He moves through the chaos without slowing. His blade rises and falls. His shadows reach and pull. Men die wherever he looks.
This is what they meant. All the stories, all the fear, all the whispered warnings about the Shadow Lord.
A horn sounds—high and piercing—from the north.
I jerk my head toward the sound. Fresh troops crest the northern ridge, pouring over the top in a golden flood. Ten thousand at least. Cavalry in front, infantry behind, and in the center—war mages in armor that blazes so bright it hurts to look at.
My stomach drops.
"Reinforcements," Kaan says. His jaw is tight. "They're trying to box us in."
I study the field, calculating angles and distances the way Father taught me before I understood what the lessons were for. "They want us in the valley center. Surround us. Use their numbers."
"Unless—"
The air splits open.
Not a portal. Not anything clean or controlled. Twenty feet to our left, reality tears itself apart. The edges of the wound bleed shadow-fire—black and gold flames that writhe and twist with something that looks like hunger. The smell hits me a moment later: sulfur, burnt offerings, something rotten underneath.
My horse rears. I fight to control her, pulling hard on the reins, my thighs clamping tight. Around us, soldiers from both sides stumble back from the rupture. Even the shadow warriors hesitate.
Something steps through.
Yasar.
But not Yasar. Not the elegant, controlled man I know.
This thing wearing his face is something else entirely.
His eyes have gone black. Not dark—black. No whites, no iris, just endless void where his eyes should be. Shadow-fire wreathes his hands, crawling up his forearms, moving with a life of its own. The flames don't flicker like normal fire. They pulse. They breathe. They watch.
Power radiates off him in waves I can taste on my tongue—burnt metal and old blood and something sweet underneath, cloying and wrong. The pressure of it makes my ears pop. Makes my twilight magic recoil in my chest.
The wound in reality seals itself behind him with a sound like tearing silk, and he stands on the battlefield like he's just stepped out for a morning walk.
"Cousin dearest." His voice is pleasant. Casual. As if we're meeting for afternoon tea rather than standing ankle-deep in blood and mud. "I hope you saved some for me."
"Where the fuck have you been?" Kaan demands.
Yasar smiles.
"Preparing." He turns toward the northern ridge. Ten thousand soldiers are still descending, their golden armor catching the morning light. "Watch."
He raises his hands.
For a moment, nothing happens. The Light Court reinforcements keep coming, confident in their numbers, their training, their righteousness.
Then the fire starts.
It begins at the base of the ridge—a flicker of black and gold that could almost be a trick of the light. Then it spreads. Not outward like normal fire. Upward. Against the wind, against gravity, against everything fire should do. It races up the slope toward the advancing columns, and the flames are wrong, so wrong—black and gold burning together in colors that hurt to look at, that make my eyes water and my stomach turn.
The first soldier touches it and starts screaming.
His armor melts. Not slowly—instantly, flowing down his body like water, and the flesh beneath doesn't burn, it vanishes. The flames devour him. Consume him. In the space of a heartbeat he goes from a man to a shape to nothing at all.
The fire spreads.
It doesn't discriminate. It doesn't slow. It flows through the columns like a living thing, hungry and patient and utterly unstoppable. Soldiers try to run—the fire follows. They try to form shield walls—the flames flow around the barriers and take them from behind. The war mages throw up wards that shimmer gold in the morning light, powerful magic that should stop anything?—
