The world dissolved into a smear of fire and panic. Kaelen was a beacon of impossible heroism in the center of the square, but I was in the periphery, the dark and dangerous edges where things skittered and hissed. The heat was a wall, pressing in from all sides, and the air was so thick with smoke it felt like I was drowning on dry land. My lungs burned with every ragged breath.

  “Left, Ms. Hawking!” Bartholomew’s voice was a sharp, clear command from the ground near my ankle. “Utilize the cover of that overturned merchant’s cart!”

  I didn’t argue. I scrambled, my leather boots slipping on cobblestones slick with something I refused to identify. I dove behind the splintered wood of the cart, pressing myself against its large, motionless wheel. My heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of my chest. Peeking through a gap in the planks, I saw one of the Pyre-cats sniffing the air where I’d just been. Its head, a mockery of a feline’s, swiveled on a neck of pure smoke. Its eyes were twin coals of hateful orange.

  My stolen broomstick felt even more pathetic now. I gripped it so hard my knuckles were white, as if sheer force of will could transmute it into Kaelen’s shimmering blade. My only contribution to this fight so far was an expert-level cower. I wouldn’t be listing ‘demon-infested arson investigation’ under core competencies on my resume any time soon.

  The Pyre-cat let out a low growl that sounded like grinding embers and bounded away, drawn by the louder, more dynamic chaos of Kaelen’s one-man stand. I could hear him shouting, not words, but pure, defiant challenges. The clang of his sword was the only music in this hellscape.

  “The conflagration spreads,” Bartholomew observed grimly. “And with it, their power. We must reach the Elder’s Hall with haste.”

  “Which one is it?” I rasped, my throat raw. “They all look pretty much the same right now: flammable.”

  “It is the singular structure that is decidedly not ablaze. It is the largest municipal structure, directly opposite the square.”

  I risked another look. Across the square, past the maelstrom of Kaelen’s battle, I could just make out a large, two-story building. It was made of dark timber and stone, looking far more robust than the surrounding wattle-and-daub homes. While embers rained down on its slate roof, it hadn’t yet caught fire. A small mercy. The problem was the twenty yards of open, demon-littered ground between us and it.

  “Okay, new plan,” I whispered. “We wait for Kaelen to kill everything, then we stroll over.”

  “A fallacious stratagem,” Bartholomew countered immediately. “His objective is to draw their attention, not to achieve total annihilation. The longer we tarry, the greater the chance a stray fiend will observe our skulking. We must move now, while the nexus of the conflict holds their gaze.”

  He was right, of course. The talking cat was always infuriatingly right.

  “Fine. Stick to the shadows. Try not to be flammable. Got it.”

  We moved in short, frantic bursts. From the cart to a horse trough, its water steaming from a fallen brand. Then into the deep shadow of an alley that stank of refuse and burning pitch. A Pyre-cat skittered past the alley’s mouth, its claws making scratching sounds on the stone, and I flattened myself against the wall, holding my breath until my lungs screamed. Bartholomew was a silent, comforting presence against my ankle. He was either completely unafraid or just better at hiding it.

  Finally, we were there, pressed against the cold stone foundation of the Elder’s Hall. The front was impassable. A heavy oak door, bound with iron, was clearly barred from the inside. The tall, narrow windows on the ground floor were protected by thick wooden shutters, bolted tight. I circled the building, but the story was the same on all sides. It was a fortress, designed to keep trouble out. Unfortunately, it was doing a great job of keeping us out, too.

  “It’s locked up tight,” I hissed, running a hand along the unyielding wood of the door. “Did anyone tell the village elders we were coming?”

  “A raven was dispatched,” Bartholomew murmured, jumping along what I thought were impossibly narrow ledges, even for a cat. “It seems their faith in avian messengers is secondary to their faith in carpentry.” He landed lightly on the slate roof and glanced around. “Ah. There.”

  I followed his line of sight. High up, nestled under the peak of a side gable, was a small, dark rectangle—a ventilation slit, maybe, screened with iron mesh. It couldn’t have been more than a foot or two wide.

  “You want me to climb that?” I asked, my voice cracking with disbelief. “I get winded walking up a flight of stairs.”

  “Your simian ancestry may prove advantageous,” he said, entirely deadpan. “Observe the stonework. Ample handholds for one of your dexterity.”

  The stonework was rough-hewn and uneven, which was both a blessing and a curse. It offered purchase, but it was also crumbling in places. To get to it, I first had to get onto the low, sloping roof of an attached woodshed. A stack of rain barrels stood nearby, looking suspiciously unsteady.

