The Inquisitors found Selene hovering above the snow, half-shrouded between the trees. She drifted just a hand’s breadth off the ground, hair and cloak suspended in a still wind that no one else could feel. Her lips moved faintly, murmuring in a language none of them could grasp.

  “What in all the Saints’ names is she doing?” Jareth muttered, his hand falling to his blade.

  Darius spread his hands, frustration etched in every line of his face. “Don’t ask me. She’s been like that for half an hour. Won’t say a damn word.”

  Myrren pushed her glasses higher, squinting at the air where Selene stared. “She’s found something,” she said, voice hushed with awe. “A barrier. She’s analyzing its composition.”

  Aelun gave the faintest nod. “Correct.”

  Darius frowned, jaw tight. “I don’t feel a thing.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Aelun chuckled, folding his arms. “A knight wouldn’t. It’s one of the many reasons mages have the advantage. You might consider studying magic, Darius. You waste your talents by not doing so.”

  Darius scoffed, hand tightening on the hilt of Devotion. “Or I could just slice through it.”

  Aelun’s eyes flicked to him, sharp for once. “And unleash a counterspell designed to tear your mind to ribbons? No. Force the weave, and you risk an illusion frenzy. By the time we regained our senses, we’d be corpses at each other’s feet.”

  Selene’s voice cut through at last, calm, certain. “He’s right. The threads were layered. One was primed to drive you mad. Another to scatter you across the woods until the snow buried you.”

  Darius’s head snapped toward her. “Were?”

  Selene’s lips curved in something that was not quite a smile. “Were.”

  Selene lifted one hand, and the air itself split with the sound of tearing silk. Runes flared across the treeline in a sudden lattice, emerald and silver light dripping down like falling snow. One by one, the runes snapped apart, vanishing in sharp bursts.

  The Inquisitors staggered back. Jareth clutched at his temples, muttering prayers. Tomas drew the Sign of Thorns across his chest.

  Myrren scribbled furiously in her book, but the sigils dissolved faster than she could capture them. Her quill broke against the page. “Gone—already gone—”

  Then the forest peeled away. A false skin ripping back to reveal a white gulf, endless snow stretching into the horizon, and a fortress of ice and black stone rising like a wound against the sky.

  The sound was like parchment tearing, but magnified to a roar that shook the marrow. The forest in front of them peeled open, snow and trees ripped away. Beyond lay a gulf of pure white: frozen tundra stretching to the horizon, and in the distance, a castle. Not of mortar or timber, but of ice and black stone, its towers spearing the sky.

  Shock rippled through the company.

  Myrren stumbled back a step, her lenses flashing. Sigils uncoiled through the air where the barrier collapsed, vanishing one by one like dying stars. She gaped at Selene as though she were something monstrous. “That—just deciphering one sigil would have taken me hours. You dismantled all of it in less than an hour.”

  “It’s massive…” Tomas breathed.

  “Massive is an understatement,” Eryndor said, his voice hoarse. “It’s the size of the imperial palace.”

  Aelun’s eyes narrowed. “And I suspect it has an army to match.”

  The castle loomed impossibly tall, its towers crooked spears capped in frozen banners that had not stirred in decades. Black stone walls were ribbed with veins of pale-blue ice, glowing faintly as if the fortress itself were alive. Shattered statues lay half-buried at the gate, their faces smooth as melted wax.

  Kaelen muttered, voice cracked: “A fortress for demons.”

  Isolde crossed herself, lips trembling. “No, worse.”

  Darius kept his eyes fixed forward, though his knuckles whitened around Devotion’s hilt. “Size means nothing. It falls like any wall.”

  But even he swallowed as the ground beneath their boots shivered and a low siren moaned from within the frozen towers.

  The earth trembled.

  They poured from the walls in a black tide, claws scraping against stone, jaws chattering like bone drums. Frost steamed from their maws, and their eyes glowed faintly, the same blue as the veins threading the fortress. Some scuttled on all fours, others stumbled in twisted parody of human strides, their bodies malformed.

  Calder raised his blade. “Saints preserve—”

  Kaelen cut him off, shouting louder to drown the shrieks. “Better to meet them now than cower!”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Tomas remained still, murmuring prayers under his breath, each word trembling against the rising roar.

  And then, as the horde shrieked in one voice, the sound faltered. They staggered, shuddering as though seized by a fear they had never known.

  Because Selene laughed.

  A dark, sharp sound that carried across the snow. “Don’t put so much pressure on our dear saints. I will be enough.”

  She strode forward.

  Darius seized her wrist. “What are you doing? We need to retreat, regroup, and find a weakness in the walls. We don’t even know where the captives are—let alone how to fight an army that size!”

  Calder’s voice rose behind him. “We should call for the Church. Or the Crown. No one wins this alone.”

  Aelun remained silent, eyes on Selene.

  Selene wrenched free from Darius’s grip. “You agreed to follow my orders for this encounter, did you not?”

  “That was under the condition they weren’t suicidal,” Darius snarled.

  Selene’s laugh was bright, edged like glass. “Then stop crowding my stage. I won’t let anyone else steal it.”

  “This isn’t a game,” Darius shot back. "I understand why you're upset, really, I do. But don't let that cloud your judgement!”

