“Fuck, take cover!” Garrick bellowed.
A spherical shield of light snapped into place around Arielle and me an instant before the monster lunged.
Its arms morphed mid-strike, smoke hardening into blades.
Alaric met the first blow with a ringing clash, his boots skidding across the stone. Bastian drove in from the side, his sword cutting through the dark, only for the shadow to fold and reform, unharmed. Garrick struck next, fast as lightning, forcing it back a step… and still, it didn’t bleed. Didn’t falter.
The Bloodsworn were terrifying in their precision, too fast, too lethal, tooFae, and yet the monster drank the strikes like they were nothing.
“What’s happening to me?” I coughed, the words ragged. “Why…why can’t I?—”
“It’s draining your soul,” Arielle cried, her voice shaking even as she held herself steady.
Her arms wrapped around me, trying to keep me upright, but I was already slipping—weightless and heavy at once, like my body was becoming a husk around something the monster wanted.
The world tilted.Darkened.
Arielle’s chant rose, relentless. “Lumiere… tundas… luminas.” The final word tore from her throat like a command. “Luminas!”
White fire erupted around us, light so bright it hurt, crackling along the ground, climbing the air, wrapping me in heat that didn’t burn butcleansed.It surged through my skin, into my veins, and the thing holding mesnapped.
I gasped hard, my lungs dragging in air like I’d been drowning. My body convulsed as the cold claws peeled away, and I clung to Arielle like she was the only solid thing left in this dead realm.
For one breath, there was nothing but relief.
Then the locator spell shifted inside me. I could feel it swirling.
It flared, violent in its clarity.
A pang seized my chest so sharply I choked, and heat licked along my soul mark like a warning.
Wolfe.
He was close.
So close that for a heartbeat, I swore I felt his pain echo through my ribs.
My head snapped up. My gaze locked on the gray ahead, and my hand trembled as I lifted it.
“That way,” I rasped. “Wolfe. He’s there.”
I pointed. Arielle's head whipped around, following my gaze to the distant gray. Then her eyes went wide. Her face drained of what little color it had managed to retain in this lifeless place.
I followed her stare, squinting through the ash and gloom, to find more shadowy shapes gathering in the distance.
"We need to move." Urgency sharpened Arielle’s. "More of them are coming."
“What are they?”
“Soulwraiths.” Her hands shook as she turned back to the fight, her expression shifting from horror to grim determination as she watched the Bloodsworn dance their deadly ballet around the Soulwraith.
Bastian's blade carved through smoke that reformed instantly. Garrick's strikes found nothing solid to bite. Alaric spun and slashed with inhuman grace, but the monster simply flowed around each attack like water, growing larger with every passing second.
Their battle was fruitless, and the spell Arielle had used merely untangled me from the wraith’s grasp.
Arielle moved away from me and pressed both palms flat against the cracked stone, then she started chanting a spell. It was the same one she’d used to free me from the Soulwraith’s grasp, but she seemed to be amplifying it with more power.
I watched, wishing I could do more than justwatch.
