The torchlight flickered down the narrow hallway, casting warped shadows across Elledor’s face.

  I spoke calmly, my voice like frost, “Lyria—get behind me.”

  She did, without a word. Her footsteps were soft, but the tension in her breath said everything.

  “Yukon—please, don’t—” she pleaded. But I wasn’t listening.

  Elledor chuckled, low and amused. “You think you’re protecting her? You’re just making a scene, like a mutt barking at a noble’s gate.”

  I didn’t blink. “Say another word.”

  He didn’t. He moved instead.

  With a speed that blurred the edges of his form, Elledor surged forward and slammed his hand around my throat. My boots left the floor as he lifted me like a doll and turned—hurling me straight through the stained-glass window at the end of the hall.

  Glass shattered around me in a kaleidoscope of moonlight and pain. I didn’t even have time to scream before gravity took me.

  Second floor. Stone courtyard. Headfirst.

  Time slowed.

  The world turned white.

  Then—

  A pulse. A flare in my chest.

  Lunae.

  The light caught me, wrapped me, braced me—just enough. I still hit the ground with bone-rattling force, the impact driving the breath from my lungs. But I was alive.

  I groaned, blinking up at the night sky, dazed and bleeding, ears ringing.

  Above, a blur of motion. Elledor leapt from the broken window, his cloak flaring like wings, and landed with impossible grace in the courtyard below.

  His sword was already in his hand—long, elegant, and glowing with faint silver runes.

  “I warned you,” he said, his tone venomous yet soft. “But you really couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

  I pushed myself to my knees, spitting blood, the icy burn of Lunae’s power still pulsing faintly through my veins.

  She had saved me. Again.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I said hoarsely.

  “No?” He raised his blade. “You should be.”

  I reached to the side, my hand clutching at my sword that had fallen beside me. My fingertips scraped the stone as I pulled it toward me.

  Elledor smiled—eager for any excuse to kill me.

  He wasn’t going to let me stand. White energy bloomed around him, some sort of enhancement spell. He readied his sword as I pushed myself up. I prepared to call on Tenebrae.

  Before either of us could move, a column of brilliant blue fire erupted between us, blinding me momentarily.

  The pounding of footsteps pulled my gaze. From behind Elledor, his personal guard came storming in, appearing to have been hidden somewhere in the shadows this entire time. As I continued turning, my eyes landed upon the ones who would stand beside me.

  My party

  My partners.

  My friends.

  There was Bront, panting slightly, looking like he’d just jumped out of bed. And I knew he had. His battle axe glinted in the sparse moonlight, his massive muscles rippling and his chest heaving.

  There was Kaela. Her golden eyes narrowed, fierce, determined. Her serpentine spear held at the ready, its tip glowing a dangerous green.

  And then there was Selene, half of her armor hurriedly strapped on. But in her blue eyes burned the kind of fierce determination you could only read about in storybooks. Her very presence was as sharp as her blade.

  Finally, Lyria. The source of the blue flames. Her body was encased in a subtle, purplish, arcane glow as she descended. She floated slowly down from the broken window I’d come crashing out of, landing between Elledor and me. Her lavender eyes burned fiercely, with fear, with rage, and most keenly, with sadness.

  I stood amongst them, wiping blood from my chin, as we faced Elledor and his guards.

  Elledor’s smile didn’t fade. If anything, it grew sharper. “The whole circus, then?”

  Lyria spoke first.

  “Prince Elledor… I have made my decision,” Lyria’s voice was fragile—yet, unshakable. “I refuse to return to Moonvale with you… I- I do not accept your invitation.”

  All four of us likely had the same look—relief, pride—a look that said, finally…

  Elledor sneered at her. His smug grin darkened further.

  “Fine—I have grown bored of you anyway…”

  “Then… you will be taking your leave of Lanton…?” Lyria asked, her voice lined with disbelief.

  “I will,” Elledor said, almost casually. Lyria’s face lit with momentary relief—until he spoke again.

  “—After he has been executed.”

  His sword pointed to me.

  My face paled ever so slightly. A unanimous gasp from Selene, Kaela, and Bront sounded behind me. Lyria made a sound like a choked sob, her tears streaming without hesitation as she stared at him wide eyed.

  His guards quickly circled me. Five of them, pointing five spears directly at my neck.

  I heard Bront take a step but Selene grabbed him, her grip like a vice, though, her head hung. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I could imagine the look they held.

  Kaela looked very uncomfortable. As if that decree had made her realize something she hadn’t wanted to. She shifted uneasily beside them, stunned into silence.

  There it was.

  No one could fight a prince. Even if I wanted to, I’d be hunted for the rest of my days.

