Lyria’s blood boiled.

  The Fellwoods were no longer simply a physical threat. The Fell were indeed dangerous beyond anything natural, but it was more than that. The woods themselves were draining. Straining everyone's resolve, emotional endurance, and will to continue into the endless dark.

  Lyria, perhaps, felt this most keenly.

  For weeks, she had been stumbling in the shadows of her own doubts. Every mistake was fresh in her mind: the suspicion she’d cast on Yukon… the fear she’d tried to mask… Not taking a stand against Prince Elledor… Syllico slipping through her fingers… Ron.

  Meanwhile, Yukon—the quiet newcomer—was wrestling with gods and winning.

  What had she done but falter?

  No more.

  Bront shouted something—her name, probably—but his voice sounded distant, stretched thin by time. He was moving toward her, shield rising, trying to protect her.

  As if she needed protection.

  Lyria inhaled, steady and cold.

  The Night Bear thundered forward, its claws carving trenches into the earth, its Fell-twisted muscles swelling with each pounding step.

  Her hand flicked upward—staff materializing in a snap of blue starlight.

  Words tore from her throat, radiant and furious:

  “AZIER—IGNITE!”

  A pillar of searing azure flame crashed onto the beast with such force the ground shook. The Night Bear roared, a deafening, bone-deep sound, its fur scorching, vines sizzling into smoke.

  Bront froze mid-lunge, eyes wide.

  Lyria lowered her staff, arcane fire swirling like a storm around her boots, her expression hard as cut diamond.

  “Out of my way,” she muttered.

  The beast, impossibly resilient, heaved upright—eyes glowing like dying embers.

  Good.

  She needed some way to vent.

  Lyria pointed her staff again, her lavender eyes blazing, fury sharpening into a single burning instinct:

  Move forward.

  Find them.

  Save them.

  Don’t fail again.

  But beneath the rage, something worse coiled.

  Fear.

  She was scared. Scared of her own powerlessness, and scared to lose her friends.

  She didn’t know if it was truly her fault or not, but Ron fell while putting his faith in her… while awestruck by her power.

  “What power…?” she hissed under her breath.

  In her hesitation, the beast began moving once more, swiping a heavy paw toward her.

  Bront was there, his shield buckling under the blow, his boots carving into the damp ground, but he was unrelenting. With a growl of his own he forced the creature back, and in the next instant, Lyria stepped past him, eyes alight.

  She took aim once more.

  Bolts of azure flame hammered the beast.

  Once, twice—again—again—again—

  Her strikes became frantic, desperate. She wasn’t fighting the bear anymore. She was fighting herself.

  “Die— Die— DIE!”

  Flames scorched the surrounding bark; sap hissed and split like boiling blood.

  Her magic flared bright enough to burn afterimages into Bront’s sight. When the flames vanished, the Night Bear was nothing but smoldering ash.

  She backed away slowly…

  A large hand stopped her, gripping her trembling shoulder.

  She spun—staff swinging—breath ragged like a cornered animal.

  Bront’s eyes met hers. Stern. Steady. Pleading.

  “Killing that thing again and again won’t do you any good,” he rumbled, calm as stone.

  The fight drained from her all at once. Her hands fell.

  She hesitated, looking much smaller now than she had just a moment ago.

  “They… They’re okay… right?” she whispered. “We’re all going to make it out of this… aren’t we?”

  Silence.

  Bront crouched to meet her gaze; the soldier behind them politely looked away.

  “You want the truth?” he asked softly.

  She winced, bracing for doom.

  “Please…”

  Bront stood again, staring into the blackened forest.

  “The Fellwood…” he said, voice solemn—

  Then he grinned, small tusks showing.

  “Never had a chance. Not after picking a fight with us… and your possessed boyfriend.”

  Heat flooded Lyria’s face.

  “He—he’s not my—!”

  He lifted his hand, smirking.

  “Save it. But when we finish this—maybe just tell him. Yeah?”

  Lyria blinked, chest rising and falling with shaky breaths, her eyes drifting to the scorched crater she’d created.

  She was powerful.

  Not perfect. But powerful enough to stand beside them. Beside him.

