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They obeyed.

Three Starless emerged from the smoke in tandem.

Maybe once they were human or Astrari, now they were something else entirely.

Their movements were uncoordinated and jerked beneath the unsteady light while cloudy white eyes reflected the burning resonance blade. Black veins spread thick beneath corpse-pale skin and their mouths slightly hung open like they had forgotten how breathing worked.

The nearest Starless lunged toward Alyra, but she sidestepped with practiced precision and her blade flashed once.

The strike was so fast Elowynn never saw it land.

The Starless took another step. Then its body came apart.

Silver-blue cracks erupted across its chest like lightning racing through crystal. The creature convulsed as light poured from the cracks beneath its skin. Bone splintered. Flesh ruptured. Dark, black blood sprayed across the stairwell and Alyra’s front.

A moment later it collapsed into a twitching heap upon the steps, frost-like resonance patterns spreading outward through the remains until even the stone beneath it glittered white.

The second reached for her; this time Caelyn intercepted it.

He caught the creature by the throat with one hand and drove it into the stone wall hard enough to shatter it.

Then the frost came.

Blackened ice erupted from beneath his hand and spread out in torrid streaks along the Starless’ body while it convulsed soundlessly beneath his grip.

Then something seemed to leave it.

The corruption threading beneath its skin collapsed inward like a dying ember starved for air.

Caelyn crushed its throat and let it drop to the ground with a sickening thump.

Elowynn stared. Caelyn’s power–it had been effortless.

Another Starless launched itself toward the fleeing crowd, and Lora screamed as Caelyn moved again, but he was too late.

The creature slammed into one of the younger scholars ahead of them. Both crashed into the stair rail hard enough to rattle the entire structure. The scholar screamed as blackened fingers tore through his shoulder, blood splattering across the stone.

White-blue resonance slammed into the Starless' chest. Glowing fractures exploded beneath its skin like cracks racing through crystal, illuminating ribs, veins, and bone before the force hurled the creature across the stairwell.

Stone fractured.

Bone splintered.

The starless slid down the wall and collapsed in a twisted heap upon the steps.

Elowynn stood rooted to the spot, breathing heavily, eyes aglow with silver.

Luminous veins traced their glowing paths beneath the skin of her hands and forearms, even her neck. The resonance still flowed through her body in brilliant currents.

The air around her hummed with residual energy, the raw astrylite within the walls and lanterns seeming to lean inward toward her.

She had not touched a single crystal.

She had not drawn from a lantern.

Still, resonance lingered at her fingertips.

For one impossible moment, the entire stairwell stared at her.