  “This is insane,” I muttered, testing the nearest barrel with my foot. It wobbled. “Completely, certifiably, ‘why-am-I-listening-to-a-cat’ insane.”

  “Celerity is of the essence, Ms. Hawking. The knight’s valiant display is a finite resource.”

  With a groan, I discarded my useless broom-handle-of-doom and started to climb. The barrels shifted under my weight, and for one heart-stopping moment, I thought I was going to bring the whole stack crashing down, creating a Paige-and-barrel-based dinner bell for every Pyre-cat in Glenhaven. But they held. I scrambled onto the woodshed’s roof, tiles scraping under my boots.

  From here, the rest of the climb was a vertical nightmare of grabbing onto stone ledges that felt slick with soot and praying they wouldn’t break off. Bartholomew, naturally, walked gracefully on the slate roof, completely unperturbed by my immediate peril. He reached the gable and sat, tail wrapped neatly around his paws, looking down at me with an expression of faint impatience. Show-off.

  My fingers were raw and my arms shaking by the time I hauled myself onto the narrow ledge beside him. The vent was right there, its mesh rusted and flimsy. Behind me, the town was an artist’s rendering of hell. Kaelen was still fighting, a silver nova against a tide of black fire, but he was slowing. Argent, his great warhorse, was bleeding from a dozen fiery wounds.

  “No time for sightseeing,” Bartholomew prodded gently.

  I ripped the mesh screen from its rotten frame. It came away with a screech of protesting metal. The opening was even smaller than it looked from the ground. It was a black, dusty maw that smelled of stale air and spiders.

  “I’m not going to fit.”

  “You are more malleable than you perceive,” he assured me. “Head and shoulders first. The rest will follow.”

  Gritting my teeth, I shoved my head and one shoulder into the opening. It was a tight squeeze. Splinters dug into my cheek. For a terrifying second, I was stuck, half in and half out, a perfect, dangling target. I pushed harder, scraping my ribs against the rough-hewn timber. My leather armor caught, then, with a sickening tear, ripped free. I tumbled through, landing in a heap of limbs and curses on a dusty wooden floor.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I lay there for a moment, just breathing in the blessedly cool, still air of the attic. A second later, Bartholomew landed silently beside me, as graceful as a falling leaf. The sounds of the battle outside were muffled now, a distant, frantic heartbeat.

  We were in. The attic was a cavern of darkness, filled with the ghostly shapes of stored furniture and forgotten things. A single beam of light, cutting through a grimy window at the far end, illuminated a thick blanket of dust motes dancing in the air.

  “See?” Bartholomew said, a hint of smugness in his tone. “A most elegant infiltration.”

  I pushed myself into a sitting position, wincing as I pulled a two-inch splinter from my palm.

  “Yeah,” I wheezed, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Elegant.” I brushed cobwebs from my hair, my fingers coming away sticky with grime.

  “So this is the Elder Hall. Smells like my great-aunt’s basement.”

  “It is a place of history,” Bartholomew corrected, delicately shaking a puff of dust from one pristine paw. “Centuries of village records, genealogies, and, regrettably, mildew are stored here.” He gestured with his nose toward a dark corner where a rickety wooden ladder descended into the gloom below. “Our destination lies that way. Do try to make less noise than a rampaging dragon this time.”

  “No promises,” I muttered, pulling myself to my feet. My side throbbed where the splintered wood had scraped me raw. My leather armor now had a custom-made ventilation slit along the ribs. My inventory screen probably just flashed a durability warning. “After you, your majesty.”

  Bartholomew gave me a look of pure, unadulterated feline disdain before trotting to the opening. He didn’t so much climb as pour himself down the rungs, a silent waterfall of gray fur. I followed, my boots clunking on each step with what felt like cannon-fire reports. The air grew cooler, but thicker, carrying a new scent beneath the dust and decay—something metallic and sharp.

  The ladder ended on a narrow upper gallery that overlooked the main hall. The interior design, if you could call it that, was bizarre. Instead of solid walls separating the space, there were tall, ornate screens of dark wood, carved into an intricate lattice pattern. It was like standing inside a giant, dusty confessional. We were hidden, but we could see fragmented glimpses of the large room below.

  Muffled through the floorboards, the clash of steel and demonic shrieks from outside were a constant, grim reminder that Kaelen was buying us this time with his own blood. We had to make it count. I crept along the gallery, peering through the diamond-shaped holes in the lattice. My view was a flickering mosaic of shadow and a strange, pulsating orange light emanating from the center of the hall.

  And then there was the sound. A low, guttural chanting, two voices woven together in a discordant drone. It wasn’t a language I recognized, but the intent was universal. It was the sound of power being gathered, of something sacred being twisted into a profane shape.