  So, what did my father mean…

  How could I fight?

  I took a slow breath.

  My mouth moved before the thought fully formed.

  “Are you afraid?” I asked.

  Elledor raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Afraid that a prince might lose to a nobody?” I said softly. “Is that why you’re hiding behind your guards?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Watch your tongue, mongrel. I’ve shown restraint—don’t make me regret it.”

  “Then stop pretending,” I said. “Stop posturing. You’re a warrior, aren’t you?”

  A pause. Tension tightened the air like a drawn bowstring.

  “I don’t need to prove anything to you,” Elledor said coldly.

  “No,” I nodded. “But your men are watching. So is she.” I tilted my chin toward Lyria. “And right now, all they see is a prince too cowardly to take his own revenge.”

  A flicker in his eyes.

  Got him.

  “Or,” I continued, voice calm, “you can give me a duel. No tricks. No guards. Just you and me. Right here. Right now.”

  His nostrils flared.

  “You think you’ll survive?”

  “I think I’ll win.”

  That was all I had. Despite his overwhelming strength, I had to believe.

  Elledor turned to his guards. “Stand down.”

  The spears withdrew.

  His sword stayed raised.

  “I accept.”

  * * *

  A murmuring wind swept through the quiet streets outside Falcon’s Flight that night. Clouds shifted in the midnight sky, allowing the moon's ethereal glow to pierce the lingering shadows.

  The guards formed a wide semicircle behind Elledor. Selene, Bront, and Kaela stepped to my flank in kind. Lyria ran to my side, her tear soaked cheeks sparkling in the silvery light. Her hands, trembling, grasped my arm. Her breath caught in short bursts. She searched for words, but none came. Her eyes, like amethyst, shone desperately, tears flecked from her face as she shook her head. Silent, pleading, begging me not to fight.

  My eyes never left Elledor, his cool expression haunting my gaze. I lifted my arm away from Lyria’s grasp. My other hand mirrored the motion, raising my sheathed sword horizontally before me. I drew slowly, its twin metals both glinting and muting the iridescence of the shimmering moonlight.

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  Elledor’s own sword, etched with silver runes, rose from his extended arm, pointing in arrogant assurance.

  For a moment, all was still. Even the wind paused for a step.

  Lunae’s light found my eyes, her power once again radiating through my limbs—cold and calm—as though the very glaciers of old had granted me their strength. It was different now, collected, focused. Ready.

  Elledor grinned widely at the spectacle. A shimmering silver mist began to emanate from his form—luminous, proud, and unshakably still, like a knight carved from starlight. It was as though the moon itself had answered his call.

  He moved first.

  The air itself seemed to question it—his body moved without friction, like light slipping through cracks.

  I circled right. My boots barely whispered against the cobblestone. The cold in my limbs steadied my breath, honed my focus. The sword in my hand felt weightless.

  My eyes, illuminated in an icy blue, tracked his every movement, anticipating his first slash.

  A flash of silver, a clean horizontal sweep aiming for my ribs. I caught it on the flat of my blade, the impact ringing like chimes. He pressed forward—testing, not committing. His movements were refined, elegant, honed by years behind palace walls and under moonlit tutelage.

  I answered with a short riposte, quick as breath. He leaned back just in time, and his smile intensified, as if he’d grown more certain of his victory with that brief exchange.

  We circled one another in silence. The crowd held its breath. Even the guards seemed to fade into the gloom.

  For a moment, my father’s confident smile flickered in my mind. The memory acted as the encouragement I needed.

  My turn.

  My breath, a fine mist, trailed after me as I plunged in. The tip of my sword started low, angling up as I stepped in. He deflected it, and the momentum carried me into a follow-up swing, my wrist twisting as I arced my sword into a diagonal downward slash. His sword caught it. Metal screeched as he slid in, aiming for a swift pommel strike. I disengaged just out of reach, reassuming a defensive stance.

  Elledor had beaten me once before, in the training ring. I knew his skill was real—I couldn’t underestimate him.

  My gaze never left his face—his cold smile—but just as it had been there, it vanished.

  Whatever power he was channeling, I now saw that it surpassed even Lunae’s enhanced perception.

  Faster. Sharper. Not the patient prodding of a noble indulging ceremony. This was something else.

  His sword blurred—a flurry of angled thrusts and feints in staggered rhythms that forced me to readjust with every step. My blade intercepted the first two. The third kissed my shoulder.

  I spun away, heart kicking.

  He didn’t give chase. He let the distance grow again, silver mist curling from his shoulders like smoke off a blade just pulled from the forge.

