Candriela had not slept more than a handful of hours in the last seven days, and even those scattered fragments of rest had come without softness or peace, slipping over her like thin veils that tore the moment they touched her mind. She walked because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant letting the weight inside her settle. She feared that if it settled, if she allowed herself even a moment of stillness, something inside her would crack beyond repair.

  The Valval Priesthood had given her provisions for the journey: hardtack that tasted like old dust, salted roots that stung her tongue, dried slices of something fibrous and gray whose origin she did not care to guess. They had assured her it would keep her alive just long enough, as if survival beyond that should be of no concern. She ate only when her vision blurred at the edges. She drank from streams without checking whether they were clean, forcing down water that tasted of leaves and mud and metal, telling herself that poisoning was a mercy compared to the silence waiting inside her if she paused.

  Her mind looped through the same impossible question again and again, a circular path she could not step off.

  What was she supposed to do with Jacobo’s offer?

  The morning air hung heavy with dampness, saturated with the musk of wet earth after a night of silent drizzle. A faint mist hovered close to the ground, drifting around her legs and wrapping itself around the exposed roots of ancient pines, like pale ghosts reluctant to disperse even in daylight. Her boots, stiffened by layers of dust and dried mud, scraped the road in a hollow rhythm that echoed between the trunks, unsettling in its steadiness. Birds did not sing. Even insects seemed muted, as though the forest itself held its breath rather than draw attention to her presence.

  She followed the narrow trail between the trees, the pine needles whispering overhead in long, indistinct sighs, like voices murmuring behind a closed door.

  Her thoughts drifted back, inevitably, involuntarily, to the Sanctum’s lowest chamber.

  The memory rose slowly at first, like something emerging from deep water.

  Then all at once.

  Virea hung suspended in the stale air of the chamber, wrists bound by iron rings bolted into an arched frame, ankles chained to the floor, head slumped beneath a crown of cables that gleamed with sterilized metal. The walls gave off a faint pale glow of the Light, enough to illuminate but never enough to warm. Shadows stretched long and thin, clinging to the edges of the machinery as if afraid to touch the girl at its center. Tubes threaded into Virea’s arms, ribs, and the base of her skull, trembling slightly whenever a pulse of liquid traveled through them. Some brought fluid in; others carried fluid out. In one of them, the faintest shimmer of Light pulsated weakly, like the final heartbeat of a dying star.

  Candriela had never known fear until that moment, not the shallow fear of battle, not the sharp fear of pain, but the deep, annihilating kind that hollowed out the chest and left only a cold, echoing void behind.

  “Alive,” Jacobo had said behind her, his voice almost gentle, too gentle. “You see? I did not lie.”

  Candriela did not remember drawing her dagger. She remembered only the sudden heat in her chest, the constriction in her throat, the words bursting out of her like sparks from flint. Her voice had not sounded like her own; it had been raw, scraped, something primal.

  “I will cut your arms off,” she had said. “Then your legs. Then your eyes. Tell me how to free her.”

  Jacobo had laughed. A soft, almost tender sound that felt far more monstrous than a scream.

  “Even if you butchered me,” he said, “even if you flayed every priest in this Sanctum, you would still lose her. Do you know how delicate the interface is? One wrong pull of a tube, one wrong twist of a conduit, and her brain will melt inside her skull.”

  A thin shiver had run through Candriela’s body, an involuntary trembling she could neither stop nor hide.

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  “No.”

  She had taken a step toward him, raising the blade with an intention so clear it felt like instinct rather than choice. The Light flickered in the chamber, casting Jacobo’s face into alternating planes of softness and shadow, serenity and horror.

  He did not flinch.

  He did not even blink.

  “If hurting me would save her,” he said, “I would let you. Gladly. But it will not. And you know that.”

  Candriela had known. The truth had settled somewhere deep, somewhere she wished she could tear out and bury.

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  Jacobo stepped closer, lowering his voice until it seemed to vibrate with the hum of the machines rather than ride above it.

  “Your sister’s power is fading. She is tired. And the Light requires a new vessel. Bring me Gemma, and I will return Virea to you. Unharmed. Free. No more tubes. No more chains. I will keep my word.”

  “You expect me to help you?” Candriela spat, her breath trembling. “After this?”

  “I expect you to want your sister back,” Jacobo replied, “more than you want me dead.”

  Candriela had wanted to deny it. She had wanted to laugh, or scream, or stab him without hesitation.

  But she couldn’t.

  “I will not serve you,” she whispered, the words barely holding together.

  “You do not have to serve me,” Jacobo said with a small, infuriating shrug. “You merely have to deliver a girl who is lost anyway.”

