The horn sounded.

  A single, sharp note that cut through the csh of steel and spellwork like a knife through cloth.

  Seraphine felt it ripple across the battlefield before she understood it.

  Then a line of fire tore through the treeline at chest height.

  The precise, horizontal cut of incandescent heat carved through bark and stone alike. Two golems took it full on. Their torsos cracked, glowing white along the seam, before sloughing apart into molten fragments that hissed into the soil.

  Seraphine staggered back, heat washing over her ward hard enough to make her teeth rattle.

  Artillery.

  Tower mages.

  The second strike came before she finished the thought.

  She threw her hands up and dragged power into shape, weaving a ward on instinct alone. The barrier snapped into pce just as another line of fire smmed into it, heat screaming across the surface. The impact drove her down to one knee, breath tearing from her lungs as if she had been struck.

  Her vision swam. Sweat ran cold down her spine.

  The fire cut again—higher this time, she realized distantly. Not repeating the same line. Adjusting.

  They were walking the battlefield.

  Another strike was coming. She could feel it building, the distant pressure of gathered spellwork aligning far beyond the trees. Not blind force. Coordinated output. Someone was watching where the first shots nded and correcting.

  A presence fred beside her.

  Nyxara stepped into pce without a word, dark runes crawling up her arms as she reinforced the ward with something older and uglier. The air thickened, bending inward, swallowing heat instead of deflecting it. The third line of fire vanished into that pressure with a sound like tearing cloth.

  She hissed through her teeth. "Damn you."

  Seraphine gnced sideways, breathing hard.

  "I spent weeks shaping those constructs," Nyxara snapped. "Weeks. And they learned how to cut them apart in seconds."

  "The enemy have changed tactics," Seraphine said, forcing the words out past the ringing in her ears.

  "Yes," Nyxara replied ftly. "Then we shall respond in kind."

  She did not release the ward.

  She held it.

  The pressure inside it thickened, folding inward on itself, heat screaming silently as it was swallowed instead of dispersed. The air warped. Leaves curled and bckened at the edges. The ground beneath Nyxara's boots began to smoke.

  Seraphine felt it then—not heat, but weight. Like standing too close to a fault line just before it slipped.

  "Nyxara," she warned, breath still ragged. "That much energy—"

  "Quiet, child," Nyxara said. "I know what I'm doing."

  Her voice was calm. Cold.

  The runes along her arms burned down to a dull, lightless red. Bone-dust sigils fred beneath her skin, ugly and asymmetrical, nothing like Tower script.

  She turned her head slightly, eyes unfocused, as if listening to something far away.

  Then she smiled.

  "Oh," she murmured. "Found you."

  Nyxara thrust one hand forward and opened the ward.

  Not outward.

  Down.

  The ground split with a sound like tearing roots. The pressure colpsed into the earth, vanishing in an instant—and then reappeared far beyond the treeline with surgical precision.

  A line of fire ripped out of the forest in reverse.

  It did not skim the ground this time.

  It rose.

  Seraphine caught a glimpse of it through the canopy—a vertical spear of incandescent heat punching up from the distant ridge where the Tower mages had been positioned. Trees exploded outward in a halo of fme and ash. Stone shattered. The night lit white for a heartbeat.

  Then came the sound.

  A deyed thundercp rolled back through the forest, deep enough to rattle teeth. Something screamed at the far end of it, thin and brief and abruptly cut off.

  The pressure vanished.

  Silence rushed in to fill the space it left.

  Nyxara exhaled slowly, as if setting down something very heavy.

  "That should make them reconsider," she said, flexing her fingers once. Smoke curled zily from the runes along her arms.

  Seraphine stared.

  Then a sharp crack split the air.

  Not magic. Not thunder.

  Impact.

  Nyxara jerked violently, breath tearing out of her in a sound that was half snarl, half gasp. She staggered one step, then another, one hand flying to her side.

  Seraphine saw the bolt a heartbeat ter.

  It had punched cleanly through Nyxara's ribs from the fnk, the bck-fletched shaft buried almost to the head. No glow. No runes. Just steel and momentum and terrifying precision.

  Nyxara's ward colpsed.

  Heat rushed back into the world all at once. Leaves burst into fme. The air screamed.

  Seraphine threw her hands up on instinct, dragging what little focus she had left into a partial barrier as Nyxara dropped hard to one knee.

  "Nyxara!"

  "Sniper," she hissed, teeth bared.

  Another crack. Closer this time.

  The bolt shattered against a tree trunk inches from Seraphine's head, bark exploding outward in a spray of splinters. She ducked, heart smming against her ribs.

