The corridor smelled of cold metal and disinfectant. Caelia, wearing Elsa Vogt’s calm mask, barely slowed when crossing paths with us. Her fingers brushed against my hand in the briefest of gestures: two slim cards with silver edges that looked almost innocent.

  —They expire in a few hours —she murmured, her supervisor’s tone unchanged—. Use them well.

  The contact lasted less than a second, and she was already walking away, talking to another officer as if nothing had happened.

  I slipped the card into the inner pocket of my jacket. It weighed on me like a key to the mouth of hell. Velka brushed my arm and gave me that half-smile of hers, the one that said steady, we’re in this together.

  We walked in silence, following the flow of technicians until a side passage left us alone in a secondary corridor. The hum of the coils vibrated through the walls, and each time we passed a checkpoint, the reader beeped with a metallic tone that rattled in my bones. Every green light felt like a disguised alarm.

  —Breathe, Caroline —Velka whispered, her voice modulated as Susanne’s but carrying the spark of her real self—. No one suspects a thing.

  I nodded, though my throat was dry.

  The corridor opened into an observation gallery, sealed by reinforced glass. And there it was.

  The central module of Project Aurora.

  Containers lined up like coffins, each one marked with runes that pulsed red like open wounds. Coils the size of towers rotated slowly, throwing out flashes of blue light that seemed to strip the magic from the very air. At the center, an opaque cylinder throbbed with a steady pulse, like a mechanical heart struggling to beat.

  On the screens floated terms I barely understood: Cross Resonance, Core Attenuation, Emotional Phase Shift. Each line was a reminder that this was not a weapon of destruction, but of erasure. A blackout of what we were.

  Technicians moved with clockwork precision, checking terminals, dictating figures. Everything ran with such perfect order it felt inhuman. And yet their faces were tight, as if they too knew that something in the heart of the machine was… unnatural.

  I leaned on the glass without realizing it, and then it happened.

  A whisper.

  Not in my ears, but in my memories. For an instant I was elsewhere: a quiet street in Seravenn, Silas’s voice calling me from an open window. I knew it was real because I felt the warmth of his hand brushing mine.

  I blinked. The glass shifted. It was no longer Silas. It was me, a child, in a place I didn’t recognize, crying before a broken statue. A memory that wasn’t mine.

  I snapped back. I was staring at the glass again, with Velka at my side.

  —Lyss? —she asked softly, frowning.

  —You said… Silas… —I stammered.

  —I didn’t say anything —she whispered, squeezing my hand.

  The chill ran all the way through my spine. It wasn’t just the module. It was something else. Something testing the doors inside my head.

  —We need to leave —I said hoarsely.

  We turned. And that’s when I saw it.

  The reflection in the glass.

  Klara Weisshaupt.

  Tall, rigid, flawless in her black uniform. She stood in the corridor behind us, watching with that gaze that cut like a blade. She hadn’t spoken a word. She didn’t need to.

  The air grew denser, as if the whole hall was holding its breath. Velka and I froze, knowing the game of masks had just cracked.

  The reflection in the glass hadn’t lied. When I turned, she was there.

  Klara Weisshaupt.

  Her tall figure filled the corridor as if she owned the space itself. The black uniform fell flawlessly over her frame, and her eyes—gray, almost white in the light—cut through me like blades.

  She didn’t need to introduce herself. Her presence alone was a sentence.

  The air shifted. An invisible pressure pushed me toward the floor, heavier with each passing second. My lungs burned, my heart hammered wildly. Then I saw it take shape in her hand: a scythe of pure energy, long and elegant, its black blade threaded with red and violet veins that pulsed as if alive. Each beat struck against my chest.

  —What are you doing here?—her voice sliced the silence, firm without raising the tone. It wasn’t a question; it was an accusation.

  I tried to speak, but my tongue tangled. A strange heat climbed my throat, as though someone—something—was feeding me words that weren’t mine. Between Klara’s phrases, I heard an echo, a murmur that did not belong to her:

  “Curiosity… always demands a price.”

