Sirens wailed somewhere below the palace.
"Three forts have been hit," Prom said. His voice was tight, like he was forcing it to stay level. "We can't hold them at bay, Ela. Revolts are breaking out all over the capital. We can't stay here. It's just a matter of time."
"We can still flee," Ela insisted. "The Imperial Guard can manage. They have the evac routes prepared. The Goshawks are ready."
"And flee to where?" Prom shot back. "Even the Council's compromised. There isn't anyone above a certain clearance level who hasn't been touched. Bunkers. Safehouses. All of it. Burned."
He swallowed once, then said it anyway.
"He needs to go, Ela. This is the only way."
Ela shook her head hard, like she could shake the words out of the air. "He's just a boy, Prom. Will he even remember us if he goes?"
Prom hesitated.
"The data isn't clear," he admitted, and the admission cost him.
"He's five," Ela whispered, voice breaking. "Maybe—maybe we can hold on. Just long enough—"
"Hold on?" Prom's jaw clenched. "He'll die here. They'll hunt him down. They'll know what he is the moment they get close. His responsibility is the continuation of the line, and the protection of the Empire."
"He's your son!" Ela snapped. "Your son. You shouldn't even be thinking about that cursed line like it's a duty roster."
Prom's eyes flicked away, then back. "From the moment he was born, his fate was decided. Just like mine. Like my father's. And my father's father."
Ela's breath hitched. "We don't even know if it will work correctly."
"We know it works," Prom said. "We don't know if he'll be normal when he gets there. We aren't sure yet." Another siren pulse rolled through the palace. He kept talking anyway. "It's hard when the test data only comes from one family. The branch families don't have strong resonance. The failures don't map clean."
Ela stared at him, eyes wet. "Will he come back… to us?"
"If we take control of the situation," Prom said slowly, "perhaps."
"And if we don't?"
"Then he comes back after."
"When?"
Prom's mouth tightened. "We haven't fully mapped it. Time doesn't correspond one-to-one. The thread is… tangled. It loops. We don't know how many times."
Ela's voice dropped into something small and frightened. "It's going to be dangerous."
Prom nodded once. "It is."
"And we don't even know if he can come back as… himself," Ela said, like the words tasted wrong.
"We tested the reconstruction," Prom said. "It will work. But only under certain conditions."
Ela took a step toward him, shaking. "We can't leave him here, Prom. We can't leave him in your machine. And you said—if we take control—"
"Let's not kid ourselves," Prom cut in. "The numbers are grim. They won't stop until they kill everyone remotely related to us. Allies are enemies. Enemies are enemies. Everyone is saving themselves."
Ela's face twisted. "To hell with this damned Empire!"
"Ela," Prom said, voice turning hard, "you forget that I am the Emperor, and you are the Empress."
Then his voice dropped.
"This is for him too. We won't see him again. But he'll live."
"But he won't know our faces," Ela whispered.
Prom's throat worked. "We don't know that."
He looked past her, like he could already see the path he hated.
"But we left him enough," he said. "For when he comes back."
"My only wish is that he at least remembers that I love him—that we love him," Ela sobbed.
"That's not important," Prom said, trying to look strong, but sadness stayed in his eyes. "What's important is that he comes back."
***
Ezra awoke disoriented.
He vaguely recalled the dreams he'd had—memories, all of them, except for the last one. The last one had been only voices.
Odd.
Ezra sat up.
His mind was buzzing, so he pushed mana to his ears first.
Roars. Commands. Shouted orders, scattered across the grounds.
"Lord Ezra," Evan said. "You're awake. Easy."
"What's happening? Why is there fighting outside?"
"I stumbled on Duke Terros's dealings," Evan said. "He's been doing business with the Shadow Walkers."
"What?"
"They were using magic cores for the deal," Evan said. "That's treason."
Figures, Ezra thought. That's basically selling uranium to terrorists.
"We think the bandit attack is Terros's forces combined with the Shadow Walkers," Evan continued. "They don't want the information to get out. They saw me go back to the Flameheart Tavern."
Treason with a paper trail. No wonder they want the witness dead.
"You should rest more, Lord Ezra," Evan said. "We'll take care of it."
"Aye, m'lord," Galwell said. "The Blackfyre Guard can handle this."
"Did you send a hawk to Bren?" Ezra asked.
"The first one—the one that says you're here—yes," Evan said. "I'm not sure about the second."
"If they're calling this a bandit raid," Ezra said, "then why aren't the nobles coming out to repel it? I thought this place was full of them."
"We're not sure, milord," Evan said. "The bells rang, but barely an hour has passed. And they hit some of the bell towers. We don't hear the others."
"So they want it quiet," Ezra said.
Evan nodded. "They silenced the alarms so the nobles won't notice until after they kill the witness. They think they can finish before it spreads."
Ezra's eyes flicked to Galwell. "Galwell—what happened? Why are you bandaged?"
"An arrow got me, m'lord," Galwell said. "Bad bargain. I didn't see it fly. Roof line was black as pitch."
Ezra exhaled once. "Then we need a read on the situation outside."
"Help me up, Evan. Let's go out."
"You still haven't fully recovered your mana," Evan said.
"It's fine. I'll manage," Ezra said.
***
Rycharde felt sweat running down inside his gambeson. It made the leather straps slippery. His breathing was controlled, but his arms were starting to drag on recovery.
He'd killed plenty of men in his life—bandit captains, deserters, border trash. He knew fatigue.
This was different. This was watching a line get dissolved by a problem you didn't have a clean answer for.
Orst's dive had done that to them.
He'd shown himself once—like a challenge—and then vanished under the street. After that, nobody could relax. Men kept looking at the ground the way you looked at a roofline when arrows were coming.
Rycharde had fought earth mages before. Bandit nobles with private arms. They were always annoying. Always slippery.
