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At her.

“Stay behind me,” he said. He looked at Julen then, too. “Both of you.”

Julen appeared at her shoulder, hollow-eyed from the descent. He looked at the assembled circle of Umbralyn, at the rising curtains of light, at the wardlines burning through the glass ground.

“Right,” he said finally. “So we just walk in there?”

“Yes,” Caelith said.

“Through all of them.”

“Yes.”

“Any particular plan for that part?”

“Some of them will recognise me,” Caelith said. “There will be a moment of hesitation. We’ll use it.”

“And when the moment ends?” Maia asked.

“We keep moving.”

It was not the most reassuring plan she had ever heard. But it was the only one on offer, and he had never once been wrong about how a fight would go.

At the far edge of the circle, one of the hooded figures turned. Then another. Recognition moved through the gathered Umbralyn like a current, heads turning one by one, the rhythm of the alignment broken by something none of them had accounted for.

Caelith had come.

No longer a prisoner. No longer in chains.

The sound that went up from them was not in any language she knew, but she felt the shape of it, surprise, anger. Admiration, maybe.

“Now,” Caelith said quietly. “While they’re deciding.”

He walked forward onto the glass plain.

Maia followed. Julen swore and followed too.

The first Umbralyn who moved toward them came from the left, breaking from the circle with controlled speed. Caelith didn’t stop walking. He adjusted his angle slightly, met the Umbralyn’s first strike with his forearm, redirected it, didn’t slow. He took the second strike across the shoulder, and he used the momentum to drive the Umbralyn sideways into the path of a second who had broken ranks.

Three seconds. He had lost three seconds and gained perhaps ten feet.

A third came from directly ahead, faster than the first two, already braced for the redirect Caelith had used twice now. This one didn’t go for the body. He went low, for the legs, and Caelith had to break stride to avoid it, losing the rhythm he’d built. The correction cost him: a strike he should have deflected caught him across the ribs instead, low on his right side, and for one visible second his breath left him in a way that had nothing to do with effort.

Maia screamed, but he didn’t go down. He turned the stumble into momentum, drove his elbow back into the attacker’s throat hard enough to buy himself space, and kept moving.

Julen stumbled. One of the Umbralyn broke toward him, sensing the weaker target, and for once Julen didn’t run.

He turned into it instead, the knife from his belt already in his hand, driving it up and in with more force than finesse. It caught the Umbralyn across the forearm rather than the throat he’d aimed for, but it bought him a half-second - enough to make the Umbralyn recoil instead of finishing what it started.

It wasn’t enough for a second one. A strike from the left caught him before he could reset his footing, and he went down hard onto one knee, one hand pressed flat to the glass ground, the knife skittering out of reach.

“Julen—” Maia turned.

“Go,” he said through his teeth. She could see it in the angle of his arm, the deliberate way he held his weight. His injured side. The same one. “I’m fine. Go.”

“You’re not—”

“Maia.” He looked up at her, his expression very clear. “Go. I’ll hold here. Just go.”