She stopped. Listened.
The birds had gone silent.
Move. Move now.
She didn’t question the instinct. She started walking faster, her hand reaching for the phone in her pocket?—
Three figures emerged from the trees ahead.
Not human. Not shifter. Not anything that belonged in the natural world.
They were humanoid, roughly. The right number of limbs in approximately the right places. But the proportions were wrong—arms too long, joints bending at unnatural angles. Their skin had a grayish pallor, like meat left too long in cold storage. And their eyes?—
Their eyes were empty. Black pits where consciousness should be.
Constructs.
The word surfaced from memories she’d tried to bury. Niccolas, reading aloud from patient files that didn’t add up.
Some of them talk aboutundeadsoldiers. Things that follow orders without question. Things made from?—
She hadn’t let him finish. Hadn’t wanted to know.
Now she knew.
The constructs moved toward her with jerky, puppet-like motions. No urgency. No strategy. Just relentless forward momentum, closing the distance with inevitable patience.
Narla’s magic surged, flames dancing at her fingertips, but she remembered what Aero had said. Direct magical attacks fed Devourers. Made them stronger. Were they tethered to Derren—would feeding them feed him too?
She didn’t know. Couldn’t risk it.
Run.
She ran.
The trail behind her was blocked—she could hear more movement in the underbrush, more wrong footsteps approaching. The only clear path was forward, toward town, toward people, toward?—
A construct stepped out of the trees directly in front of her.
Narla skidded to a stop. Wheeled around. Two more behind her, emerging from hiding places she hadn’t seen. Four constructs. Four mindless soldiers with empty eyes and reaching hands.
Derren’s message.
She understood with crystalline clarity. He wasn’t trying to kill her. Not yet. He was showing her what he could do. Demonstrating that she wasn’t safe even if he wasn’t around. That nights in a panther’s bed didn’t change the fundamental equation.
You belong to me, those empty eyes seemed to say. You’ve always belonged to me.
“No.” The word came out stronger than she felt. “Not anymore.”
Her magic flared. Fire spiraled up her arms, bright, hot, and furious. If she was going to die here, she’d go down fighting. She’d burn every one of these things to ash and maybe, just maybe, buy herself time to?—
The woods exploded.
Something massive and black tore through the underbrush with a sound like thunder. Narla caught a glimpse of midnight fur, of muscles rippling beneath silk-smooth hide, of claws that gleamed in the dawn light?—
And then the first construct screamed.
If constructs could scream. The sound it made was more mechanical than organic, a shriek of splitting flesh and snapping bone as the panther hit it like a freight train. Claws shredded through the creature’s torso. Jaws closed around its throat and wrenched.
