Clearly, a battle had already taken place.
And now a lone soldier advanced towards the camp in silence—Katell.
Black smoke curled around her feet, unfurling in slow, eerie tendrils. It leeched into the air and made Leywani’s skin crawl, her body prickling with the terror it conjured.
The soldiers flanking Velthur murmured among themselves, voices tense. Their horses danced beneath them, eyes wide, ears pinned back, as if they, too, sensed the impending storm.
“Look at her now. This is the monster your friend has become.” Velthur’s voice cut through the thick silence, but Leywani couldn’t tear her gaze away from the scene below.
One of the rebels raised his fist in a defiant gesture atop the palisade, shouting a rallying cry that echoed through the valley. His comrades’ determined shouts answered, a wave of hope amid the chaos.
Then, in the next breath, two figures emerged from the unnatural smoke, their forms cloaked in the same suffocating blackness that surrounded Katell.
Leywani’s horse jolted, but she gripped the reins tight, forcing herself to stay steady. Beside her, another soldier wasn’t so lucky. His mount bolted, and he was thrown to the ground. Velthur’s horse stamped the earth, nostrils flaring, sensing the disturbance in the very air around them. Reacting quickly, Lecne leaned over and steadied him, his grip unyielding.
The moment stretched. The slaves stood frozen, their defiant cries strangled into silence. The two hooded figures glided forward, moving with an eerie weightlessness, their edges blurred by the writhing black smoke curling from their forms.
No one moved. Not the Rasennan soldiers in their perfect formation, nor Velthur, whose dark eyes remained fixed on the nightmare unfolding below. Because they knew.
They all knew.
Whatever Katell had summoned—whatever nightmare she’d unleashed—was about to devour them all.
Stars be cursed…
Leywani’s pulse pounded in her ears. She wanted to scream, to warn the slaves, to beg them to run. But the words died in her throat. She was as frozen as they were, trapped in the horror of what was coming.
The hooded figures reached the burning barricade and passed through the flames without flinching. And then?—
The screaming began.
It was not the cries of battle, not the desperate shouts of men fighting for their lives. These were raw wails of fear, shrieks of agony so visceral they scraped against Leywani’s skull. She could only watch, helpless, as the demons descended upon the slaves with ruthless precision—silent shadows slicing through flesh like scythes through wheat.
When Leywani couldn’t take any more, she squeezed her eyes shut and clapped her hands over her ears, but it didn’t help. The screams burrowed into her bones, endless and inescapable. Her vision burned with tears, but she couldn’t shut out the horror.
Even after the last body fell and silence reclaimed the valley, the screams rang inside her head, rattling her to the core.
Back in the tent,Leywani sat stiffly, her clammy hands folded on a table half-covered in maps and scrolls. Her racing heartbeat hadn’t calmed since they’d left the battlefield. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the hooded figures gliding through the flames, heard the slaves’ screams, their terror thick in the air like smoke.
She had never witnessed such carnage. When the Rasennans came for the Freefolk, most had been taken alive; few had fallen resisting.
But this… this had been a massacre.
Her stomach twisted, a sharp, churning ache that made her head spin and bile rise in her throat.
Velthur took one look at her and poured water into a cup. “You’re in shock.” He pressed it into her hands. “Here. Drink.”
The cool liquid slid down her parched throat. “Where’s Katell?” she croaked.
Velthur didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached for a plate and filled it with food, his movements unhurried. Finally, he said, “You won’t be seeing her for a while.”
Leywani’s fingers tightened around the cup. “Why? Where is she?”
“She’s with Dalmatius and the Sixth Legion.” His tone was even. “On their way to crush the next rebellion stronghold.”
Leywani’s stomach lurched. More blood. More death. More slaughter.
And Katell at the centre of it all, powerless to stop it.
