The Red grandmaster dropped to one knee beside Shad.

  “Demon magic is impressive on its own,” he intoned. “But you….” His head bowed, red cloak pooled around him like a fire come to rest. “I pledge myself,” he said, clear enough for the city to hear, “to the Queen.”

  The White Grandmaster’s robes swayed as he stepped forward, his voice booming across the city, not in fury but in incredulous command. “To pledge… to her? To a foreign interloper?” He spread his arms wide, staring not at me but at Shad and the Red Grandmaster, as though the weight of their choice demanded spectacle. “Do you comprehend what you have done?”

  Shad rose slowly, sure in his posture. The Red Grandmaster stepped with him, his cloak flaring as he moved to my side. Together they stood behind me, their presence like shields raised. The Yellow Grandmaster gave a sly grin, his golden staff tapping once against the stone.

  “Then their estates will be seized. Their vaults stripped bare. A fine contribution to the true rulers, I say. Thank you, my dear colleagues.”

  But White raised a single hand, halting his words like cutting a song short. His eyes fixed on Shad.

  “Are you certain?” he asked. “After all the years, after all the battles… you would cast your lot with her? Her mother falters even now, bleeding against the Empire’s tide. And this daughter—” his hand swept toward me like I was an exhibit in his lecture hall “—will fall here, before my hand. Is that the future you choose?”

  All the while, my eyes stayed locked on the Binding Stone. The demon magic circles still spun furiously, each rune blazing, the storm of power shaking the square. But holy Saevrin, it was taking its sweet time to destroy the stone and crack the door open for the demons. Every second dragged, a slow bleed of eternity.

  I had to stall; I had to play the game. Shad’s jaw set. Slowly and firmly, he nodded. “I stand on the winning side of history.”

  The White Grandmaster scoffed, turning back to me with a curl of disdain. “Her? She is weak.”

  And before the words had even faded, his sleeve flared, and the air detonated; wind lashing forward in a sudden, merciless strike aimed straight at me.

  I didn’t think. There was no time.

  The ice answered.

  It roared up from the ground like a tidal wave, jagged and crystalline, a wall of ice slamming into place between us. The gust hit with full force, splintering the barrier into glittering shards that spun through the air like broken glass.

  But the spell was gone… absorbed, shredded, neutered by the frost. Steam hissed around us. My breath misted as I exhaled, heart hammering.

  “Ice magic?” Purple’s eyes widened, his voice breaking the silence. The Master of the Gloomy Sky looked rattled for the first time. “Isn’t she—”

  “A runaway slave?” I cut in, my grin dangerous enough to wound. “You enslaved me. Hear that, good people of Altandai? I was treated as a slave! And I gave both grandmasters a chance.”

  Behind me, the Red Grandmaster’s power flared.

  Magic coiled along his arms, twisting into sigils that bloomed into fair golden shields. They locked into place in front of us, layer upon layer of crimson light… a bulwark against the storm yet to come.

  The White Grandmaster straightened, the wreckage of my shattered ice still swirling in the storm of his presence. Shards spun weightless for a moment, then were tugged down, snapping into dust at his feet as though bowing before him.

  His pale eyes cut through me. “So it was you,” he intoned, each word full of judgment. “The foreign agent seeded in our midst. How quaint. How predictable.”

  “I wasn’t an agent,” I snapped back, frost still steaming from my hands, breath clouding with every word. My chest heaved, but my voice held steady. “Madame Karzi captured me. She made me a slave.”

  The Purple Grandmaster’s aura flared before I could catch my breath. Symbols blazed around him, burning sigils falling like meteors through the air. Gravity itself seemed to bend toward him, the weight of his spell building like a star collapsing.

  “Back!” Shad barked. Instinct answered before thought. Ice surged at my command, blasting up beneath us in a craggy pillar. It tilted, carrying us away from the epicenter just as Purple’s spell detonated.

  The world buckled.

  Everything inside that circle—my frost barrier, Red’s golden shields, even the cobbles themselves—imploded under crushing gravity. Stone cracked like an eggshell, and the ground sank inward, groaning as if the city itself were breaking under the weight. The air bent. It pressed against skin and bone, heavy and merciless, every breath an effort stolen from the void.