  No more hesitation. No more doubt.

  She inhaled Fellwood air—damp, rancid, alive with corruption—and set her jaw.

  Her voice was steady, resolute:

  “Let’s go. Our friends need us.”

  She strode ahead, blue light gathering at her heels.

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  Bront grinned wider and followed.

  Lyria didn’t look back at the ashes.

  She was done looking back at all.

  Call it a bad trait born from her long lived heritage.

  But no more.

  Now, there was only forward.

  …And as they moved on…

  Something deep within the Fellwoods smiled.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  “You’re sure this is the way…?” Darron whispered, head on a swivel as we crept through the black trees.

  I shrugged. “He seems pretty sure,” I said, motioning ahead to Tenebrae.

  “What even is that thing…?” Darron muttered.

  I didn’t respond.

  As we moved, I couldn’t help but find the quiet unsettling. Since our encounter with August, we hadn’t had any more trouble, not even wayward vines or watchers. A small unease coiled in my gut. It felt like the Fellwood was pooling its energy, preparing.

  We crested a small hill and Tenebrae went rigid, hackles raising, snout lowering.

  I came up beside him, peering through the twisted woods.

  There, straight ahead, the ruins stood.

  We’d finally made it.

  Bigger than I’d imagined, they consisted of crumbling walls, battlements and fallen towers. Once, this must have been a small fortress or perhaps the home of an ancient civilization. At its center stood a stepped pyramidal structure. I craned my neck to look up, and there, splitting the sky, was a massive stream of red and green. Fell energy, coiling together, emanating from somewhere far below.

  Darron crouched beside me. “No good… the whole place is guarded.”

  I let my eyes fall back down, there, atop crumbling walls and broken spires stood countless husks, unfortunate adventurers caught and consumed… warped into warriors to be used by the Fell forces. Along with them were a handful of tall, black robed figures, glimpses of their red faces promised them to be Fell sorcerers.

  I looked again to Tenebrae, saw the restlessness in his posture, and decided to dismiss him for now.

  “Tenebrae… return.”

  With a quiet glance, his form began swirling like black smoke, coiling back into the mark on my chest.

  Darron watched but said nothing.

  I liked that about him.

  “Got any ideas…?”

  He stared a bit longer at the ruins, eyes darting, likely mapping the visible enemies.

  “Trail the perimeter, hope to run into the others… If anyone else is alive that is,” he whispered back, already moving away from the treeline.

  I gave a nod, took one last look, and followed him.

  We moved fast but quiet, circling the ruined fortress at a wide arc. The trees here were skeletal, stripped of leaves, as if the Fell had devoured even the idea of color. Darron kept low, eyes sharp, but my attention kept drifting back toward the ruins—toward the way the red-green stream bent unnaturally, as if aware of us.

  A faint shimmer tugged at the corner of my vision.

  I froze.

  “Yukon?” Darron hissed.

  I didn’t answer.

  Something glowed through the dim fog and bramble—soft, pale, like moonlight caught in mist. My pulse stuttered. I stepped toward it without thinking, brushing aside a branch.

  The fog parted just enough.

  And I saw her in the distance.

  Lyria.

  On her knees.

  Her hair clung to her face, plastered by sweat. Fell corruption pulsed in jagged black veins across her arms and neck, crawling like serpents beneath her skin. Her eyes were unfocused, her breaths sharp and shallow.

  And standing over her—Murasa.

  Hammer raised.

  His expression carved from stone.

  Around him stood Haizen with his twinblade drawn, Celeste with her staff shimmering, Barton muttering a prayer under his breath.

  The Knight’s of Golden Light.

  Formed in a loose execution circle.

  “No…” The word left me before I understood I’d spoken.

  My heartbeat thundered—yet sounded distant, muffled, as if underwater. A cold, crystalline pressure began coiling up my spine—Lunae’s power answering something deep in my chest.

  Darron reached for my arm. “Yukon—? What is it? What do you—”

  But the world snapped sideways.

  In the blink between heartbeats, Lunae’s energy swallowed me whole.