  I blinked, shaken. Velka brushed my arm, rigid but steady, as if she knew I was about to buckle under the invisible weight.

  —We only… needed some guidance— I managed, my voice shaped by Caroline’s modulator, but frayed at the edges.

  Klara took a step toward us. The floor itself seemed to obey her, vibrating under her boot. The scythe crackled, an arc of light in the gloom.

  —You are not what you seem—she said without a trace of doubt. Her smile was brief, glacial.

  For a second, I could have sworn her lips moved differently, and the whisper returned, piercing me like a thorn:

  “They’re not from here.”

  My stomach turned. The memory of Silas brushing my hand blurred with the vision of the weapon before me, as if the two realities fought for control of my mind.

  Klara tilted her head slightly, as if confirming something. Her gaze hardened.

  —Remember this, Caroline. Remember this, Susanne. Curiosity… always leaves scars.

  She didn’t strike. She didn’t need to. With a sharp turn, the scythe vanished with her, swallowed by the corridor as if it had never existed.

  The silence that followed wasn’t relief—it was threat. Velka exhaled a curse under her breath and gripped my shoulder, forcing me to move.

  But even as my steps carried me away from that hallway, the pressure did not lift. In my chest, something alien still pulsed, as though a seed had been planted there, waiting for the right moment to open.

  The corridor seemed to close behind us, as if Klara had left a shadow clinging to the air. Velka gripped my arm harder than she needed to. Her fingers trembled ever so slightly.

  —Lyss… —she whispered, using my real name for the first time that day. So faintly that even the microphones couldn’t have caught it.

  —She saw. She saw us for what we are —I said, my throat dry, still feeling the echo of the scythe in my chest.

  Velka forced me to keep walking, her stride steady but her eyes tight with tension.

  —She didn’t stop us. If she wanted to, we’d already be dead.

  —Then… what does that mean?

  She pressed her lips together, silent, until we reached a side hatch. She pushed me inside with perfect composure, as if it were all part of a scheduled routine. The room was empty, save for the table and the metal chairs. Caelia and Neyra were waiting.

  Caelia, wearing the unflinching calm of Elsa Vogt, closed the door behind us. Her eyes scanned my face with surgical precision.

  —You’re late.

  —We had a setback —Velka cut in, her voice perfectly modulated, though the tension never left her gaze.

  I collapsed into a chair.

  —Klara Weisshaupt… she was there. Watching us. And she spoke.

  Neyra looked up, her eyes wide as if searching for lies in my words.

  —And what did she say?

  —That curiosity always has a price. But… —I swallowed hard, unable to hide the tremor— I felt something else. As if someone tore a memory out of me and twisted it. For a second, I was in Seravenn. And it felt real.

  Velka shot me a warning glance, but Caelia tilted her head, her gaze colder than steel.

  —Then it’s no longer suspicion. It’s a hunt.

  Silence fell, suffocating. Even the air seemed to be holding its breath.

  Caelia placed both hands flat on the table.

  —Listen to me. We have no more room left. From now on, every step we take will be under Klara’s gaze… and under something else we can’t yet name.

  Velka leaned closer, her shoulder brushing mine, the faintest touch.

  —This isn’t espionage anymore —she murmured—. It’s surviving long enough to destroy it.

  Caelia nodded, her voice a final verdict:

  —Then be ready. Tomorrow, we won’t be shadows. We’ll be blades.

  The echo of her words cut deeper than any threat. Because it wasn’t a plan. It was a warning.

  But...Then.

  The reflection in the glass had frozen my blood. She was there, right behind us. Klara Weisshaupt. Tall, rigid, flawless in her black uniform, watching us as if she had always known this moment would come.

  Velka squeezed my arm, a gesture that said more than a thousand words. We turned slowly, and the world seemed to narrow around us.

  Klara didn’t speak at once. She dragged her scythe across the floor, the blade leaving a trail of sparks that lit the hallway in brief flashes. The metallic scrape filled the silence, a silence worse than any scream.

