"—the smoke, where's it coming from—"
"—screaming, did you hear—"
Brannick shoved past us, sword already drawn. "Move! Everyone move!"
We ran.
The tunnel to the surface felt longer than it ever had, the smoke thickening with every step, stinging my eyes, coating my lips. By the time we burst out into the night air, I was coughing so hard I could barely see.
My boot came down wrong—loss of traction on the wet stone—and I caught myself against the tunnel mouth. Beneath me, the stampede had churned the crack where stone met soil to mud. The little purple-blue wildflower that had been growing there—the one I'd been stepping over for weeks without letting myself think about why—was gone. Ground into the dirt under thirty pairs of panicked boots. I didn't stop. Couldn't. But my eyessnagged on the smear of it, and something in my chest flinched harder than it should have for a wildflower in a crack.
The smoke thinned as the last of the rebels shoved past me, and the horizon opened up.
The neighboring settlement that we passed on supply runs, with the market square and the children chasing each other between stalls—was burning.
Flames roared into the black sky, so bright they turned night into a hellish orange dawn. Buildings collapsed inward, sending up showers of sparks. And the screams—they were fading now, fewer and fewer, each silence worse than the sound that preceded it.
Then the screaming stopped, and it made the destruction more visible. Smoke billowed thick, carrying the stench of charred flesh. The buildings that had stood yesterday were now skeletal frames, glowing orange at their bones. A cart lay overturned in the square, its contents—vegetables, bread, someone's livelihood—scattered and burning. Bodies. I could see bodies now. Twisted shapes in the ash, some still smoldering, frozen in the positions they'd died in. Running. Crawling. Reaching for something they'd never touch.
Kaelen appeared at the tunnel entrance, eyes sweeping the destruction. For once, there was no calculation in his expression. No strategy. Just grief.
"The King's men," he said quietly. "They thought that was our camp."
This happened because of us.
Then I heard it.
That sound. Low, guttural, vibrating through the air like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. The same snarl I'd heard through the cavern walls in the night—the one I'd told myself was nothing.
It wasn't nothing.
Maxx went rigid beside me. He crouched down and pointed toward the scorched earth at the settlement's edge. Prints. Massive, clawed, gouged into the ground—too large for any wolf, too deft for any wild thing. They cut a path clean through the destruction, methodical as a military march.
"Nullatheon Hounds," Maxx said quietly. "They hunt by soul-scent. Once they have your Mark, they don't stop. Ever."
The guttural howl rose again in the distance—farther now, fading—and my blood turned to ice.
Maxx's jaw tightened. "If the hounds are here, that means Black Talons did this." His voice was stripped of its usual drawl. "The King's purge unit. They don't arrest. They don't question. They just burn. Send a message to anyone thinking about harboring enemies of the Crown."
Dreadscale had materialized beside us, silent as always, his eyes reflecting the distant flames. He said nothing. There was nothing to say to change the fact that we did this.
We stood there, helpless, watching the flames eat everything that was left.
By dawn, the inferno had burned itself out.
The sun couldn't break through the haze—just a smear of lighter grey where the horizon should have been. The ground was still warm underfoot. Hours later, and the earth hadn't let go of the heat. Every step crunched—tile, glass, things I didn't look down to identify. Serenya walked beside me, a strip of torn cloth tied over her nose and mouth, her eyes streaming.
The village square was unrecognizable. Blackened stone. Collapsed stalls. The air thick with ash and that sweet, wrong smell I'd never get out of my lungs.
I stopped walking.
A child's doll lay in the ash at my feet. Melted, one glass eye staring up at nothing. I crouched down without thinking—like I could fix it, like anything here could be fixed.
That's when I saw them.
Footprints. Right beside the doll, pressed deep into the ash. And they had a different tread than the Black Talons. A tread I recognized.
My Luminar flared, humming against my collarbone, confirming what my eyes were already telling me.
