And that’s when she knows—she’s seen this before.
In Thornewood.
This is not just a shield.
This is Aether.
The soldiers press in, closing in on Kael, swords rasping from their scabbards as they approach.
But Kael only smiles. Wicked and menacing. The look of a man born to violence, raised on brutality.
“I am the Endbringer,” he whispers to himself, but the words ricochet off every surface, drenching the vault.
Even the soldiers hear the prophecy in it.
They tighten formation anyway.
Brave men.
Dead men.
They hold their ground, but no one misses the falter. The slight misstep. The fraction of a heartbeat of hesitation.
And then he lunges.
“Take him down!” Marin commands, unsheathing a blade from the high split in her dress.
But the Decay leads, hunting life and ending it.
It slips through the narrow seams between their shields like smoke with intent, like shadow given teeth. One soldier jerks as it latches to his throat, his scream cutting off as black creeps beneath his skin. Another stumbles when Kael’s silver-laced shadows strike his knee, forcing him down hard enough that bone cracks against stone.
But still they come. Because the shields hold. Not fully. Not enough to stop Kael entirely. But enough to blunt the force of him. Enough to slow the thing that should be impossible to survive.
Blue Aether flares at every point of impact, bright and violent, turning the vault into a storm of obsidian shadow and electric light.
Elyssara’s pulse becomes a drumbeat in her throat.
Too many.
There are too many.
Kael tears through the first line with a violence so absolute it feels god-made. A sword is ripped from one soldier’s hand and driven clean through another’s chest. His shadows snap out, silver threaded through black, and a third man drops screaming as rot devours the flesh beneath his armor.
But for every man Kael takes, two more step forward.
“Kael!” Elyssara screams.
She moves before she can think better of it, lunging toward the wall of soldiers closing around him, divine fury rising in her blood. Golden light flares at her fingertips?—
“Don’t.”
Maireth’s voice slices through the vault. Cold. Certain. Not a threat—a promise.
Elyssara freezes.
The queen does not raise her voice.
She does not need to.