  I wasn’t familiar with the power he wielded, but it appeared to be some sort of enhancement magic. Maybe something intrinsic to moon-elf warriors. It seemed to work similarly to Lunae and Tenebrae’s power: enhancing his speed, perception, and strength. Whatever it was, he held a mastery over it that challenged what I believed to be possible.

  “That’s better,” he said, low and sure. “Don’t disappoint me now.”

  Then he came again—quicker, crueler. His footwork was immaculate, gliding across the uneven stone like a dancer on polished glass. His sword became a ribbon of light, coiling, striking, recoiling. I blocked, deflected, ducked—and still, he slipped through. A shallow cut across my thigh.

  Pain lanced up my leg, but the cold in my limbs dulled it. My pulse stayed steady. My breath didn’t hitch.

  Selene, standing off to the side, winced as Lyria’s grip tightened around her arm, knuckles white. She, too, held her breath. Kaela and Bront shifted warily beside them. A cold sweat gathered on each of their brows as the four of them watched. None—save for Selene—could follow our blades.

  I panted as he took a brief pause. He had the edge, but not by much so far…

  “Is that the best you’ve got?” I called, my eyes boring through him with determination. The cut on my thigh steamed as Lunae’s power attempted to close it. “If so… this duel will prove easier than I thought—”

  A silver wind howled.

  Elledor's eyes lit with piercing white fire—not fury, not pride, but something colder. Detached. As though the weight of a kingdom had fallen behind his blade.

  "This is not a duel," he said. "This is an execution."

  He came at me again, and the world blurred.

  His sword struck like moonlight through mist—one, two, three times. My guard shattered on the fourth. Steel cracked against my ribs as the flat of his blade made contact, and I stumbled back, gasping as the air left my lungs.

  Move, I told myself. Breathe.

  Pain flared down my side. I tasted copper.

  I launched a counterattack, channeling Lunae’s strength and precision into every strike. My blade danced through a sequence of slashes, feints, and perfectly timed thrusts. I managed to catch his side as he twirled away from my next piercing stab, my blade cut through his silvery tunic like butter, grazing his skin.

  But he didn’t flinch. He turned it right back on me, his aura flashing brilliantly, threatening to blind me. I tried to squint away, but his blade sang in, slashing horizontally for my neck.

  I pulled back just fast enough to dodge it, feeling the disrupted air graze my throat and once again I backpedalled, desperate to create some space.

  He didn’t let up. His movements came faster and more precisely. I couldn’t go back on the offensive, he had the upper hand.

  In my mind, a warning rang out.

  “You cannot win this as you are now.”

  The voice rang through me like a tolling bell—Lunae’s voice, echoing from somewhere beyond the veil. Not angry. Not afraid. Just… certain.

  Fear gripped me then. Real, genuine, fear. Why would she tell me that…? Would I really lose this battle? Was this really—the end?

  My breath caught.

  Since the confrontation began, I had felt something simmering within me, something dark. Unquenchable fury bubbling just beneath the surface…

  “Let go. Or fall.”

  Came Tenebrae’s voice in my mind, deep, gravelled, absolute. It felt different somehow to what I’d come to expect from him. More cruel, more… possessive.

  But I couldn’t let go. Not fully. Not with my party watching… Lunae’s power already surged in my veins, sharpened my senses, made my reflexes sure—but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.

  My body seemed to fight on its own as Prince Elledor continued his onslaught. The blade of twin metals whizzed through the air, desperately fending off his assault. My feet carried me back with each wave. Backstepping, retreating, failing.

  Another strike barely missed me, but a fist followed behind, slamming into my temple and knocking stars into my vision. I dropped to one knee.

  “Yukon!” Bront roared from somewhere behind, his hand reaching for an axe he couldn’t draw.

  Selene stood frozen, lips parted, horrified.

  Kaela snapped her eyes shut.

  And Lyria—Lyria didn’t scream. She didn’t cry out. But her eyes…

  Her eyes were wide with something I hadn’t seen before.

  Devastation.

  Defeated at the realization that I wouldn’t win. That I couldn’t.

  Up to this point my power had always astounded her. Always subverted the odds, saving her on more than one occasion.

  When I blocked the shaman’s killing bolt.

  When I landed the final blow on the mutated bandit…

  …When I crashed into her holding cell, eyes ablaze with icy fire.

  Somewhere deep down she had held out hope that I might win, that I might really save her yet again. But now… Now that she saw how outmatched I was, she felt like a fool. Like this was all her fault. Like if she had just accepted Elledor’s proposal, maybe I would’ve been spared this inevitable fate.