  She stepped forward, and the pressure grew heavier, as if the corridor itself shrank under her will.

  —Where do you think you’re going? —she asked softly, as if the answer didn’t matter—. To finish something you don’t understand?

  Velka instinctively stepped in front of me, putting herself between Klara and me. Caelia and Neyra arrived seconds later, having followed the trail of our absence, and the group closed in on itself in a tense half-circle.

  —You have no right to stop us —said Caelia, her voice firm though tension betrayed her.

  Klara’s smile was slow, calculated. She tilted her head slightly, like someone observing a curious animal.

  —I have the right to everything —she replied, dragging the scythe farther, the blade scratching marble—. Here, every breath exists because I allow it.

  The air grew heavier with each word. My fingers reached for the modulator at my neck. I could feel the burn of my magic trapped, shackled, and I knew that without releasing it, we wouldn’t survive a second.

  —Trust me —Velka whispered, not looking at me, barely moving her lips—. She won’t touch us… not yet.

  But Klara took another step. And in her frozen gaze I understood she knew. That she had been waiting for this.

  —You can keep lying a little longer… —she said, raising the weapon—. Or you can show me what you really are.

  The metallic click echoed in the hallway as I tore the device from my neck. My magic surged back, brutal and fierce, like an animal breaking its chains. Velka and Neyra did the same. The air shifted. The floor trembled. And certainty lit in Klara’s eyes.

  The smile that crossed her face was like a verdict.

  —I knew it.

  The edge of her scythe flared with a black and silver flash. The invisible pressure slammed into us head-on. The battle had begun.

  —“I knew you were different,” she said, her voice so calm it froze more than any scream. “But I didn’t expect you to be like us.”

  Her aura bent around her with brutality: a silver-blue glow that warped the air, sinking the walls as if the whole corridor breathed to her rhythm.

  Caelia was the first to react. She raised her arms and a translucent shield bloomed between us and Klara, crackling under the invisible pressure. —“Stay behind me,” she ordered firmly.

  Velka didn’t obey. She already had the sword-pistol in her hand, the blade folded forward and the barrel gleaming under the dim lights. With a twist, she fired the first shot. The blast shook the air, the bullet sparking against Klara’s scythe and deflecting with a metallic snap.

  —“If you want to touch us, you’ll have to bleed first!” Velka spat, eyes blazing.

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  Klara tilted her head slightly, smiling as if insolence were just a game.

  The next exchange was brutal. Klara lunged, the scythe came down like lightning, and the impact against Caelia’s shield was deafening: a thunderclap that shook the corridor. The shockwave shoved us back, yet Caelia held, sweat rolling down her temple.

  Neyra tried to flank her, searching for an opening, but the scythe swept low and drove precisely beneath her knee. Neyra’s scream tore through the hallway, hot blood staining the floor as she collapsed, gasping.

  —“Neyra!” I cried, my heart burning.

  Velka rushed to cover her, laying down short bursts with the pistol side of her weapon. Each shot echoed like a furious heartbeat. —“Get up, damn it!” she barked, firing again at Klara, who turned her scythe with chilling elegance to deflect every round.

  Caelia, panting, tried to reforge the barrier, but Klara was already on her. She seized Caelia by the throat and slammed her against the floor with a dull crack. The shield shattered into sparks, and Caelia was pinned beneath invisible weight pressing her into the tiles.

  —“See?” Klara murmured, barely raising her voice while holding us down. “You’re nothing but emotions pretending to be power.”

  Velka roared and swung her blade, powder magic igniting in a red flash as she fired point-blank. The strike ripped through Klara’s coat, carving a line across her side, and a spark of blood hit the ground.

  Klara froze. For the first time, I saw her blink. Slowly, she smiled, calm in a way that hurt more than the wound.

  —“So… you bite too,” she whispered.

  The corridor trembled again under her aura. Gravity doubled. My knees slammed the ground, the rifle nearly slipping from my hands. Velka resisted, arms shaking, the sword-pistol stabbed into the floor like an anchor. —“I won’t let you touch her!” she roared, glancing at me.