  The forest blurred—branches streaking like silver comets—and then the world slammed back into place around me.

  I was there.

  Right behind Murasa.

  His hammer had fallen to his side.

  Darron was somewhere far behind, cursing under his breath, not even close to catching up.

  My chest rose and fell in shallow, sharp bursts. The cold inside me intensified, Lunae’s magic coiling like frostbitten lightning along my arms. The ground beneath my boots shimmered with a thin layer of rime.

  But then—

  A flicker.

  At the other edge of the partial clearing, I spotted Selene and Kaela sitting with a cluster of soldiers and adventurers. Jango and his shieldbearer. Other wounded fighters huddled near them.

  They were far from Murasa. Unaware. Calm.

  My breath hitched. Icy mist coiling from a snarl I couldn’t even feel.

  I turned sharply toward where Lyria had been kneeling—

  She wasn’t quite there.

  Just broken stones.

  A patch of dried moss.

  My vision blurred at the edges. A cold sweat crawled down my back.

  Where—

  Movement.

  Past Murasa.

  Something slumped against a ruined stump.

  Lyria.

  Blood soaked her tunic, spreading from a wound just below her ribs. Her eyes were vacant. Her skin pale. A thin line of crimson dripped from the corner of her mouth.

  She wasn’t breathing.

  My throat closed.

  Murasa turned, suddenly sensing my presence, his eyes widened in complete shock and dread.

  Don’t look at me like that…

  His voice reached me—low, grim. He didn’t deny it. Didn’t even try to explain.

  He simply said:

  “Yukon… Don’t—don’t do this…”

  My world broke.

  Something tore open in my chest—raw, jagged, blistering.

  The cold inside me snapped like a spine.

  Rage flooded in.

  Not like before. Not like when I fought Elledor—or when Ron died…

  This was different.

  Hot. Blinding. Uncontrollable.

  My hands shook violently; Lunae’s frost steamed into flame, as Tenebrae’s darkness washed over her silver blaze. An inferno rolling out over each limb like oil, coating my entire body.

  Tenebrae’s pulse throbbed in my ribs, dark, hungry, radiating malice.

  Kaela and Selene had felt this before, and it brought them both to their feet—a cold sweat forming as they caught sight of my arrival, and form…

  They didn’t see…? Didn’t even know?

  They’d just sat there as though nothing was wrong…

  But Lyria—

  Lyria was—

  Something inside me screamed without sound.

  Murasa reluctantly raised his hammer, his scale lined face stuck between something like guilt and resignation.

  He didn’t see grief in my eyes.

  He saw murder.

  Murasa opened his mouth to speak once more—

  But Haizen moved first—sensing his leader's hesitation, knowing his soft spot for me—he flashed in impossibly fast. His twinblade screamed down, tearing through the air faster than it could register, leaving behind shockwaves as the steel cut through the surrounding atmosphere.

  I caught it—my hand moving on its own.

  The ground fractured around me from the sheer force, and the debris knocked loose, rose, instead of settling back. The pitch blackness surrounding me distorted the very gravity of the world.

  Crimson eyes snapped open, peering into the narrow slits in Haizen’s helm. My fingers, now clawed, pierced four holes right through his blade.

  Before he could react I let out a roar so piercing, so utterly terrifying, the very air around me recoiled in shockwaves. Tenebrae’s black energy flared around my form, streaked with lines of deep crimson like red lightning amidst a black stormcloud.

  The Knight’s of Golden Light were forced to act.

  Murasa stepped in, slamming Haizen clear of my volatile energy, his radiant aura shining against my darkness, wings of golden light extending from his back as he channeled as much power as he could manage.

  Teal and gold tentacles of arcane light wrapped around me, restraining each limb. Just behind me, a spectral octopus floated, channeled by Celeste, her brows creased with the effort, hands trembling in fear at my display.

  Barton chanted prayers I couldn’t comprehend, barriers of golden light, intricate sigils forming around his companions.

  None of it mattered to me.

  I was beyond reason.

  Beyond worry.

  In that moment of all consuming grief, I didn’t care if the entire world burned.

  I’d failed again.

  I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save anybody.