  Footsteps followed.

  Measured. Light. Too many.

  They emerged from the trees without urgency, moving through the smoke and broken light like they had all the time in the world. Griffon crests caught the firelight in brief, dull fshes. Crossbows held low, already reloaded.

  Night Wardens.

  Nyxara tried to rise.

  The runes along her arms flickered, then dimmed to ash-gray. She sucked in a sharp breath, face tightening as if something inside her had twisted the wrong way.

  "Poison," she growled. "Clever bastards."

  Seraphine's stomach dropped.

  They shifted then, spreading terally with practiced ease.

  Eyes slid to Seraphine.

  Assessed. Weighed.

  Chose.

  Nyxara's hand closed around Seraphine's wrist, grip iron despite the tremor running through her.

  "Run," she said. "Do not fight them here."

  Nyxara's magic fred reflexively—and folded inward. The air around her compressed with a sound like a held breath finally released.

  Then she vanished.

  Her robes colpsed where she had been standing, empty fabric slumping into the scorched leaves. The bolt cttered free a heartbeat ter, striking root and stone with a dull, final sound.

  Seraphine stared, stunned—just a fraction too long.

  A bolt grazed her shoulder, heat and pain blooming white-hot as it tore through fabric and skin. She cried out, stumbled back, barely kept her feet.

  'Expendable,' Cire had said.

  But expendable did not mean weak.

  The bde whispered past Rocher's throat.

  He twisted aside on instinct, the edge grazing his shoulder hard enough to burn. He hit the ground rolling and came up in a crouch, fists already glowing.

  They stepped out of the shadows around him.

  Eight. Maybe ten.

  Griffon-embzoned armor, lighter than padin pte, built for speed and silence. Crossbows held low. Short bdes. No banners. No wasted motion.

  One of them inclined his helm slightly.

  Then he lunged.

  Rocher met him head-on.

  A sharp burst of force snapped the man's stance open; Rocher pivoted inside the guard and drove an elbow into the helm hard enough to drop him boneless to the moss.

  And as the body fell—

  The second and third moved.

  One from the left. One from behind.

  Bolts snapped through the space where Rocher's spine had been a breath earlier. He felt the heat of one pass close enough to singe hair as he twisted again, runes fring along his skin on instinct. The impact smmed into his armor hard enough to stagger him, breath tearing from his lungs.

  Rocher surged forward anyway, closing the distance on the second before the Warden could reload. A concussive pulse at close range crumpled armor and sent the man flying into a tree with a sound like splitting wood.

  The third was already moving.

  Bde low. Crossbow dropped without ceremony as he rushed inside Rocher's reach, accepting the risk. Rocher struck, fast and brutal, force cracking ribs—

  —and the Warden kept coming.

  Blood sprayed dark through the seams of his armor as he drove the bde up and in, aiming for Rocher's fnk. Rocher twisted at the st instant. The edge bit shallow, burning hot as it tore free.

  Rocher answered with a knee to the chest that lifted the man off his feet and dropped him hard to the moss.

  The Warden did not scream.

  Did not beg.

  He rolled, gasping, and raised his crossbow one-handed, arm hanging wrong.

  And fired. Point-bnk.

  Rocher barely got up his guard in time. The bolt detonated against it in a fre of heat that shoved him back a step, magic fring uncontrolled along his arms.

  That was when the others shifted.

  Not toward him.

  Around him.

  Two peeled wide, one left, one right, boots silent on moss. Another stepped back, drawing a clean line of fire past Rocher's shoulder.

  They were not trying to overwhelm him.

  They were trying to fix him in pce.

  Trying to spend him.

  Rocher felt it then, cold and precise beneath the hum of his magic.

  Expendable did not mean weak.

  He moved in a blur, force snapping out in tight, lethal bursts. One Warden went down mid-step, ribs colpsing inward. Another took a gncing blow that should have dropped him and kept moving anyway, jaw clenched, eyes locked past Rocher instead of on him.

  On something else.

  Fire roared.

  Ferric crashed into them like a living weapon.

  Witchfire spiraled off his body in howling arcs, heat punching the air ft. The smell of scorched flesh overwhelmed sap and smoke in an instant.

  The Night Wardens barely had time to react before the world became screaming light.

  One went down in a bze, armor peeling open. Another smmed into a tree hard enough to shatter ribs. A third fell screaming—then stopped.

  Ferric tore through them with brutal efficiency, fire-infused blows crushing armor and bodies alike.

  One Warden—one Rocher had already dropped—tried to crawl.

  Ferric stepped on his back and burned straight through the hauberk, leaving nothing but a smoking outline in the moss.