  When the echo faded, ruin spread across the square… rubble strewn in a hollow crater.

  And at its center, untouched, stood the White Grandmaster. His robes hung in perfect lines, not a crease disturbed. Even the lingering hum of Purple’s gravity pulse, dust pressed flat to the surrounding ground, seemed to bow to his poise.

  He smiled.

  “Do you see, Shad? Her power is chaos. Unshaped. Unschooled. Already breaking beneath the weight of true mastery.” He spread his arms wide, pale sleeves unfolding like wings, as if he were embracing not just the square but the whole of Altandai. “Stand with her, and you will be buried beside her. Stand with us, and Altandai endures.”

  His gaze returned to Shad, narrowing, pity creeping into the faint curl of his mouth. “It is not too late to join me, old friend. Choose wisely. Meanwhile… come, empire agent.”

  Footsteps broke the silence. Heavy, metallic.

  I turned.

  A man stepped into the dome, armor clanking with each stride. Imperial make… thick plates of blackened steel engraved with pulsing trim.

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  His helmet was broad, with a single narrow visor slit glowing faintly from the mana channels beneath. In his hands he carried a halberd taller than I was, its blade curved like a fang, the haft wrapped in worn leather darkened by use.

  He grinned beneath the steel. “Ah, Charlie. You little girl.” His voice dripped with contempt, each syllable drawn out as if he wanted to savor it. “Surprised? You shouldn’t be.” His grin widened. “Count Itzel was thrilled to cooperate with us.”

  My heart skipped, then steadied. Of course. Of course it had to be Damon. He walked closer, and with a flick of thought, I willed the magic to project him into the sky along with the rest of us.

  Let the city see. Let them know what fool had stepped onto the stage. I shook my head slowly, forcing boredom into my tone even as ice itched at my fingertips, begging for release. “You’re just stupid,” I said flatly. “And you will lose. What do you gain from this?”

  The words were theater, and I knew it. Every second was another chip off the Binding Stone, another rune inching closer to detonation. All I had to do was keep him talking, but Damon didn’t bite the way he used to.

  He wasn’t rattled.

  Not this time.

  “Power.” His voice was steady, clear, conviction wrapped in arrogance. “Money.” He hefted the halberd once, its edge catching the flickering light from the runes. “What more can a man like me want?” He motioned to the grandmasters with an almost mocking flourish, his gauntleted hand gleaming. “They can keep ruling the city. Even the tax will be exempt for decades. Do you see?” His words rang throughout the city. “This is power.”

  He turned, gesturing to the spinning circles and the storm of demonic energy roaring louder by the second. His smile twisted, dismissive.

  “Not… this.”

  The White Grandmaster did not flinch when Damon’s words rang across the dome. Instead, he drew in a long, deliberate breath, and when he exhaled it came out as a laugh… soft, somewhat cultured, and dismissive. “Power, money.” He repeated the words as if reciting a nursery rhyme, his tone dripping with disdain.

  “You reduce destiny to coin and steel, Damon. How… peculiar.” He stepped forward, the sweep of his white sleeves billowing like sails as his arm rose toward the heavens. Above, the storm of demonic energy boiled, vast circles of fire and shadow thrumming against the sky. “And yet, even in your simplicity, you serve a purpose. The Empire rewards blunt instruments as well as fine blades.”

  His gaze shifted to me, gleaming. “Let her cackle. Let her stall. It matters not. She is already outmaneuvered.” Then his eyes flicked back to Damon, his mouth curling into something humorless, thin as a knife wound. “Just remember who set the board you play upon.”

  So I did as asked and cackled, letting the sound ring wild across the dome. Sell it, Charlie. Sell it until the stone cracks. The Binding Stone trembled faintly, a vibration that traveled up through my trusty heels.

  Not too long now.

  “Ah, Damon,” I said, locking eyes with him. My grin widened. “You don’t know what you’ve got yourself into. Do you seriously think I came here with just that plan?”

  For a moment, his grin faltered; the faint twitch of his jaw betraying it. The glow inside his visor caught the movement. Then he barked out a short laugh. “Another plan?” His voice rose, mocking. “Please.”

