We burst out into a cluttered yard behind the building. Rain slicked the cracked concrete. The figure skidded to a halt, trapped against a high brick wall, and spun around, cornered. A ragged hood concealed his face.
The wolf didn’t hesitate. Dane launched himself forward, a cannonball of muscle and fur, slamming the figure into the wall. Theman went down with a guttural cry, and the wolf was on him, a heavy paw pinning him to the wet ground. The hood fell back.
An Umbrakynn. Shadows rippled from his skin, not a controlled concealment but a chaotic, frightened bleed. He was young, no more than eighteen, his face a mask of terror.
But something was wrong.
A network of veins flared under the surface of his pale skin, glowing with a pulsing blue-white light. It was Calysteri magic. Beating inside an Umbrakynn like a stolen heart. My own scar burned in horrified recognition.
And then I saw it. Burned into the side of his neck, just below the jawline, was a crude echo of the sigil. A jagged, rushed triangle. It glowed, a faint, sickly ember. He was branded like the victims.
The wolf lunged, jaws closing on the Umbrakynn’s shoulder. A sickening tear of flesh.
The youth screamed in pure rage. The wound, deep and ragged, smoked. The flesh knit itself back together in a blink, the blue-white light flaring violently. It healed instantly. Too fast. Too unnatural.
Fear gave way to fury. The Umbrakynn threw his hands up. Shadows whipped from his palms, no longer formless blurs but solid, grasping tendrils of pure night. They wrapped around the wolf’s throat, thick as ropes, squeezing tight.
Dane let out a choked, wet growl. He clawed at the shadows, powerful legs scrabbling for purchase, but the tendrils held fast, tightening, sinking into his fur.
The Umbrakynn rose to his knees, eyes blazing, a snarl twisting his lips. The captured Calysteri light fuelled his dark magic, amplifying it, corrupting it. The wolf’s struggles weakened, frantic movements becoming sluggish. His breath came in ragged, desperate gasps.
Dane was losing. Fast.
A raw,guttural scream ripped from my throat. “Dane!”
I launched myself at the Umbrakynn, hands clawing for his arms, his shoulders, anything. I heaved, digging my heels into the slick tarmac, throwing my entire weight into tearing him off the wolf.
It was like heaving against a statue carved from granite. He didn’t budge. He just turned his head, eyes blazing with that stolen blue-white light, and snarled.
Then his grip tightened.
A crack—sickening—cut through the rain.
Dane’s body jolted at the sound.
I didn’t even have time to process it before the impact hit, sending me flying. My skull smashed against the brick wall, a burst of white swallowing the world.
I slumped down the rough surface, vision swimming in violent tides of black and light. Through the rain-streaked blur, I saw Dane. His legs twitched once, weakly, then not at all. A terrible, wet gurgle escaped his throat as the shadow tendrils burrowed deeper, draining him dry. His amber eyes were glassy. His limbs slack.
He was dying. Right in front of me.
Something inside me broke. Every devastating truth I had swallowed in the last hour turned to pure, violent heat. The seal Liora had bled to create cracked, splintered, and burned to ash.
Incandescent power detonated within me. Electric-white light tore through my skin, bursting from my hands and chest with a force that rattled my very marrow. This was foreign. Unscripted. A sheer, chaotic release that had nothing to do with the structured magic I knew. An arc of pure lightning shattered inside my ribcage—blinding and all-consuming.
The blast slammed into the Umbrakynn, lifting him off his feet. The electric-white torrent pinned him against the brick wall, drowning his screams in a deafening roar of ozone and static.
For three agonising seconds, I held him there, pouring every ounce of the broken seal into the strike.
Then, the surge faltered. My muscles locked. The blinding lightbegan to stutter and dim as the sheer physical toll of the awakening dragged me under.
Just as my magic frayed, something else struck him. A second force. A shock that cut through my fading heat like ice cleaving fire.
I didn’t see its source. I don’t think I even saw it happen. It was just there, a split-second impression: cold and bladed. It was part of me, another layer of the explosion I couldn’t control, another monstrous thing I didn’t know I could do. For a moment I thought I’d split myself open, that my magic had two voices: one wild and blazing, one brittle and merciless.
My vision fractured. My scar erupted in pain, a molten spike under my skin; something inside it snapped. I couldn’t tell what was mine and what wasn’t. In the chaos, it all was all me. Like I did all of it.
The Umbrakynn convulsed, caught between the two forces. He was a conduit for a storm he couldn’t contain. The stolen Calysteri magic within him rebelled, flaring wildly. He thrashed on the ground, thin body seizing, a howl of inhuman torment tearing from his lungs.
