I slam my palms to the ground.
The earth buckles, then rises at my will, folding up into a shield-wall just as a gout of black-green fire slams into us.
The impact reverberates through my teeth, my spine, my skull.
It doesn’t feel like normal magic.
It feels corrupted. Stolen.
I grit my teeth and hold the wall.
Behind it, Thorne curses, his flames faltering for a heartbeat before roaring back.
Kael staggers, then steadies himself, hands cutting sharp patterns in the air to call more water.
Above, Alaric wobbles mid-flight. His wings beat hard, fighting some invisible drag.
I risk a glance over the top of the stone.
Idris lifts his staff.
The ring of corrupted Ember ore around him spins faster.
For a moment, I see them clearly—each shard humming with trapped power, ghostly faces writhing inside the dark glass.
Souls. Dying ones. Dead ones. Taken ones.
Masielle.
The retired Dreamwright from Stone’s Edge.
Others like her.
He’s plugged his ritual straight into the bones of Nightfall and wired it to the corpses of our people.
When we attack, the ritual drinks.
When we push, it pulls.
He smiles—thin, cracked, wild—and slams the butt of his staff down again.
The next wave hits harder.
Pain lances through my chest as the earth under my feet bucks against my will.
For a horrifying second, my power doesn’t answer me—it answers him. A fissure splits the plateau at my back, racing toward the Barrow’s walls before I wrench it away.
“Fuck,” Thorne snarls, staggering to my side. His flames flare, then gutter as if blown by a poisoned wind. “He’s leeching us.”
“I feel it,” Kael grinds out, water dripping from his hands like blood. His usually sharp eyes are shadowed, his skin pale beneath the tattoos that glow along his arms. “We hit him, he drains it. Twists it.”
Alaric slams down on the ground beside us in Dragon form, wings mantling wide to shield us from another volley of black fire.
When the blast clears, he shifts, folding down to his Demon shape in a sweep of silver light.
“I can’t get close enough to rip his head off,” he snarls. “Every time I dive, he turns the air against me. My own currents. My sky.”
SoulTakers press closer, howling.