  He slammed the butt of his halberd against the cracked stone beneath us. The clang reverberated like a war drum; the vibrations rolled through the dome. The noise wasn’t just sound… it was pressure, a blunt declaration that rattled bone and nerve.

  “Your allies? I paid them. Nathanco bought their loyalty. You lost; you’re stalling. Same trick you always pulled when you were weak. Delay, chatter, and now you pray your ice buys you time.”

  He tilted his head, visor narrowing, that faint glow drilling into me like a predator marking its prey. “But time, little girl…” He leaned on the halberd, its edge glinting in the rune-light. “…is the one thing you don’t have.”

  The Binding Stone cracked.

  A thunderclap ripped through the square as fissures spread across its massive surface, glowing veins of light tearing it apart from the inside. Then the stone split, and an immense wave of mana detonated outward.

  “Not possible—” the white grandmaster's words died out.

  The shockwave flattened everything in its path.

  Soldiers, assassins, even the Grandmasters themselves were thrown down.

  Cloaks snapped like banners in a storm.

  The Yellow Grandmaster’s staff clattered across the cobbles, the Purple Grandmaster buckled despite using his gravity spell, and even the White Grandmaster was forced to his knees, his face contorted with pain.

  The mana curled around me like a living storm, pressing down with crushing force.

  My hair whipped wild around my face, cloak snapping, knees braced against the torrent.

  But it didn’t hurt.

  Not me.

  The energy recognized me… because I was the one holding the summoning. The one steering it.

  This was the time.

  I raised my voice, and through the dome and the sky projection, my words carried across Altandai.

  “Listen, Altandai!” My voice rang, layered by the resonance of demon magic until it felt like the city itself spoke with me. “To the slaves who can hear me, I say… do not despair! The chains that once shackled you are crumbling!”

  The circles screamed.

  Dozens became hundreds as they spun faster, colliding and blending together until they formed vast wheels of fire and shadow, all drawing from the dying Stone. Mana streamed upward in colossal torrents, weaving into spirals that lit the dome and the heavens above.

  The Red Grandmaster gaped openly, his mouth slack, eyes wide with awe.

  “The hate of Grandmasters will die tonight!” I bellowed. “And the lives they stole from all free people will return to you!”

  Another crack split the Stone, louder than the first. Pieces fell away like shattered mountains, glowing fragments dissolving into streams of energy. The circles blazed so bright the entire dome looked like a sun collapsing, beams of power scarring the sky projection.

  The Stone shattered, breaking apart completely, and the largest wave of mana yet surged outward.

  The White Grandmaster screamed, his arms thrown up as though to shield his face. Damon’s body crumpled under the crushing pressure, his halberd falling from nerveless hands as he fainted, sprawled across the cobbles like a broken doll.

  “Don’t give yourselves to the fear of slave masters!” I roared, voice splitting with raw force. “To those masters who enslave you, despise you, tell you what to do, what to think, what to feel!”

  The mana howled like a hurricane; the storm shoving dust and stone outward in violent currents. Yet in the eye of it, I stood unbroken.

  “You, the FORMER slaves, are holding the power now!” My words reverberated, echoed by the projection above, so every rooftop and alley rang with it. “Let us use that power. Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new Altandai—an Altandai without hate, without chains, without intolerance!”

  The circles pulsed in time with my heartbeat, a halo of blinding energy behind me.

  “Join my liberation army,” I screamed, pouring everything I had into the last words, “and let us all be free!”

  The last syllables ripped through the air like thunder, shaking the very bones of the city. And at that exact moment, the demon gate flickered to life.

  The last fragments of the Binding Stone dissolved into dust, and in its place a ring of molten light tore itself open. A circle as vast as the stone spurred into existence, its edges burning with twisting runes, black fire licking outward like the gate itself resented being called here.

  The glow was unbearable, a wound in the air, and from that wound came…

  A hand.

  It pushed through the gate with slow, awful certainty. The fingers were as long as my legs, each joint armored in irregular plates of obsidian flesh.

  I willed Identify, and the truth blazed across my vision.