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Caelith moved with the opening, driving a warded strike into its centre. The creature screeched, a sound that shook dust from the rafters. But desperation made it wild.

It flung itself forward recklessly, one claw slashing across Julen’s already-injured side. He cried out, weaker this time, collapsing onto his hands, breathing ragged and fast.

Maia bolted toward him instinctively, but a claw arced toward her.

Caelith seized her arm and wrenched her backward with enough force to bruise, yanking her back just in time. The claw cut through the air where her face had been.

He shoved her behind him, his jaw clenched, breath sharp with pain.

He was weakening. The creature sensed it.

It lunged for him.

But Maia, driven by instinct and terror, threw the shards high at it. Their glow ignited; bright enough to cast stark shadows against every wall. The creature shrieked again, face splitting into something grotesque as it recoiled.

Caelith moved with her. Their motions aligned as he grabbed the rest of the shards from her hands. Light exploded outward, and somewhere behind them a windowpane cracked, then burst: a fine rain of glass catching the light like falling stars before it scattered across the stone.

The creature’s limbs began to unravel, peeling apart into ribbons of shadow that writhed as they retreated. The pieces dragged themselves backward across the floor, slipping into the cracks between the stones as though the dark had swallowed them whole.

Then the silence hit them, heavy and suffocating. Even the shards had gone still.

“Are we safe?” Maia cried.

“Yes,” Caelith breathed. “For now.”

His eyes went to her first. Only then to Julen.

Maia dropped to her knees beside Julen. His face was pale, eyes glassy with pain. “Stay with us,” she whispered, pressing cloth to his wound as best she could. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Caelith knelt on the other side, breathing hard, blood dripping steadily down his flank - a deep, tarnished silver, dark as old coin, beading rather than running the way human blood did, as though even his body refused to give itself up easily. He pressed a firmer wrap to Julen’s injury, movements tight but precise.

Julen swallowed, blinking hard to stay focused. He looked up at Caelith with dazed confusion. “You came,” he said, voice thin with shock. “I didn’t think you would. I’ve spent weeks telling her not to trust you.”

Caelith’s gaze flickered with something unreadable. “Focus on breathing,” he said. Nothing more.

Maia watched him. The way he kept looking to the shadows long after the creature was gone. The way his jaw hadn’t fully unclenched.

She didn’t need to ask what it meant. She had spent enough evenings across the table from him to know the difference between his ordinary stillness and this - the particular quiet of someone bracing for a second blow that hadn’t come yet. Whatever that thing had been, he hadn’t just recognised its shape. He’d expected it.

When Julen finally stopped shaking and his breathing evened, he whispered, “What— what was that?”

Maia turned to Caelith, wanting the same answer. She had read more of the Archive’s histories than most of the scholars twice her age, and not one of them had named the thing that had just tried to kill them. That frightened her almost as much as the creature had.

“A wraith,” he said at last. “A Hollow Wraith. Rare. From the Fracture.”

Maia’s pulse skipped. “You recognised it.”

He paused for too long.

Then he stood, gripping his injured side tightly, jaw locked. “They aren’t supposed to cross this far,” he said finally. “Not wraiths. The hounds we met on the road to Meridon were scouts. Nothing more. This is something the Fracture wouldn’t have sent unless it meant to be found.”

Maia and Julen exchanged a look; fear, confusion, suspicion intertwining.

Caelith looked at the shards glowing faintly on the floor. Then he turned away. “We need to leave this room,” he said quietly. “Now.”

The storm howled against the windows as the three of them limped out.

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