  She looked on in horror as Elledor’s continuous assault forced me further to the ground, my blade practically carrying my arm instead of the other way around, desperately deflecting his blows.

  I stumbled across the cobblestones while he walked forward with ease. His sword found my blade instead of my body, as if he were enjoying the torment.

  “Such a pain you were… meddling, turning Lyria against me. In the end, you're nothing. Just weak. Dependent on magic you can’t even fathom,” Elledor spat as he continued battering me. “Allow me to put you down like the dog you are—”

  Tenebrae’s voice echoed in my mind again.

  “Give in.”

  But I couldn’t… I couldn’t become a monster and admit my own weakness.

  I wouldn’t. Not in front of the party that believed in me.

  I reached for more of Lunae’s power, hoping to leap to the third-tier transformation under her influence instead…

  She refused me.

  “As you are now. My power will turn you to dust.”

  Beyond my struggle, Elledor’s eyes surged with white light. He raised his blade to the sky, primed for the final swing.

  “YUKON—!” Came Lyria’s cry, echoing through the night.

  His sword tore through the air, splitting the very molecules like a flash of unstoppable light. His blade made contact with my shoulder, and cut deep, opening me from shoulder to abdomen, cutting through muscle and bone all the same.

  I suppose I should have known. I wasn’t special. I was never chosen. I was just simply a passing thought in a grander story. My time, it seems, had come to an end, before I would even see my 21st summer. Life, forfeit to a being that had seen more than three hundred.

  Elledor stood above me, his eyes radiant with silver fire, as if the stars themselves had taken root behind them. His face was unreadable—not wrath, not triumph. Something colder.

  My eyes stared back at him, widened in disbelief, blood pooling in my mouth.

  “This was never a duel,” he reiterated, voice echoing through the hush that fell over his guards and my party. “This was an execution.”

  He raised his sword again.

  And something in me cracked.

  I saw them.

  Kaela—arms pinned behind her by a guard, struggling, shouting my name.

  Bront—frozen, fists clenched so tightly his knuckles had gone white.

  Selene—her lips moving in prayer or disbelief.

  Lyria—

  She had stepped forward.

  Eyes wide. Trembling. Her hand half-raised, as if reaching for me. As if she wanted to stop it.

  No magic. No words. Just a single step toward me—

  —and the horror dawning in her gaze.

  Lunae’s light faded from me. Slow, quiet, somber.

  I let my eyes drift shut. Maybe this was for the best. At least Lyria would be safe. At least…

  A vision flashed behind my eyes. Lyria, sitting alone beneath the pergola, face hidden in her hands, quietly sobbing. Then came the image of my father, and the face I imagined him making as he wrote me that return letter. The knowing smile he would’ve worn when I finally brought Lyria to meet him.

  …No—Not like this.

  I bit down hard, blood spilling from my mouth as I spoke.

  Elledor took pause, his blade raised.

  “...Fine… if I have to become a monster to defeat you… so be it.”

  “Tenebrae—”

  In the next instant, Tenebrae’s black flame consumed me, casting a shockwave from my now obscured body. Beneath that tornado of shadowy flames, two crimson orbs flashed into existence as my eyes snapped open.

  You didn’t really think I’d let it end like that, did you?

  Tenebrae seemed to cackle as I gave in to his power, a deep, snarling laugh that reverberated through my skull.

  The gaping wound in my chest began steaming shut, though a gruesome scar took its place. My limbs felt full of molten stone. The black flames raged around me as the transformation neared completion.

  Sparse tufts of black fur lined my arms, my jaw, and the back of my neck. My hair grew longer, draping barely over my crimson eyes. Claws like knives split from my fingertips. Fangs like daggers pierced my gums. My muscles rippled and tensed as they grew. My face contorted into a permanent snarl.

  Tenebrae’s true second-tier transformation.

  The guards recoiled in fear as the sheer negative energy of the transformation washed over them like crashing waves.

  Kaela covered her mouth in horror.

  Bront winced and his orcish instincts forced him back a step.

  Selene’s face went pale as death.

  Lyria stared—wide-eyed, shivering—as she fell to her knees.

  And Elledor… he looked on in disgust as the black flames cleared, leaving my body wrapped in a tight dark aura, eyes like glowing embers piercing his own.

  Elledor didn’t flinch.

  He simply lowered his blade—and pointed it at me.

  “So,” he muttered, voice like ice cracking over stone, “you really are a mongrel.”

  My breath came in slow, seething huffs, steam rising from my body.

  Maybe I was.

  But I wasn’t dead yet.

  And I wasn't done.

  Not until he bled.

  I surged forward.

  And the world—

  —exploded into black.