The silence after Heaven’s Fall broke not with awe, but with fury.

  Darius stormed toward Selene, Devotion blazing faintly in his hand, his face a mask of rage. “We still don’t know where the captives are!” he shouted, voice cracking under strain. “Your fire and meteors—what if they were in those towers? You may have killed them as surely as the ghouls!”

  Selene turned her head lazily, as if he were a boy scolding her for spilled wine. Her voice was calm, level. “My task was to kill Apostates and Sorcerers. Not to rescue peasants.”

  Darius’s jaw clenched. “You think so little of them—”

  “The battlefield has been set for you,” she cut him off, her gaze hard as cut glass. “All that’s left is cleanup. So go clean up.”

  Darius’s nostrils flared, his breath misting hot in the cold air. He wanted to strike her, to ram Devotion’s flaming edge through the smug calm in her eyes. But behind her, the staff hummed with power, and the air around her shimmered faintly with lingering heat. The Inquisitors shifted restlessly, blades half-drawn, watching both of them.

  For a heartbeat, he looked ready to strike. Then he spat into the snow, whirled on his heel, and raised Devotion high. “To me!” he roared. “We have a witch to cleanse!”

  The Inquisitors surged past him, answering the call with a fury that was almost relief.

  Aelun did not follow. He lingered at Selene’s side, eyes watching the storm of blades and blood beginning below. “You can relax now,” he said softly. “They aren’t looking.”

  Selene sagged at last, slumping against her staff. Her knees buckled, shoulders quivering, and a thread of green light flickered unbidden at her temple before fading. For the first time since they’d left the Emperor’s hall, the mask slipped. She was pale beneath the snowlight, breath ragged, fingers white where they clutched the staff. Aelun tilted his head, studying her as though she were a puzzle with pieces missing.

  Aelun sighed, folding his arms. “You could just tell them what you’re thinking. What are you planning? It would ease some of this.”

  Selene scoffed. “Pointless. They don’t trust me, and they never will. Better to use their hate. If they despise me, it’s easier to get under their skin. And once I’m under their skin, they’re easier to control.”

  Aelun groaned. “Maybe. But that won’t last. Not if you keep throwing spells like that. You know the cost.”

  Selene’s lips quirked, dark amusement glinting in her eyes. “If they get their hands on some star metal, it will make them more useful. A fair trade.”

  “That’s not the price I’m talking about,” Aelun said quietly.

  She chuckled, straightening again, green fire sparking faintly in her pupils. “Luckily for me, that price doesn’t apply to me.”

  Aelun blinked, genuinely startled. But before he could press, she turned her gaze back to the ruined fortress.

  “Go,” she said. “Malcolm won’t leave them unguarded.”

  Aelun’s bow appeared in his hand as though conjured by the words. At his side, a sapling thrust itself from the snow, branches weaving into a rough arrow. He nocked it, drew, and as the shaft passed through the glyph that bloomed before him, it split into streams of light.

  Figures on the battlements jerked, fell, cloaks unraveling as their skulls split clean through. They were not malformed ghouls but pale, almost human things, veins of black threading their skin.

  Aelun lowered his bow, voice cold. “I’m well aware.”

  Below, the Inquisitors carved through the stragglers. The ghouls staggered still from Selene’s storm, their movements sluggish, some half-crushed, others limping on splintered limbs.

  This time, the company did not falter. Where once they had met the dead with the nerves of green recruits, blades trembling against the first wave, now they moved like a single machine — practiced brutality honed by fury. Shields locked, blades struck in sequence, and every step was measured, deliberate. Fear had not vanished, but it no longer ruled them; it sharpened them into something harder, crueler.

  Darius led from the front, Devotion blazing in his grip. He carved a path with every swing, his orders cutting the air as sharply as the blade itself. “Left flank, drive them to the wall! Hold your line!” he barked, striking down a stumbling ghoul without breaking stride. Another lunged from the rubble, and his flaming edge split it from clavicle to hip before he pressed onward, eyes fixed on the ruined battlements. His voice carried over the clash, and the Inquisitors surged after him, their discipline restoring the rhythm of slaughter.

  Jareth and Kaelen Morrick moved as one, mirrored blades flashing in eerie harmony. Kaelen’s blade sheared clean through a ghoul’s chest, and before it could collapse, Jareth’s sword found the same spine, cutting it in half with mirrored precision. They pivoted in perfect sync, striking together with a rhythm so exact it was almost inhuman. Wherever one cut, the other followed, each swing a continuation of the other’s.

  Tomas fought like a man praying with steel. He drove his sword through a ghoul’s throat, blood spraying across his face, and shouted scripture over the sound of its gurgling death. His voice cracked, but he did not stop. His voice carried over the clash, prayers rising between ragged breaths as his blade hacked through frost-bitten flesh. For every ghoul that fell, he whispered another line of scripture, as though baptizing them in their own blood.

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  Around him, the snow was red mud, steam rising where Selene’s meteors had scorched the earth. In that haze, Calder waded through the tide with brutal economy. She did not waste motion or breath, her blade snapping up and down with cold precision. She took a ghoul’s arm at the shoulder, pivoted, and cut its legs out in the same motion, leaving it writhing in the snow before her boot crushed its skull.

  The steam cleared in bursts as flames and frost met, and through that shifting veil, Myrren carved patterns into the air with swift gestures. Glyphs snapped into place and bolts of ice and flame burst forth, cutting down ghouls with precise economy. Myrren wiped the frost from her lenses, muttered a curse, and flicked her hand. Three glyphs spun at once — a lance of ice, a burst of fire, and a shockwave of wind. The ghouls fell neatly, like books knocked from a shelf.

