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Containment magic slams into me from every iron band in the walls. The spell wraps around my ribs, hooks beneath my skin, and drags at the hunger like chains yanked around a starving beast’s throat. For one violent second, it works. My vision floods gold. Heat explodes across my shoulders hard enough to scorch the walls nearest me.

Behind me, Isolde coughs once against the sudden infernal flare.

Vaerith’s eyes brighten with satisfaction.

Then Isolde breathes.

In.

Hold.

Out.

I stop fighting the containment spell.

Instead, I open the hunger toward the magic itself.

The containment current pours into me expecting frenzy. I catch it and redirect the flow before it can root itself in instinct. It tastes of old iron, command structure, and Vaerith’s certainty that I am too monstrous to think.

I swallow the magic whole.

Then I drive it downward through my boots and into the corridor lattice.

The walls crack. The containment bands ignite from within, red light turning black-gold as the spell reverses through its own channels. One after another, the corridor wards rupture with explosive cracks that echo through the tower like breaking bones. Sparks shower across the floor.

Isolde grips my sleeve tightly. “Left passage,” she says sharply over the noise.

“What left passage?” I ask.

“The one you’re making.”

Stone fractures behind the confinement room, exposing a narrow maintenance channel hidden beneath the ward structure. Dust bursts into the corridor thick with old mortar and stale magic.

I shove one final surge of absorbed containment energy into the broken lattice.

The opening widens.

Vaerith’s expression hardens into something genuinely cold now. “You will not leave this estate.”

I look at him through drifting dust and shattered wardlight.

“No blood,” I say evenly. “No bodies. No witnesses. That must be frustrating.”

Isolde steps beside me, wrists bruised, hair disheveled, eyes bright with fury and exhaustion. “You also have a destroyed containment corridor,” she adds coolly, “multiple unconscious guards who can testify they were left alive, and several missing ledgers you have not recovered.”

Vaerith’s gaze flicks sharply toward her.

That landed beautifully.

I slide one arm around Isolde’s waist and pull her through the fractured passage before Vaerith can reshape the situation into something salvageable. The maintenance tunnel beyond is narrow and damp, stone scraping against my shoulder while dust hangs thick in the air.

Behind us, Vaerith hurls another spell into the collapsed corridor.

Blue-white light flashes violently against broken wards.

The magic never reaches us.

“Keep moving,” Isolde says while she navigates the narrow path.