A portal through the center of the chamber—not light, not darkness, but somethingbetween, something that hurt to look at, its edges crackling and bleeding crimson. The blade wrenched itself from Vex’s grip as if an invisible hand ripped it away, and it spun end over end through the portal, swallowed whole.
Vex stumbled back. For the first time, he looked small.
Fire roared inside the opening. Not normal fire—it moved wrong, churning and clawing upward like something starving. And within it, shapes. Figures. Dozens of them, hundreds their mouths stretched open in soundless screams, fingers hooked into claws as they scrambled and tore at each other, trying to climb out of a pit that had no top. Hands reached through the flames toward the portal’s edge, and something below kept dragging them back down.
Then I saw him.
He stood at the edge of the pit like he owned it. Like he owned everything. Tall, impossibly beautiful, with long red hair that moved as if caught in a wind that touched nothing else. His skin was pale and flawless, his features so perfect they werewrong—the kind of beauty that made your brain scream to look away even as your eyes refused to move.
His black wings unfurled. They stretched wide, wider, filling the space behind him like a cathedral of shadow and bone. Each feather gleamed like an oil slick.
His eyes opened, and they burned red—not glowing,burning,like twin coals pressed into that beautiful, terrible face.
Every cell in my body went cold. Not fear — something deeper, something older, something carved into the marrow of every living thing that had ever existed. A knowing. The way prey knows the predator before it has a name. The way the dark knows the light.
I knew what he was.
My hand holding the shard trembled. My lungs forgot how to work. I wanted to fall to my knees — not in worship, but because my legs simply refused to hold me in the presence of something this ancient, this vast, this wrong. The air around him didn't just feel heavy. It felt like standing at the edge of an ocean that went down forever, and somewhere in the black depths, something was looking back.
He didn't look at me. He didn't need to. I could feel his awareness pass over me like a hand brushing across the surface of water — brief, disinterested, absolute. I was nothing to him. Less than nothing. A heartbeat. A flicker.
He looked at Vex the way you’d look at something stuck to your shoe.
"You failed, Vex." He lifted one hand and curled his fingers inward. A lazy gesture. Almost bored. "Now you'll pay the price."
"No — no —" Vex's voice cracked into something I'd never heard from him. Not rage. Not cruelty. A wail. Wind erupted from the portal, hot and reeking of sulfur, and it seized him like a fist. His feet left the ground. His fingers clawed at nothing.
He screamed all the way down.
A loud pop echoed through the chamber, so sharp it split through my skull like a nail. The portal snapped shut.
Gone. He was gone. Really gone.
The shard's light dimmed in my palm — fading from blazing white to a faint, tired pulse, as if it had given everything it had. My fingers uncurled and it rolled free, clinking softly against the stone floor.
My legs gave out. I hit my knees, then my hands, gasping, struggling to pull air into lungs that felt like they'd been crushed flat. The chamber was silent. The fire was gone. The screaming was gone.
It was over.
Rocco.
The thought hit me like a blade between the ribs.Please please please be okay.I tried to save him. Save all of them. But what if I was too late? What if the demon had hollowed him out and left nothing behind? What if the man I loved was gone and something else was wearing his face?
I couldn’t see him. The chamber was too dark now, the shard’s light spent, and my eyes wouldn’t focus. Everything was shadows and the copper stink of blood.
“Rocco?” My voice came out broken. Small. “Rocco, where are you?”
A sound. Low, ragged. Not a word—a sob.
I crawled toward it. My palms slid through something warm and wet on the stone, and I didn’t let myself think about what it was. I just keep moving, pulling myself forward until the shadows shifted and I saw them.
Rocco was on the floor with Lucien cradled in his arms. Lucien's head lolled against his chest, and Rocco was rocking him — slow, rhythmic, the way you'd rock a child — his face buried in Lucien's hair. Blood soaked through Rocco's shirt, smeared across his chin, stained his teeth. Lucien's blood. On his mouth. On his hands. Everywhere.
“I killed him.” Rocco’s voice was gutted. Hollow. Like someone had reached inside him and scraped out everything that made him Rocco. “I killed him.”
My heart shattered.
I knelt in front of him and took his face in my hands. His skin was wet. Tears, blood—I couldn’t tell, didn’t care. I made him look at me.