  This was sughter.

  Rocher stared, bile rising in his throat.

  Not at the blood. At the ease. The certainty.

  Breath burned. His pulse thundered. The familiar thrill licked at the edges of his focus—how clean it felt, how easy, how right—

  He clenched his jaw.

  "Stop!" he snapped, stepping forward. "Ferric, that's enough!"

  Ferric turned, eyes bright and wild. "Enough?"

  He kicked a corpse aside, boots slick with blood. "These men won't draw a single priest from formation. You know that. They're irrelevant to your woman's precious pn."

  The words hit harder than the violence.

  Rocher knew the feeling. The justification.

  He'd used it before. If it was for Cire, everything became simple.

  Here it was a different enemy. Different purpose.

  But it always took the same shape.

  Ferric's smile softened, almost fond at Rocher's hesitation.

  "You know," he said lightly, "if you ever stop pretending you're smaller than this, we could do extraordinary things. Together."

  His gaze flicked once to the bodies, then back to Rocher.

  "You have the aptitude," he said. "Hero."

  Another horn sounded, distant but urgent.

  Ferric gnced toward it, excitement fshing anew on his face. "Duty calls."

  He vanished in a streak of fire.

  The forest was suddenly very quiet. Too quiet for how loudly his pulse roared in his ears.

  His hands were still clenched. His magic still coiled tight, waiting for a target.

  Rocher stood there for half a heartbeat too long, then turned and ran the other way, heart pounding, unease settling deep and heavy in his chest.

  They did not rush her.

  That was the worst part.

  The Night Wardens moved through the forest in the deep canopy-dark like they were tracking wounded prey, not chasing an enemy. They let Seraphine run. Let her burn magic. Let panic do the work for them.

  Seraphine skidded behind a fallen trunk and spun, hurling ice in a wide, desperate arc. The spell tore free raggedly, not the clean bde she preferred. It caught two Wardens across the legs. One went down hard, armor screeching against bark. The other rolled and came up immediately, already closing the distance.

  Too fast. Too close.

  She ran again, lungs burning, lightning snapping blindly from her hands as she fled. Each fsh turned the forest white for a heartbeat before the dark smmed back in. Each was answered with a bolt, flying past her head. The light only helped them track her.

  She tried to angle back toward the others. But the griffon crests were already there. She veered hard, nearly crossed the cordon—and stopped herself a step from its pale shimmer.

  Her heart dropped.

  Padins waited ahead of her, their shieldline a dark wall until their holy symbols fred and sketched them into visibility.

  A net.

  The cordon hummed softly, pale and absolute.

  If she crossed it, her magic would die.

  If she stayed, they would kill her.

  The corruption stirred eagerly beneath her skin. A familiar pressure.

  No more options.

  Seraphine pnted her feet, shaking.

  She thought of Cire's voice. Of rules. Of lines she'd promised not to cross.

  Then she thought of dying here. Of never seeing Cire again.

  She grit her teeth.

  "Sleep," she whispered, her voice like soft steel.

  The magic surged out of her in a crushing wave, thick and suffocating. Darkness rolled across the clearing like spilled ink. Wardens colpsed mid-step. Padins sagged where they stood, resisting at first.

  She poured more into it, wrestling the padins for control. Their armor finally hit the ground with dull, heavy thuds, bodies piling together in a tangled heap.

  Seraphine dropped to her knees.

  Bck veins crawled up her neck, branching along her jaw and temples. She gagged, retching violently, bile burning her throat. The world tilted. Her ears rang.

  Too much.

  Footsteps crunched nearby.

  More of them.

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, fingers trembling, and forced herself upright. Her magic still pulsed inside her—unstable, frayed, dangerous.

  "I refuse to fall here."

  She raised her hands again, straining against strain, vision blurring at the edges.

  "Sleep."

  Rocher reached the clearing just as she swayed.

  The sight hit him like a blow.

  Bodies y everywhere, unconscious, sprawled at wrong angles. Armor glinted dully whenever spell-light caught it, then vanished back into shadow.

  At the center stood Seraphine, eyes bloodshot, bck veins stark against her skin.

  Fear cut through him, sharp and immediate.

  "Sera!" He reached her just as her knees buckled, catching her before she hit the ground. She was burning hot, shaking uncontrolbly, barely aware of him.

  "You have to stop," he said hoarsely. "Cire told you not to push it this far."

  Her lips twitched. "I... didn't have much choice."

  The forest rustled.

  Rocher did not turn. He already knew.

  He scooped her up and ran.

  Headlong into the cordon.