Orst wasn't annoying.
Orst was using the right tactics. He wasn't pushing into the light where they could mob him. He was diving, coming up at angles, cracking lamps with [Stone Bullet], and splitting formations with timed breaches.
Unless you were a viscount yourself—or you had enough firepower to erase the street—you fought him on his terms.
And his terms were simple: you get tired first.
The pressure shifted again.
Shadow Walkers pressed. Bandits pressed. And every few breaths an unseen [Stone Bullet] cracked a gemlamp and made the square a little darker.
"We need to regroup and get into formation," Rycharde told Evered, forcing the words out like a command instead of a complaint.
Evered's jaw tightened. He didn't like it either, but he nodded.
Rycharde lifted his voice.
"Men—defensive line! Backs to the wall. Break from your individual skirmishes!"
Half the men peeled back immediately, hungry for something ordered. They moved into place with shields up, trying to make an anchor out of stone and proximity.
The rest couldn't disengage. Too many hands on them. Too many knives. Too much shadow in the gaps.
Evered's breath came out rough. "I wish those nobles would help," he said, meaning the nobles holed up elsewhere in Anticourt—present, armed, and treating this like someone else's problem. "It'd be great if they could."
Rycharde didn't look away from the lane. "We can make them," he muttered, "but it reveals Evan and Lord Ezra. More dangerous than helpful."
Sweat dripped off his brow. He wiped it with the back of his gauntlet and immediately regretted wasting the motion.
The line they'd formed wasn't good. Not with low light and shadow pressure. It was a stopgap.
Deimos and Phobos held their section with grim consistency—whips snapping, denying the shadow easy grips. The Blackfyre Guard fought well too.
But even disciplined men got worn down when the ground beneath them could kill them.
Then the ground did.
A huge mass bolted up through the street and smashed into their line like it had been thrown.
The street erupted. Stone chunks and dust hit faces and visor slits. Men staggered. Then the figure landed—fist clenched—and punched through a soldier's helmet.
The sound was wrong. Too dense.
Orst used the collapsing body as an anchor. He twisted and spun, kicking hard enough that men flew sideways into each other. Shields went everywhere. The wall split in two, and bandits surged through the gap with a cheer that sounded too eager.
Rycharde started shouting commands again—sharp, basic, the only kind you could hear in chaos.
"Close the gap! Don't chase! Hold the light!"
Orst stood up slowly, as if he had all the time in the world.
Earthen armor warped around his plate.
He started toward the administrative building—the hall where the gemlamps still burned brightest. He wasn't rushing. He was moving like he already knew where the fight would end.
An arrow snapped out from the entrance.
Fast. Dark shaft. Low arc.
Orst didn't notice immediately—then his eyes flicked, and he dodged his head just in time.
The arrow brushed his cheek.
Orst stopped.
At the entrance, Evan and Galwell stood side by side—Galwell pale but upright, his bandage darkening. And between them, at knee height, stood a toddler.
Ezra.
Violet eyes locked on Orst with a focus that didn't match his body.
Ezra didn't waste the moment.
"Rycharde," he called, "gather the archers. Put them on the roof. Oswyn—Dynham—gather the dislodged magic crystals and bring them up with the archers. It prevents ambush from the Shadow Walkers. Other knights stay here. You need to battle this brute."
The Anticourt Guard stared.
Not at Orst. At the toddler giving orders like a captain.
Their confusion was immediate and messy. A few looked between Ezra and Evan, trying to figure out who the child was—and why these elite knights were listening.
Rycharde didn't hesitate.
"Archers to the rooftop!" he shouted.
The Anticourt guards hesitated, then obeyed.
Oswyn and Dynham moved immediately, snatching fallen crystals from broken mounts and shattered posts—bright cores that had fed the lamps. They carried them like bombs.
Ezra watched the field. Evan had briefed him on Shadow Walkers, but Ezra wanted to see.
The moment the fight came into view, he started sorting it.
From the Shadow Walkers to Orst, his eyes swept the lane.
"That brute is burying himself underground and traversing it," Ezra said. "He uses it to hide, then strike. We shouldn't spread out. We know their core objective. It's not to raze the town or plunder it. If we thin the line, it breaks."
Evan nodded.
"I have an idea for the brute," Ezra said. Rycharde was close enough to hear him.
"And for the Shadow Walkers," Ezra continued, "based on what we've seen and what the Demon Hunters told us, I think I have it."
They're manipulating light. Photons. Probably expelling them outward or pulling them inward—either way, they create an area of minimal lighting. But that comes with constraints. Ezra thought.
He glanced at the nearest gemlamp.
"They're removing light from the environment but they can't remove too much. If they do, they blind themselves too. So they have to keep enough for their own eyes while starving everyone else. That's why night helps them. It's easier to subtract from darkness than from a bright environment."
Some of the men didn't understand the details, but they understood the point: the shadow was a spell, and it had limits.
"And the brute," Ezra said, voice flat, "is relying on terrain and fear. If the street stays a death trap, he'll keep using it. So we make the street something he can't use."
He looked at Galwell.
"Do they have oil, tar, or pitch here?" Ezra asked. "I want a lot. If we coat the ground, he won't want to dive. And if he does, he risks getting trapped in a burning seam."
Galwell blinked, then nodded quickly. "I think they do, sire. Cauldrons too. They use it for sealing beams and wagons."
"Good," Ezra said. "Gather as much as you can. Get cauldrons to the front."
Then he pointed at Evan.
"Evan," Ezra said, "scout the surrounding rooftops. See if there are Shadow Walkers nearby. Bring a torch."
Evan's eyes narrowed, already tracking angles and lines above. "Understood."
Ezra's voice stayed calm.
"Evan. Galwell. We are going to retaliate."