  My breath broke into ragged gasps, and then it happened.

  A whisper. Not in my ears, but in my memories. For an instant I saw Silas reaching for me from a window that didn’t exist. I smelled bread from my childhood. I felt impossible warmth.

  I blinked, and it was only the corridor again. Klara had stilled too, her eyes narrowing, as if something foreign had just intruded.

  The floor vibrated. From the depths of the facility, white light seeped through the seams of the metal. It wasn’t normal magic. It wasn’t human. It was a twisted echo of faith, a living memory that belonged to no one.

  Klara turned her head, alert, and for the first time I saw her lose composure.

  Velka clutched my shoulder, her weapon still smoking. —“Lyss, what the hell was that?”

  I had no answer. The air itself seemed to pray, and every word brushing my mind felt like it was mine and not mine.

  And I understood that whatever had awakened here was neither ally nor enemy. It was something worse.

  The edge of Klara’s scythe had just cut through the air when everything broke.

  Not the metal nor the walls, but something deeper: reality itself.

  The corridor lit up with a white radiance bleeding through the seams of the floor, as if the building were hiding a blazing altar beneath our feet. The air smelled of incense, of burned wax—something sacred and rotten at the same time.

  —What…? —Velka muttered, lowering her gunblade just slightly.

  Klara’s voice, sharp as ice, froze mid-gesture. Her eyes, which a heartbeat before had been locked on us with cruel certainty, flickered with confusion. Even she—the impeccable leader of Schattenspeer—seemed to feel something was wrong.

  And then, we saw it.

  Shadows cloaked in twisted symbols of faith—crosses bent out of shape, broken moons, circles devouring themselves—spread across the walls, like frescoes that had always been there. A central figure emerged from the illusion: a female form, slender and withered, draped in the robes of a thousand creeds. Light bled from her palms, every drop falling like shattered glass.

  —No… —Neyra whispered, pale-faced, one hand clutching her wounded leg—. This isn’t possible.

  Voices filled the corridor, a choir without mouths. Words that sounded like prayers, but also commands, but also memories.

  “Trust me…”

  “You are my daughter…”

  “Silas was waiting at the window…”

  I froze. That last one—I recognized it. It was identical to the whisper I had felt in front of the module’s glass.

  —No —I whispered, trembling—. That wasn’t real.

  But the world didn’t obey.

  The corridor dissolved. I was standing in the middle of a Seravenn street from my childhood. I could feel the sun on my skin, the smell of fresh bread in the air, my mother’s voice calling me from an open window.

  “Lyssandra, come home.”

  And there she was: her face blurry, yet full of tenderness.

  —Mom… —I whispered, stepping forward.

  Velka’s arm yanked me back violently, tearing me from the mirage. The corridor snapped back, cold and gray. Sweat streamed down my face.

  —Lyss! It’s not real. Listen to me! —she shouted, eyes blazing with fear and fury.

  But I could barely hear her.

  The illusions didn’t stop. Caelia saw herself surrounded by shadows wearing her own face, all of them screaming that she had failed her squad. Neyra arched in pain as distorted versions of her parents appeared, accusing her of betrayal. And Velka… Velka froze when, just a meter away, an adolescent girl appeared seated in a chair, hands resting on her knees. She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. She only stared at Velka in silence, her eyes heavy with reproach, as if she were the embodiment of a guilt Velka had never dared to name.

  I felt myself tearing apart. The images were so vivid that my own memories—the few I believed intact—began to blur. Silas’s window. My mother’s voice. The warmth of an embrace I didn’t remember ever having. What was true? What was invention?

  The white glow intensified. The female figure stretched out her arms and spoke in all our voices at once:

  —Faith is all that remains. Believe. Surrender. The rest… I will rewrite.

  I fell to my knees. The pain in my chest burned like fire. The edges of my vision filled with symbols I couldn’t decipher. For a heartbeat, I wanted to give in. To accept whatever this thing offered, even if it meant erasing who I was.

