A loyalist broke from the melee and charged for Seori’s back. I snapped my wrist, and a throwing disk took him under the ear. He dropped boneless, surprise etched into his face like he couldn’t believe his story ended with a girl in a burned dress and ink under her nails.
“Good,” Jisoo said, automatic, the way we remind each other we’re still alive.
Rheon got both hands on Taeyang’s shoulders. For a heartbeat, itlookedlike enough. Then Taeyang looked up and the look wasn’t for Rheon. It was for the sky. He opened his mouth, and the sound that came out wasn’t a word. It was anote.Old. Wrong. Bone-deep. The kind of sound that makes temples crack and fathers pray to gods they don’t believe in.
The field flinched. Seori’s eyes went wide. Rheon reeled like he’d taken a blade under the ribs.
“Minji.” Jisoo’s forehead pressed to mine, the way you keep someone from going where their body has already decided to run. “Listen to me.”
“I am.”
“We’re going to fix this,” he said. “But not by dying in his hands. We need a counter-sigil for the cup. We need the old Korr rite broken at the root. We need—”
“Yuna,” I said, hoarse. “We need Yuna.”
He swallowed.
“We need Yuna.”
I clawed my way up the cart and whistled the sharpest call I had—the one you only use when the map has changed and your friends are too busy bleeding to notice. Seori’s head snapped toward me.
“Violet!” I shouted, slashing two fingers across my throat—cut the leash.“Balcony!”
She didn’t hesitate. She never does. “Rheon—” she barked, and the prince’s shadow snapped back into his skin like an animal answering the only voice it fears. He pivoted, set his feet, and—god help all of us—let go,just enough to throw a wall of night up between Taeyang and the nearest living thing while Seori sprinted for the palace like she’d trained her whole life for this run.
“Hold,” Jisoo breathed against my temple, hands braced on either side of me, wing covering us both while arrows hammered and snapped. “Hold, Minji. Breathe.”
“I am,” I said, and it was almost true.
Taeyang staggered in the cage Rheon made for him. He clawed at his chest like he could dig the brand out with his hands. Fire leaked from his fingers. He threw his head back and made thatsoundagain—the one that asks the world to end and means it.
On the balcony, Yuna tore the chain from her wrist. The ward shrieked. The King turned so fast his crown slid. She didn’t look at him. She looked at the field and lifted her palm like a queen calling her own lightning. I felt the bond strike through every wrong spell laid between them—thin, then bright, thenbright enough to hurt.
“Come on,” I begged the air. “Come on, Yun. Be the one he hears.”
Rheon locked the shadow-cage tighter. Jisoo’s wing trembled with effort and injury. My disks were gone; my lungs were knives; my friends were drawing lines with their bodies and asking me to stay behind mine.
On the far edge of the field, Daesin laughed, blood-slick and delighted, and whispered another small, ugly word. Taeyang shuddered. For one impossible second, his eyes cleared.
They found the balcony.
They foundher.
“Stay,” I heard him rasp, and it was unclear whether he meant himself or Yuna or me or the whole cursed world.
It didn’t hold.
The heat spiked. The light turned colorless. Every drum became one drum and every breath becamehis. He rose inside the cage like a man made of ruin. My knees went weak. Jisoo caught me with the hand that had saved me more times than I would ever tell him.
“Minji,” he said, and it wasn’t a warning anymore. It was a prayer.
“I know,” I whispered back, and the words broke on the edges of my teeth. “It’s too dangerous.”
We watched our friend become the thing that would rather die than kneel—and understood it might make him do both. I set my jaw against the helplessness. I carved the route in my head to the Archive for whatever counter-sigil lived there. I counted how many breaths I had to give to get Seori to the balcony and back. I told myself strategy is love in a language no one writes poems in.
And over the scream of metal and men and an old magic rejoicing at its own cruelty, I let myself grieve the boy Taeyang had been—the one who learned wrath first because no one taught him how to be anything else.
War doesn’t begin. It reveals.