  Their rage was palpable — not against the ghouls alone, but against the witch who had forced them to march into this nightmare. Every cut, every spell, every guttural cry was an answer to Selene’s laughter.

  At the edge of the field, the Saints wove their craft with ruthless precision. Isolde’s voice carried like a whip over the din, each word a command both to her companion and to the storm she conjured. “Advance three paces. Freeze them at the ankles — now!”

  Eryndor obeyed without hesitation, his hands carving a glyph in the air. A wave of frost surged forward, locking a pack of ghouls in place. Isolde’s reply was immediate: she flung her palms wide, wind sigils flaring, and the frozen husks shattered into shards under the sudden gale.

  She did not pause. “Again, two lengths left. Burn them.”

  A circle of fire bloomed at Eryndor’s feet, his incantation quick and practiced. The blaze roared outward, cutting a swath through the battlefield. Isolde stepped into the firelight, staff raised, her own glyphs snapping into place to drive the flames higher, whipping them into a cyclone that devoured everything it touched.

  Command and execution — her sharp directives and his raw power — moved as one rhythm. Together, they fought like a single, merciless unit.

  Darius’s eyes caught movement on the battlements — cloaked bodies tumbling where Aelun’s arrows had struck. He caught sight of their veins, black and crawling. Almost human.

  “Dammit,” he muttered.

  From the shattered gate, three more emerged. Their cloaks dragged across the rubble, steps unhurried, deliberate.

  “Isolde! Eryndor!” Darius barked. “With me. Calder, take command of the survivors. Clear the rest!”

  The two Saints closed ranks behind him, their white garments fluttering like banners in the ashen wind.

  One of the cloaked figures raised its hand. Glyphs spun, ice shards lancing toward Darius in a glittering storm.

  He swung Devotion in a single, blazing arc. White fire roared from the blade, vaporizing the shards in a hiss of steam. The flames surged forward, engulfing the figure and tearing back its hood.

  Pale skin. Black veins. Eyes like dead glass.

  The two beside it lunged, ice blades sprouting from their arms. Darius met them head-on, shearing through one limb and seizing the other’s frozen blade barehanded. Frost raced over his gauntlet, creeping toward his flesh. He crushed the blade to splinters and cleaved the creature in half.

  The frost that had crept across his gauntlet bit deep, leaving the steel rimed white. He flexed his hand, pain like needles stabbing up his arm, but he did not release his grip on Devotion. The blade pulsed once, white fire licking along the hilt, traveling to his frozen hand. The ice shattered away in a hiss of steam.

  The ground convulsed as a forest of ice spikes tore toward him.

  “Immolation!” Eryndor roared. A glyph flared, and a serpent of fire burst forth, coiling around Darius before streaking forward. It smashed through the spikes and clamped its jaws over the third ghoul, consuming it whole.

  The ghoul thrashed inside the serpent’s coils, its pale limbs flailing soundlessly as the flames ate through muscle and bone. For a moment, its face surfaced in the fire, mouth open in a voiceless scream, before the jaws closed and the body collapsed into glowing cinders.

  The first two staggered upright again — one reknitting its severed arm with brittle cracks, the other dragging itself forward despite its bisected torso.

  “Deplorable,” Isolde spat, her hand raised in the Sign of Thorns. “They feel nothing — no pain, no grief. They are husks. May the Goddess cleanse what remains.”

  She lifted both palms, glyphs blossoming like twin flowers. “Thorns of Wind.”

  Gales shredded the creatures, thorn-shaped blades ripping them apart until nothing remained but frozen slurry.

  Darius lowered Devotion. “You two are with me,” he said grimly. “We end Malcolm now.”

  The Saints nodded, and together they advanced into the castle.

  Behind them, Calder led the Inquisitors deeper into the ruin. Blood slicked her gauntlets, her jaw tight, but her strikes did not falter. Kaelen and Jareth carved in tandem, Myrren’s spells flashed bright in the darkness, and the company pressed forward with brutal rhythm.

  And then — a shout.

  “Survivors!”

  They surged toward the cry, boots crunching over ash and shattered stone. The ruin groaned around them, timbers still smoldering, the stink of burnt flesh and blood heavy in the air.

  At the end of a collapsed corridor, they found it — a chamber walled in by rubble, every path around it choked with destruction. And yet in its heart, a cluster of terrified villagers huddled close, soot-streaked and wide-eyed, clutching one another in silence. Children buried their faces in their mothers’ skirts; an old man’s lips trembled as though caught mid-prayer. Not a bruise marked them. Around them, the ruin was total. And the chamber itself — untouched. The stone looked as though it had been deliberately cleaved around them, a perfect circle of safety cut into chaos.

  The Inquisitors’ voices rose at once, relief boiling into fervor.

  “A miracle!” one cried.

  “The Goddess shielded them!” shouted another.

  “Blessed Thorns!”

  Jareth dropped to his knees, tears running down his soot-streaked cheeks. Kaelen raised his blade high, shouting until his throat broke. Myrren’s hands shook as she traced wards of thanksgiving in the air, though her eyes flicked uneasily over the ruin’s pattern; this was too deliberate.

  “Blessed Thorns…” Calder echoed, steady enough for all to hear. But in her chest, doubt stirred like a blade being drawn. She looked longer than the others — at the rubble, the beams cleaved clean instead of splintered, dust lying untouched where no blast had reached. At the villagers’ unmarked skin, too clean for chance.

  She clenched her jaw, tasting iron, and thought of Selene standing calm amid fire and falling stars.

  Calder looked back toward the smoldering field where Selene still stood, staff in hand, eyes fixed on the fortress.

  A miracle, they called it. Calder’s lips thinned.

  Or something else entirely.