari next to her aunt in the hallway. Veya has already been tortured and looks broken. Arkyn’s men search the cells and discover the diary beneath Kyzari’s waste container.
Kyzari spits in Arkyn’s face, and he beats her nearly to death. He orders the guards to drag her back into the small room. Turning to Veya, Arkyn says that Raeve will need the Aether Stone back and instructs her to keep the girl alive until it’s time to use the stone. After that, he leaves.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 67
Raeve, Kaan, Pyrok, and Ahvi travel toward Gore by cart. Raeve notices Pyrok caught in a nightmare and tosses his flasks out to stop him from drinking more.
Kaan sits with the driver Noeve, who mentions that Raeve looks remarkably like a woman she transported along the same route fifty cycles ago. Kaan brushes it off, steering the conversation toward his sister. Noeve explains that Veya visited the velvet trogg and returned with a silver jeweled bangle that gave off a deeply unsettling aura. Kaan is upset because Veya had promised to get rid of that object.
Just then, a parchment lark lands on Kaan, but it isn’t from his sister.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 68
The group reaches a military checkpoint near the city gates. Soldiers tear through the wagon, seize Noeve’s bloodstone, and probe the cargo for stowaways. The plan falls apart when Ahvi’s hatchling makes a noise under the floorboards. A soldier recognizes Raeve, and the situation turns violent.
Raeve sends the first guard over the cliff with wind magic. She and Kaan cut down the rest. Raeve drives stone spikes through the soldiers on the other side of the gate. Once the guards are down, Ahvi confirms that he can bypass the magical runes on the gate and get them inside the city.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 69
The group walks through the empty streets of Gore and finds several people hanging from a bridge. Raeve notices that the victims share the same marking on their ears that she carries. Kaan believes the military executed them to clear the streets before moving the population to the Undercity.
Later, the group stops at The Curly Quill. Raeve looks for her friends but finds no one. Upstairs in the office, she discovers a brief message from Sereme saying the current plan has changed and keeps an old parchment lark from the Elding to herself.
Kaan calls Raeve back down because the dusty air is making it hard for Ahvi to breathe. Raeve warns that the journey to the mine will take two days through filthy tunnels, hoping to convince Ahvi to turn back. He refuses, but he agrees the dragon should stay behind. Pyrok volunteers to watch over the hatchling.
Raeve shows Pyrok a hidden entrance into her old home and tells him where to find food and weapons. She also warns him that he must never go through the door to the upper level.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 70
Pyrok wakes to tapping from the ceiling. Despite Raeve’s warning, he climbs up. A woman ambushes him, pins him down, and presses a blade to his neck.
She catches a familiar scent on Pyrok and grows emotional. Believing her friend Raeve was killed by a dragon long ago, she listens as Pyrok explains that the execution failed and a dragon rescued Raeve and took her north. The woman faints, and Pyrok lunges to catch her before she hits the floor.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 71
Raeve fights through a blizzard with a painful injury and a key she stole from a guard. She loses sight of Fallon and panics, but she catches up. They find shelter from the wind, and Raeve tends to her wound. The sky clears just enough to reveal a dragon overhead. Then, Fallon urges her to keep moving and to find a reason to be happy. Raeve promises she’ll live and falls asleep.
Raeve wakes from the dream in a small shelter deep in the tunnels. Kaan is there, wiping her tears, and Ahvi sleeps in the corner. Raeve wonders out loud if the boy’s parents are still alive. Kaan says they’re probably dead.
When Kaan asks if Raeve wants to talk about her dream, she only asks him to hold her, and he pulls her close.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 72
Essi wakes, and she and Pyrok exchange names. Pyrok tells her Raeve is alive and traveling with Bothaim’s protégé, who may break Raeve’s blood bind. Essi wants to meet the kid.
A young dragon named Gruffin cries for food. Pyrok tries insects, but Gruffin refuses them. Essi produces raw meat, which Gruffin eats.
Essi offers to create a rune so Pyrok can use the front door and search for his sister. While working with his blood, she catches a familiar scent and realizes his sister is Queen Dothea Vaegor. Essi tells Pyrok that his sister is safe, hidden in a subterranean city she helped protect. She offers to take him there after finishing a project. Pyrok stays.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 73
Raeve, Kaan, and Ahvi arrive at a cave Raeve knows well. It’s the exact spot where she nearly died crossing the wilderness. Kaan finds it suspicious that Sereme managed to locate her in such a remote place. Raeve pulls out the lark she took from Sereme’s office. The note says the Elding gave orders to keep her under control until he could reclaim her.
As Ahvi prepares to break the blood bind, he warns Raeve that the process will force her body back to the state it was in just before she made the original deal. She was near death then and tries to stop him. Ahvi says the Book of Voyd will anchor her life force and keep her alive through the transition.
Just as Ahvi begins, Sereme activates the blood bind, and Raeve collapses in agony. Kaan screams at Ahvi to finish the spell. Ahvi draws the final symbol, and the ritual is complete.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 74
\The transition begins, and Raeve wastes away to almost nothing. Kaan is forced to watch from outside the magical circle until the final step. When he holds her close while she’s unconscious, her heart stops, then starts again, and her body returns to normal.
Suddenly, soldiers surround the three. Sereme steps out and uses Kaan’s niece as leverage to force his cooperation. She hands him a letter from the girl with a hidden note. To keep Raeve and Ahvi safe, Kaan surrenders.
Sereme admits that the pain she inflicted on Raeve was part of a plan to lure Kaan to the cave. She then forces him to drink a potion that strips his magic. The guards chain him and knock him unconscious.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 75
Grihm scales a red cliff to reach the burrow of a silver dragon named Ahra. At the nest, he finds that all the eggs are smashed and the younglings are dead. He covers their eyes with shell fragments, sits in the nest, and waits for the dragon, hoping she’ll kill him.
Grihm lost his own dragon and felt that one of Ahra’s eggs was his last chance at a future. When Ahra returns, she pins him with her talons but refuses to finish him off. Furious, he leaps onto her back, and she takes flight.
As they fly, Grihm begins to feel Ahra’s thoughts and immense sorrow. She’s been searching for a rider, so he chooses to stay rather than welcome death. They dive into a crater, and when they emerge, their minds and spirits are linked as one.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 76
Raeve wakes in a dim cell and sees Fallon resting on a thin pallet nearby. She thinks it’s just a dream but pulls Fallon close anyway. Raeve shifts so she’s between Fallon and the cell door. She hums softly until the pain in her head drags her back under.
As Raeve drifts through broken memories, a strange silver glow takes root inside her and spreads through her soul. She feels complete.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 77
A silver Sabersythe glides toward the capital of The Burn with Grihm riding between its wings. A shimmering silver ribbon guides them south as crowds fill the streets to watch.
The ribbon is a fragment of a much larger entity, broken apart long ago and trapped in the atmosphere, struggling to draw its scattered pieces back together. It once gave part of its essence to the Sabersythe as a silent plea for help. Now it hopes Grihm will understand this reunion was always meant to happen.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 78
Pyrok returns from a supply run and finds Essi passed out at her desk, her hand wrapped in a bandage. It looks like she used her own blood to carve runes into a stone. Pyrok feeds Gruffin, but the portions are too small. He knows he should hunt for something bigger, but he’s too tired to move. He falls asleep on the floor.