  And then I felt another hand. Velka’s—warm, trembling—squeezing mine with a force that felt impossible.

  —Lyss! —she screamed, her voice breaking—. You are you! Don’t let them take that from you!

  That spark gave me a second of clarity. I looked at the bleeding light, at the creature draped in borrowed faith, and I knew whatever it was, it didn’t want to save us. It wanted to empty us.

  The corridor shook. Illusions collided with reality. Eiswacht soldiers rushed in, confused, some firing at shadows that dissolved in the air. Klara herself clenched her teeth, her scythe glowing dark as she fought against the weight of the vision.

  I, meanwhile, could barely breathe. Each memory, each word, tore at me until something deep inside began to beat. Something that wasn’t the voice of the illusion but my own.

  A pulse of fire.

  A pulse of rage.

  The corridor split into echoes and false prayers. The figure of light kept stretching out its arms, and every word was a knife, trying to unmake what we were.

  —No… no… —Caelia clenched her teeth, her shields trembling, cracking under the invisible weight.

  —Stop it! —Velka swung her gunblade, firing bursts of energy at the silhouette. But the projectiles went right through the illusion, as if she were shooting at water.

  Neyra whimpered on the ground, the wound in her leg bleeding while her eyes, red with tears, couldn’t look away from the images haunting her.

  And Klara.

  She stood tall, scythe in hand, her back straight like an unbreakable wall. But even she was trembling. Her eyes, usually cold and domineering, now burned with helpless fury. Each time the white radiance grew stronger, her knuckles tightened around the weapon’s handle.

  —Enough… —she growled, her voice low and grave—. Enough!

  Gravity swelled around her, making the walls groan. The floor quivered, yet the sacred figure remained, smiling at her like a teacher to a child.

  For an instant, I saw in Klara not just ice, but a crack: the attraction that had made her watch us with suspicion was now doubt, raw rage. Her lips twisted into a gesture of unbending pride.

  —I will not… yield —she said, and the scythe carved through the light. For a moment, the illusion recoiled, but returned stronger.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. The burning in my chest became a broken drum. My hands went to my abdomen, the place where I had always felt an emptiness that couldn’t be filled.

  The whisper came back, not as a stranger’s voice, but as my own.

  “Let it out. Don’t fight it. The anger is yours. It’s what you are.”

  I screamed. Not out of fear, but from being torn open.

  And the sword was born.

  It didn’t rise from my hands, but from my very core, tearing through nothingness as if it had always been there. A blade of crimson and black light, alive, breathing with me. When I held it, the world shook.

  The figure’s radiance cracked, the illusions unraveling into tatters of smoke. Caelia stopped seeing shadows, Neyra no longer heard her parents, Velka gasped as the adolescent girl that had been silently judging her vanished.

  And her.

  The leader of Schattenspeer took a step back, her icy eyes locked on me. This time there was no superiority in her gaze, only bewilderment.

  —That isn’t rancor… —she whispered, as if the word itself tasted bitter.

  The anger consumed me, but it wasn’t blind fire. It was a torrent, ancient and ordered, claiming my body and my voice. I raised the sword, and the very air split apart in a roar of flame and wind.

  The figure screamed, its voice repeating in a thousand tongues, before disintegrating into a rain of symbols that burned against the walls. The corridor collapsed in an explosion of dust and rubble, separating us.

  I felt the floor give way beneath my feet as Velka grabbed my arm desperately. Caelia lifted a shield to cover Neyra, but the beams fell between us and Klara. I saw her one last time on the other side of the wreckage, still standing, scythe in hand, confusion burning in her eyes.

  And then, only the roar.

  When it finally ended, I coughed through the dust and the blood in my mouth. Velka was beside me, Neyra and Caelia too, though both were wounded. The sword still burned in my hand, pulsing irregularly like my own heart.

  I knew it wasn’t over. What had awakened inside me wasn’t going away. And Klara… would never let us escape.

