Those here were half-elves, and that only left one harrowing truth. These children were assets, their bloodlines braided deepwith Essence and earth. Kept close. Kept quiet until the king decided to draw their leash taut.
Aside from the mothers, there were no adults or adolescents or any of the age when power began to stir. That alone told Lykor everything. If the adolescents weren’t here, they were somewhere worse. And it wouldn’t be the academy, with its gilded walls and its illusion of choice.
Daeryn and his people were proof enough of that, wherever they’d been trained. Separate bloodlines. Separate purposes. All pieces on the same board.
As the last of the children vanished through the portal, Bhreena followed, shepherding the smallest alongside a handful of her people and rangers. When the rift sealed, silence fell. Heavy. Absolute.
Those who remained stood tense, eyes flicking toward the tunnel’s mouth as though afraid of what might stare back. Whatever hope they’d carried in had guttered out, leaving only the rigid stance of warriors bracing for the worst.
Zaeryn and Daeryn took up sentry by the passage leading out, Essence shimmering around them as they peered into the endless gloom. Kal lingered nearby, jaw clenched, fingers drifting across the blades strapped over his chest.
Without a word, Lykor passed Vesryn and led them forward, deeper into the mountain’s waiting dark.
The incline rose where his memory swore it should’ve dipped. A right turn now stood where there’d been a fork. Again, he told himself that decades had skewed his sense of these tunnels. But unease eroded through the reassurance as the pathway stretched on.
The muscles between his shoulders twitched as his beastblood stirred, though it usually simmered unnoticed. But now, something in his instincts bristled. Alert. Waiting.
Aesar’s voice slid through his thoughts.“It feels like the earth is watching us through the walls.”
Lykor didn’t reply, but he lengthened his stride as the second chamber opened ahead. He hurled a lance of shadows, disintegrating the shield in a single strike. Vesryn’s illumination swept forward, spilling light into the cavern.
Like before, most of the prisoners huddled in corners or slumped in silent groups. Adults this time. Half-elves and humans. Likely those without magic of note. Those deemed to have novalue.
Lykor kept his focus on the next tunnel, though he heard some of those with Daeryn recognizing a scattering of people in the chamber.
They began to rise. Slow. Uncertain. Not yet convinced the danger had truly passed. Shadows haunted their eyes from too much time buried in silence. But unlike the children, a glimmer shone behind the vacancy, a flinch toward hope.
Vesryn moved through the chamber with Kal and Zaeryn, directing the strongest to aid the weakest while the rangers opened portals. Some prisoners were nearly too far gone—skin stretched over bone, breaths shallow and rattling in their chests.
But none would be left behind.
Time worked against them as the extraction dragged, each moment scraping into the next. The minutes didn’t pass so much as crawl sideways, wrong in a way that raised the fine hairs on Lykor’s arms. His heartbeat slipped out of rhythm, beastblood pacing his ribs, caged and restless.
The walls felt too warm, the stone holding heat where it shouldn’t, as though the mountain had begun to exhale around them.
Movement whispered. Too weighted to belong to air alone.
Essence shuddered through the chamber like a distant gong, its resonance answered by a splinter of darkness peeling openin the tunnel. Power pressed inward, condensing, shaping into a portal.
An intrusion.
Ten elves stepped through the rift, Essence winding around them, flashing off white armor. Their eyes gleamed with the arrogance of predators who’d never been prey.
But they would be.
Shadows writhed around Lykor’s shoulders as Aesar surged forward, their wills aligning as he raised their hands. Lykor didn’t resist. With a low snarl, they ripped a glaive from their spine and warped inside the enemy’s line.
Lykor lashed a pulse of force outward, yanking the first warrior out of formation and hurling him straight into Aesar’s waiting claw. The elf managed only a strangled gasp before their talons crushed his throat. Lykor twisted their wrist, flinging the corpse aside without a word.
They didn’t pause. Didn’t need to think. They moved as one.
Another elf charged. Lykor obliterated the warrior with rending as Aesar spun to meet two more, both glaives now bared, carving across exposed throats in mirrored arcs.
Steel shrieked. Blood sheeted across the ground.
Lykor ripped Essence around them, dragging enemies inward, hurling them screaming into Aesar’s blades. Shadows lashed like whips, splitting bone, splattering red across the stone.
The elves never stood a chance against this storm of vengeance. Not against one who’d already clawed his way out once, now returned for blood.
