Time for the fourth.
Fire.
I step forward, feeling the weight of their expectations settle over me like an old mantle.
The Ember Vein pulses brighter as I approach, as if recognizing one of its own. Heat climbs my spine, licking at the underside of my skin, eager, demanding.
I let it come.
Bone mask slides closer beneath my flesh.
My vision tastes of ember and ash.
When I open my hands, flame spills out—not wild this time, but focused, a steady stream of molten gold and deep red.
I send it into the rock.
It threads through Dagan’s lattice like veins of lightning.
It coils along Alaric’s sigils, setting certain runes alight, sealing others.
It hisses against Kael’s barrier and then sinks beneath it, branding it from within.
The whole chamber brightens.
For a heartbeat, it feels as though we are standing inside the heart of a star.
“Speak it,” Alaric says quietly. “Name the ward.”
I bare my teeth.
“By earth that holds,” I begin, feeling the words pulling power through me, “by air that veils, by water that guards, by fire that devours—let all who come here unbidden be marked as enemy.”
The others join in, their voices overlapping mine in a counterpoint of elements.
“By the will of the Four,” Kael intones.
“By the blood of the Crown’s last keepers,” Alaric adds.
“By the bones of Nightfall itself,” Dagan finishes.
The Ember Vein surges.
Light bursts outward in a ring, racing along the tunnel walls, up through the stone, echoing through every shaft connected to the mine. The ward shudders into place like a massive lock snapping closed.
And in the back of my mind—faint but clear—a new thread settles.
A warning line.
If anything touches this barrier, who is not approved, if anyone with ill intent even attempts it, we four will know.
“No more quiet breaches,” I say, lowering my hands as the flames dim. “No more guessing.”
“There,” Alaric agrees, rubbing his temples as the last of his sigils fade into the stone. “Now, if the SoulTakers so much as breathe in this direction, the Vein will scream loud enough to rattle our bones.”
Dagan pushes slowly to his feet, looking like a mountain that’s just remembered how to stand. Sweat beads along his temples, and the earth’s quiet groan beneath us tells me how much strain this has cost him.
“It is done,” he says. “For now.”