  The escape was chaos, condensed into every heartbeat. The collapse had opened cracks toward the surface, but it had also unleashed the hunt: sirens wailing in the air, boots pounding against the ground, tank engines roaring like beasts of iron.

  Velka supported Neyra, pulling her arm over her shoulders to help her walk. Blood soaked through the fabric of her wounded leg, and every step was a choked gasp. Caelia stayed on the other side, her face rigid, shields flaring to deflect bullets that ricocheted like lightning across the snow.

  I… I was the vanguard.

  As we broke into the forest, the frozen air struck me with a blade’s edge that should have shattered me. Instead, the fire in my chest grew hotter, burning me alive. The sword pulsed in my hand, each vibration spilling out red waves that rippled through the air like tides of blood.

  The first soldiers emerged among the trees. One gesture, one instinctive slash… and they disintegrated. The whole line collapsed without screams, without resistance, as if they were shadows cut from their roots.

  I didn’t think. I didn’t need to. My body knew. I wielded the sword as if I had always done so, each motion precise, each swing carried by a savage elegance. There was no doubt in my hands. No fear in my steps. Only rage, raw and transmuted into mastery.

  A tank roared a few meters away, its cannon swinging toward us. I raised the sword and brought it down in a clean arc. A massive red wave unfurled like a burning tide, and the steel monster split in two. The metal shrieked as it bent, collapsing in flames.

  Velka barely managed to halt without letting go of Neyra, who hobbled beside her, gasping for air. Her eyes reflected the blaze of the explosion.

  —Lyss… —she breathed, barely audible.

  But I couldn’t hear her. Another turn, another strike, and the drones buzzing above fell like scorched insects, their wreckage hissing as it hit the snow.

  Caelia retreated step by step, her shields intercepting the bullets that still found their way through. Sweat gleamed on her forehead, but her eyes never left Neyra, ensuring she didn’t collapse.

  My steps grew fluid, each slash dragging rage across the air like a brushstroke. Red waves carved through the trees, toppling ancient trunks as if they were paper. Troops unraveled around me, unable to grasp what was tearing through them.

  It felt… natural. As if I had wielded this blade all my life. As if the sword hadn’t been born from me, but I had been born to hold it.

  The forest itself seemed to bow under each movement. The ground trembled, the snow hissed and melted, and my breath burned like liquid fire. There was no past. No future. Only this moment, this power, this rage.

  And I could not stop.

  The forest burned in crimson flashes. Every swing of my sword left behind cutting waves that dismembered steel, men, and trees alike. The air was saturated with a metallic stench, as if blood itself had replaced the oxygen.

  A platoon emerged from the snow with shouts, rifles raised. I lifted the blade in a violent arc, and they fell before they could even fire. The wave tore through them, their bodies unraveling like smoke beneath the red tide.

  No resistance lasted more than a heartbeat.

  But my chest… my chest was a broken drum. Each beat slammed into me like a hammer, each breath was molten fire tearing my throat apart. My veins felt stretched to the brink of bursting, the mark on my chest burning with a glow that pierced through the fabric, runes searing across my skin.

  Velka was holding Neyra up with all her strength, while Caelia advanced beside them, casting invisible shields to block the artillery still raining down. I could barely hear them. Their world was behind me; mine was only this sword and the roar of wrath.

  The sky lit up as a shell landed nearby. Snow exploded into thousands of glittering shards, like broken glass. I staggered… but my arm responded by instinct. A downward slash, and even the smoke split in two, dissipating before me.

  For a moment, everything was silent. And in that silence, I felt it: a dull ache in my heart, a void that shouldn’t have been there. As if every time I swung the sword, I was tearing something out of myself.

  I swallowed hard, but I knew I couldn’t stop. Not while my friends looked at me with desperate eyes, not while every second meant the difference between survival and being buried in this forest-turned-grave.

  I pushed forward, each step heavier than the last. My legs trembled, but the sword flowed like a raging river.

  A horizontal slash. A tank burst into flames, its turret flying into the sky.