  “They are well into the second phase,” Bartholomew whispered from beside my ankle, his voice stripped of its usual pomposity. There was a cold urgency in it now that sent a fresh chill down my spine. “We have precious little time.”

  We reached the end of the gallery, where a set of stairs descended. Crouching low, I peered through the final lattice screen, and the fragmented picture snapped into a whole, horrifying panorama.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  The main hall was a large, hexagonal chamber with a high, vaulted ceiling. In the center of the stone floor, a complex diagram of intersecting lines and jagged sigils burned with an inner, fiery light. It wasn’t painted on; the very stone glowed as if lit from a furnace deep within the earth.

  Kneeling on opposite sides of the circle were two figures in deep crimson robes, their faces hidden by the shadows of their cowls. Firebrand Cultists. Their hands were outstretched, palms down, as they chanted the dissonant prayer. The air around them shimmered with heat.

  But it was the thing in the center of the circle that made my stomach revolt.

  It was a man’s body. Or what was left of it. He was naked, his skin flayed from muscle and bone, and stretched parchment-tight over the wooden floor. The edges were nailed to the floor in a grotesque imitation of a many-pointed star. And he was headless. The stump of his neck was a cauterized, blackened ruin. From that ruin, and from every other bit of damaged flesh—which was all of it—thin tendrils of black smoke rose, coiling and twisting as they were drawn toward the center of the circle. They condensed there into a shimmering, unstable sphere of darkness the size of a fist. With every chant from the cultists, the sphere pulsed, and the corpse twitched, its limbs jerking in a ghastly parody of life.

  I swallowed hard, the taste of bile rising in my throat. This wasn’t some high-res rendering in a video game; it was visceral and real. The smell of burnt meat was overpowering now. What kind of message were they trying to send? We’re evil and have no respect for public nudity ordinances? My brain, in a desperate attempt at self-preservation, latched onto the absurd.

  “Okay, Barty,” I whispered, my voice tight. “What the ever-loving hell is that? Some kind of demonic battery charger?”

  “Worse,” he breathed, his fur standing on end. “That is not merely a corpse. It was likely a man of some significance—a town elder, a magistrate. This is a Ritual of Unmaking. They are not summoning a creature; they are forging a key. They are rendering his soul, his authority, and his connection to this land into a fulcrum to pry open a gate for something far more substantial.”

  “A gate for who? The Shadow Lord?”

  “More likely one of his lieutenants. The Pyre-cats outside are but the vanguard, a noisy distraction to keep the village occupied while the true work is done.”

  As he spoke, the chanting intensified. The cultists raised their heads in unison, and the sickly orange light from the circle illuminated their chins. They were smiling. The sphere of dark energy above the corpse began to spin, faster and faster, emitting a low hum that vibrated through the floorboards and up into my teeth. The smoke from the body was being consumed at an alarming rate. The ritual was nearing its climax.

  Panic began to set in, cold and sharp. Ser Kaelen was out there fighting a losing battle against a distraction, and we were in here watching the main event with no plan. I had Rusty at my belt and a handful of snarky comments. Against whatever that ritual was about to unleash, I might as well have been armed with a wet noodle.

  “What do we do?” I hissed, my eyes darting around the room, searching for anything—a weapon, an escape route, a fire extinguisher.

  Bartholomew didn’t answer immediately. His emerald eyes were fixed on the scene below, analyzing it with an unnerving calm.

  “The ritual requires absolute concentration and a precise flow of energy between the two casters. That flow is anchored by the glyphs they kneel upon. If the connection is broken, even for a moment, the matrix will destabilize.”

  “So, we just… run in there and kick one of them?” I asked, knowing how stupid it sounded the moment it left my lips.

  “A suicidal notion,” he confirmed dryly. “The circle itself is a ward of immense power. Stepping into it would immolate you instantly. We must disrupt them from a distance. It is unlikely that they would notice our passage, however.”

  My gaze fell upon a heavy, iron fire poker resting on a stone hearth not ten feet from the base of the stairs. It wasn’t much, but it was heavy, and it was throwable. It was a terrible plan. A one-in-a-million shot that would probably get us both vaporized.

  It was the only plan we had.

  The hum from the sphere deepened into a threatening growl. The light in the room flared, casting our hiding spot in stark relief. One of the cultists shifted, his cowled head turning slightly, as if he’d sensed a change in the air.

  There was no more time.

  “The time for observation has concluded, Paige Hawking,” Bartholomew said, his voice a low hiss that was almost lost in the ritual’s drone. “The time for intervention is now.”