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Don’t think about it. Don’t look down.

Another attacker rushed me from the right, his axe raised. Then another. There was no rhythm to the violence, no pause to breathe. It was a blur of parries, thrusts, and the metallic taste of adrenaline pooling under my tongue. I survived on pure reaction, completely detached from the horror around me.

Suddenly, the great iron bells of the citadel began to ring.

Deep. Resonant. Ancient. The heavy, rhythmic tolling echoed through the foundations of Enlathaes Kastali, vibrating through the stone corridors, through the floor beneath my sneakers, and out across the spires of Naralust City beyond the iron gates. The sound rolled outward like a living thing—a warning, a call to arms, a declaration of chaos.

“Tauriel!”

Manem’s deep, commanding voice cut through the roaring of the fight.

The High Commander moved through the room as if the violence deliberately bent around his form. He wasn’t moving faster than the rogues, but every redirection was absolute, as if every step, every parry, and every execution had been decided centuries before he ever drew his sword. His rich caramel skin glowed like burnished bronze beneath the dark, interlocking plates of his midnight armor, the shadows clinging to him like a second skin.

“You need to move,” he said the second he reached me, his blade effortlessly deflecting a rogue spear without his eyes ever leaving my face.

“I just got here, Manem!” The words came out sharper than I intended, my breath ragged, my pulse far too loud in my ears.

“And you will not stay here to die,” he snapped back.

Another attacker rushed us, his sword raised high in a downward cleave. I caught the strike on the guard of my blade, my knees buckling slightly under the force, but Manem was already stepping between us. His armored shoulder slammed into the rogue, redirecting the male’s momentum, and his steel finished the job before I could even blink.

“I don’t need protecting,” I insisted, my fingers tightening around the leather hilt of my sword. I had trained for this exact thing. I couldn’t just flee, not without knowing where my family was. “Aerynn... where is he?”

My head whipped around frantically, scanning the swarming masses of black armor and glittering steel lining the high dais, but my brother’s golden head was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m not doubting your ability, Princess.” Manem’s voice didn’t rise. It carried that absolute, chilling certainty of his duties. “I’m worried about what you just walked into.”

His massive, gauntleted hand closed around my upper arm. The commanding grip irritated me, but I let him pull me toward the eastern exit anyway. It bought me the seconds I desperately needed to keep searching the floor.

We moved rapidly toward the heavy oak doors, cutting through the splintered edges of the room. The further we went, the clearer the space became; the individual pieces began to separate from the background noise.

And then, my gaze was pulled toward the shadows.

At the far, western end of the throne room, where the light from the sheer sea windows fractured unevenly across the granite, stood a man dressed in unadorned black.

He was perfectly still. Untouched by the madness.

He wasn’t wearing armor, and he wasn’t engaged in the fight. He was simply standing there with his hands loosely clasped behind his back, watching the slaughter with the detached interest of a scholar observing an ant farm.

Watching me.

Everything else in the room dulled for a heartbeat. The sound of clashing steel didn’t vanish, but it became distant, muffled beneath an underwater drone. My focus narrowed onto his silhouette, my chest tightening. He did not belong to this fight. He did not belong to this world.

He smiled. The crimson haze of battle swallowing the rest of his face, but that smile cut through the blood-soaked mist with unsettling clarity.

It wasn’t a wide, obvious grin. It was a slow, calculating curl of his mouth. Certain. Like he knew a terrible secret that I had yet to uncover. The absolute certainty in it made an icy chill slide straight down my spine.

Then, he unraveled.

He didn’t step back into the stone arches. He didn’t run. He simply melted into shadow. A dense, ink-like shadow peeled away from his torso like heavy smoke, his form losing its solidity as if he had never been fully real to begin with. The darkness sank into the flagstones beneath him and completely disappeared. Gone. No trace. No echo.

That kind of ancient magic—that specific ability to command the void—hadn’t been seen in Elfain for ages.

And there was something else threaded through it. Something darker.

Blood magic.

My stomach tightened at the realization. It wasn’t merely uncommon in Elfain. It was forbidden. Magic like that always demanded a price, and blood magic had never been particularly forgiving about what it considered payment.