  A vertical slash. The snow itself split open like a wound, swallowing the soldiers who dared to advance.

  Another diagonal strike. The drones disintegrated, falling as a rain of sparks that lit the frozen night.

  The forest roared with me. But inside me, the roar was different: an echo that devoured, reminding me that the price of this fury was far from fully paid.

  My hands trembled around the weapon—not from fear, but because I no longer knew if I was the one wielding the sword… or if the sword was the one wielding me.

  The silence after my last strike was heavier than any word.

  The forest itself seemed to hold its breath. Melted snow steamed at my feet, streaked with the crimson waves left in the air by my sword. My throat burned raw from screaming, my arms stiff as if the blade had fused with my bones.

  Velka stared at me wide-eyed, a mixture of awe and fear. Caelia, her uniform torn and blood on her face, still carried the weight of everything we had unleashed. Neyra, trembling, leaned against a scorched tree, her leg wound bleeding again. All of them looked at me as if they no longer knew who I was.

  —Lyss… —Caelia whispered, barely a thread of sound.

  Velka approached cautiously, as though she feared she might shatter me just by touching me. Her trembling hand brushed my arm, burning hot from the strain. Her warmth contrasted with the frozen air around us.

  —Are you okay? —she asked, her eyes searching for an answer I didn’t have.

  I opened my mouth, but my voice came out hoarse, broken.

  —I don’t know…

  The breath I exhaled turned to white clouds, but inside I felt empty. The sword still glowed faintly in my hand, unwilling to be released, and the mark on my chest burned, pulsing with a fire that wasn’t human.

  Neyra, pale and biting her lips against the pain, looked at me as if she saw a miracle that terrified her.

  —That… that was… —she stammered—. What were you, Lyss?

  I shook my head clumsily, unable to give it a name.

  —I don’t know.

  Caelia drew in a sharp breath, gritting her teeth as if clinging to certainty.

  —We have to move. Quickly, before more arrive.

  I tried to take a step, but then I felt it.

  A brutal heartbeat, like a broken drum, thundered in my chest. It bent me forward, and the sword slipped from my hand with a dull clatter. Another beat. And another. Each strike tore me apart from the inside.

  I screamed, clutching my chest. The pain was unbearable, as though an invisible claw twisted my heart. Snow darkened beneath my knees as I collapsed, gasping for air that wouldn’t come.

  —Lyss! —Velka’s voice broke with a panic I had never heard in her before. She dropped beside me, her hands trying to hold me, useless against what was devouring me.

  —She’s having a heart attack! —she cried, desperation strangling her words.

  —Caelia, help me! —her plea was a raw scream.

  I felt hands on my shoulders, on my back, trying to steady me. Caelia’s voice cut through, firm, commanding me to breathe, to resist. But my body would not obey. Every inhale was fire. Every exhale, a knife.

  —No, no, no… —Neyra whispered through sobs, her wound forgotten, her eyes flooded with terror.

  My vision filled with black spots, the world spinning like a broken carousel. Each heartbeat weaker than the last. I felt it… my heart was stopping. The abyss yawned open, pulling me in.

  —Lyss, look at me —Velka begged, tears streaming down her face. Her voice, always mocking and strong, was now a fragile plea—. Look at me. Stay with me.

  But it was so hard. My eyelids weighed tons. My body surrendered, demanding rest.

  And then I heard it.

  “Let it out…”

  The voice was a firm whisper, impossible to ignore. It didn’t come from outside, but from within, as though it had always been there.

  “Blood of the crown… It is your legacy. It is what you are. Use it. Without losing yourself. And when the time comes… let the crown bleed.”

  The words etched themselves into my mind like embers. They burned, illuminated, tore a crack into the darkness. One last spark.

  I opened my eyes for a moment. I saw their faces. Velka, crying. Caelia, holding discipline like a shield against fear. Neyra, trembling but refusing to look away. And I felt that I still loved them, that I still had to protect them.

  Then, nothing.

  I let myself be dragged into the weight pulling me down, and the world faded into a cold whisper.