Footsteps closed in outside the temple doors—sharp, rapid, like knuckles rapping against bone.

  Amina snapped her short staff across the lintel and spat out a string of clipped warning phrases, low and cold. Whoever waited beyond hesitated. After a brief pause, they did not force entry. Instead, a thin, drawn-out whistle cut through the night—too deliberate to be casual—then unraveled into the wind like a signal left behind.

  Inside the hall, only the four of them remained—

  —and the fragment, lying at the center of the broken formation, still trembling faintly.

  Erika reached out.

  The instant her fingertips brushed the fragment’s edge, pain surged up her palm like a spike of ice. She jerked her hand back instinctively. Her jade pendant flared hot against her chest, emerald light spilling from her collarbone to shield the skin of her hand.

  The fragment felt like the cold scale of a fish—slick, alien. Fine sigil-lines flickered across its surface, brightening and dimming under the moonlight, as if mimicking the shallow breaths of something on the verge of death.

  “Don’t force it,” Lucas said sharply.

  He was already at the edge of the array, stripping away golden threads with practiced urgency. Runes flashed rapidly across his lenses as his voice dropped, tight and fast.

  “It’s in an unstable state. Residual cold from the shadow is pulling against the heat we trapped inside the formation. Energy’s leaking—if we wait any longer, it’ll fracture.”

  “Fracture?” Amina arched an eyebrow. “Explode?”

  “No,” Lucas said, lips pressed thin. “Fail.”

  From the deepest compartment of his pack, he withdrew a palm-sized silver-white case. Inside lay a mercury-smooth disc and five needles no longer than fingernails.

  “Alchemical Matrix—Hermes Lock,” he explained while already working. “Mercurial alloy as a buffer medium. Five-point mass anchors to lock the sigil stone’s phase oscillation. We stop the bleeding first—then we stitch.”

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  Erika lowered herself into a cross-legged seat, palms turned upward. The jade pendant’s green light pooled gently in her hands, like a quiet spring stirred by breath.

  “I’ll provide the medium,” she said, steadying her breathing.

  She fed her qi into the silvery disc in slow, careful strands. The metal softened under the energy, its cold sheen warming, faint patterns surfacing across its surface—subtle echoes that began to resonate with the fragment’s broken sigils.

  “Good. That’s the frequency,” Lucas said, eyes flashing.

  He pressed the disc squarely over the fragment’s core. The five needles fell in sequence—four at the corners, one along the central axis—forming a minimalist pentagram. From his device, he drew a filament-thin gold wire and clipped it to the needle heads.

  “Grounding.”

  The fragment shuddered once—twice—then the violent pulsing dulled, like a beast pinned by the throat, struggling before finally yielding.

  “One more pass,” Lucas barked.

  Erika brought her palms closer. Green light seeped from the edges of her hands into the silver disc, interlocking with the fragment’s sigils. In her inner sight, she saw something strange—

  Broken lines reaching for one another through water.

  They could not reunite.

  But they could bridge.

  “Hold,” she whispered.

  Sweat beaded at her temples. Her breath frayed, fingers twitching slightly as she realized—this force far exceeded what her body was meant to sustain.

  Lucas’s hands shook, veins standing out as the runes on his lenses spun faster than the eye could track. Jabari stood guard beside them, blade in hand, the spirit beast collapsed into a faint, breathing outline at his feet, its chest rising and falling like a shadow of flame. Amina braced the door, staff wedged into the frame, ear pressed to stone and wood, listening for wind, footsteps, and coded sounds beyond.

  Time stretched thin, measured only in breath.

  At last, the fragment’s light-lines contracted. The glow on the disc and needles sank away, like a pond settling after a storm.

  “Done?” Jabari asked.

  “No,” Lucas corrected quietly. “Stabilized.”

  He lifted one needle, inspecting the fragment’s edge. His jaw tightened.

  Erika saw it too.

  One corner of the fragment was dim—sigils scorched, inert, as if burned past recovery. The jade pendant at her chest released a soundless sigh.

  “It’s missing a part,” Lucas said. “Its energy foundation’s been pulled out, like a lamp drained of oil. It’ll still function—but with reduced output and stability.”

  “As long as it can move us forward,” Amina said, withdrawing her staff. Her gaze flicked to the fragment, a flicker of complexity passing unnoticed.

  Erika sealed the fragment into the silver case. As the lid closed, unease slid through her chest.

  These things were not indestructible.

  They could be damaged.

  Consumed.

  Worn down by opposing forces.

  “We need to be faster,” she murmured. “Before they go completely dark.”

  Outside, the distant whistle echoed again—once, then again—like a reminder etched into the night.

  The hunt, it seemed, had only reached halftime.