  Candriela had lifted her blade, intending to slice his throat open and silence him forever.

  Jacobo only smiled, the expression calm and unbearably confident.

  “Do it,” he said. “But then Virea dies tonight.”

  Her hands had shaken. For the first time since childhood, tears had burned down her cheeks, hot, humiliating, unstoppable.

  Jacobo turned to a nearby priest and signaled with a tilt of his head. “Prepare supplies for her journey.”

  The memory burned like fever. Candriela blinked hard and forced her eyes forward.

  The trees began to thin. The hills widened into open slopes. And ahead of her rose thin columns of smoke, wavering and uncertain, the last remnants of something that had burned too fast.

  Preta.

  It should have been a relief.

  Instead, a slow, crawling dread rose in her throat, sharp as if it had claws.

  She increased her pace, ignoring the ache in her legs and the cuts across her arms that still had not healed from her fight in Bondrea. Her shoulder throbbed sharply every few steps, where a blade had grazed bone; the wound pulsed in time with her heartbeat. Her body begged for rest, but she refused it.

  Preta was wrong.

  Silent.

  Too silent.

  When she reached the crest of a low ridge, the devastation unfolded all at once, a grim tableau revealed beneath a washed-out sky.

  Several homes were reduced to blackened skeletons, roofs collapsed inward like ribs crushed beneath invisible weight. Market stalls lay overturned and burned; the goods of the vendors scattered and trampled until they became unrecognizable piles of soot. A section of the northern wall had collapsed outward, its stones strewn across the earth like giant, broken teeth. The air tasted of ash and old death, so thick she felt it coating her tongue.

  Candriela stopped walking.

  Stopped breathing.

  What happened here?

  A gust of wind pushed a charred scrap of cloth across the ground. Far away, a wooden beam creaked before snapping and falling. She forced herself to move again, each step kicking up clouds of soot that clung to her boots and calves as if trying to pull her down.

  Near the center of the ruined square, Lord Hirias stood with several soldiers clustered around him. His once-polished boots were gray with dust. His eyes were bloodshot, his expression hollowed out by exhaustion and terror. His cloak was stained with ash. He spoke in a low voice to a captain, though Candriela couldn’t hear the words over the faint crackle of cooling embers.

  She continued toward him.

  One soldier spotted her first. His face blanched. “My lord… someone is approaching!”

  Hirias turned.

  And when his gaze found Candriela, the color drained from his face entirely. His expression tightened, and the terror that surfaced was raw, unguarded, almost childlike.

  “Arrest her!” he shouted.

  Candriela barely had time to process the command before five soldiers were rushing her with spears leveled.

  “Wait!” she shouted, raising her hands instinctively, but they did not slow.

  She dodged the first thrust, seized the wooden shaft, and snapped it clean across her knee. Splinters flew into the air. She pivoted, slammed her elbow into the second soldier’s throat, then twisted out of reach of the third. A boot collided with her shin, sending a sharp bloom of pain up her leg.

  “Stop,” she growled, breath ragged, “I don’t want to...”

  Another soldier slashed at her. She moved a fraction too late.

  Steel slid into her shoulder.

  The force drove her to one knee. Air left her lungs in a hoarse cry. A second blade tore into her thigh. Her vision flickered at the edges, white and blinding. She dropped her dagger. Warm blood streamed down her leg, sinking into the soot.

  She tried to rise.

  Her body managed an inch, then collapsed again.

  A soldier lunged from behind, tackling her to the ground. Her face slammed into broken stone. Dust filled her mouth. A boot pressed between her shoulder blades, pinning her. Her injured arm was wrenched upward, grinding the wound against the grit.

  Candriela choked on a breath, her thoughts scattering like startled birds. She had survived battles, raids, ambushes.

  But this?

  This was different.

  Instantaneous. Merciless. Without meaning.

  She lifted her head through strands of sweat-damp hair. The world swayed in and out of focus.

  Lord Hirias stood in front of her, pale, trembling, his voice cracking when he spoke.

  “Why are you here? Do you want revenge? Do you want to kill me?”

  Candriela could barely form words. “I… don’t understand…”

  Pain surged in a cold wave from her shoulder down her ribs. The world tilted diagonally. Smoke and iron filled her nose. The sky overhead seemed to twist as if recoiling from her.

  “Keep her restrained!” Hirias shouted, flinching as though her voice had cut him. “She’s dangerous!”

  Candriela tried to speak again, but her throat closed around the words, leaving only shallow, frantic breaths.

  This wasn’t right.

  She had come for Gemma.

  She had come for answers.

  But everything blurred, slipped sideways, dimmed.

  She tasted blood.