  Selene turned, her gaze burning through him. “You don’t understand anything. You swing that legacy in your hand like a shit-flinging monkey, without a thought for what it means. Let me show you the legacy you wield.”

  The air thickened.

  Vaylora flared around her, not invisible, not subtle, but raw and visible as stormlight. A green flame licked the air, threading into streaks that boiled the snow into steam, which rose in clouds.

  Jareth dropped to one knee, choking. Calder gritted her teeth and forced herself upright, sweat running despite the cold. Kaelen spat curses, trying to mask his trembling hands.

  Myrren’s glasses fogged as her breath hitched. “No human—no one alive—has this much Vaylora.”

  Isolde trembled, eyes wide with memory. “I've felt this Vaylora before… Meme…” Her voice cracked into a whisper.

  Only Darius stood firm, Devotion humming in his grip, though the tremor in his arm betrayed him. He felt its resonance deep in his bones, a pulse that answered Selene’s fury.

  Even the charging ghouls faltered. Their shrieks died in their throats, bodies shivering with a primal terror they didn’t understand.

  Aelun shook his head, arms folded, a wry smile ghosting his lips. “Even ghouls can feel fear. Typical LeFaye. So dramatic.”

  Selene’s chant deepened, Old Valenforian cutting through the air like a hymn to war. Each word etched a new line into the sky: vast sigils forming overhead, glowing brighter with every syllable.

  The air thickened until it was hard to breathe. Pressure pressed down on their shoulders, as though the heavens themselves bowed under invisible chains. Frost cracked across the ground, then melted in the same instant beneath the green fire burning overhead.

  Jareth staggered back, one hand clutching his chest. Calder raised her arm to shield her eyes, but she would not yield her ground. Kaelen spat Selene’s name like a curse, his voice breaking. Tomas knelt outright, prayers tumbling over themselves, while Isolde whispered in disbelief, “No… this is wrong.”

  Above them, the sky pulsed, trembling on the edge of collapse.

  The sky shines to guide us with its light,

  but even it shall break, despite its might.

  Above them, the clouds split.

  A sigil bloomed across the heavens, vast and green, lighting the tundra as though dawn had come. The sky itself seemed to fracture.

  Selene’s hand lifted. “Heaven’s Fall.”

  The air cracked. Then a burning mass tore through the breach — a meteor, glowing red-gold, dragging a tail of fire. The heat slammed down before it touched earth, blistering skin, searing the snow to steam.

  “By the Blood and Thorns—” Darius’s mask of calm shattered. “What kind of spell is this?”

  Aelun’s smile widened, almost reverent. “Morgan LeFaye’s creation. A spell that turned the tide of The Great Demon War. Heaven's Fall, or better known as Meteor. Though Morgan’s was larger.”

  The Inquisitors gaped, eyes wide as the world itself seemed to end. One shouted hoarsely, “She’ll kill us all!”

  Selene chuckled, eyes glinting. “Shut up and enjoy the show.”

  Her fist clenched. “Scatter.”

  The meteor split before it struck, shattering into a rain of flaming shards. Each stone screamed as it fell, ripping the air apart.

  The first slammed into the ghoul ranks, flattening dozens into blackened husks. Another smashed into a watchtower, sending ice and stone exploding outward in a spray of jagged spears. A third carved through the gatehouse, leaving only ruin where it once stood.

  The screams of the horde rose in a cacophony, shrill and guttural, only to be drowned beneath the roar of fire and stone. The fortress itself shuddered, cracks veining its walls like spiderwebs.

  Selene threw her head back and laughed, her voice carrying even through the storm.

  Far within those walls, Malcolm stumbled through the quake. His laboratory shuddered, glass shattering, shelves toppling. He flung himself to a window and stared out. Fire streaked the air, meteors hammering the fortress. One immense fragment descended straight toward his tower.

  “Cursed Ash!” he bellowed, weaving a ward with frantic hands. The world detonated outside, walls trembling as his spell sealed his chamber. Smoke and rubble filled the air. He coughed, eyes watering, surveying the ruin. Much of his work lay in ruins, but his masterpiece still glowed, untouched.

  His breath caught, and he pressed a trembling hand to the glass. “A child wielding spells of legend… she doesn’t understand its cost. Otherwise, why use it here? Why now?”

  His teeth bared in fury. “What is that hag teaching her!?”

  Back in the gulf, silence fell beneath the hiss of cooling stone and the distant groans of the fortress. The Inquisitors stood frozen, faces lit in the sickly green glow of Selene’s Vaylora. Kaelen’s lips moved soundlessly, as if trying to spit a curse that refused to form. Calder’s knuckles whitened around her blade. Even the Saints shifted uneasily, their composure cracked by the weight of what they had just seen.

  Selene stood at the center of it all, her power burning like a beacon against the snow. She turned, eyes sharp, voice calm. “Found you.” Her gaze fixed on Malcolm’s tower as if no fortress wall, no army, no god could stand between them.

  Aelun only watched her with the faintest smile, arms folded. It was not unity that bound them in silence — it was fracture, each man and woman caught between fear, hatred, and something that looked uncomfortably like belief.

  She looked over her shoulder at the Inquisitor. Then she smiled faintly. “What are you waiting for?”