Smoke.
It doesn’t rise from the ground or spill from a fire—it manifests, curling and seething, thick and black, swirling in the shape of something enormous.
A figure emerges from the dark.
Monstrous.
Too tall, too broad, his presence warping the space around him. Shadow and substance bleeding together into something jagged, shifting. His limbs are too long, his body wrapped in an armour of dark, glistening ridges that flex and move like living metal. Spines curve along his arms, his back, his shoulders. Hisface—if it can even be called that—is a mask of shifting bone and blackened flesh, eyes burning red in the depths of his skull.
My stomach twists, my knees locking as every part of my brain screams,Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Kael moves. Not towards him but in front of me. Lethal, unyielding, his entire stance coiled and ready to strike. His blade is in his hand before I even register him drawing it, his muscles taut with the promise of violence. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t challenge.
He just waits.
The Hendroy steps forwards, his presence like a void, sucking the air from my lungs. When he speaks, his voice is a thing of nightmares—low, distorted, vibrating with something ancient and terrible.
I don’t understand the words. But I don’t need to.
The intent is clear.
Glowranth are not welcome.
He must die.
My breath catches. My fingers tremble at my sides, my body screaming at me to move, but I can’t. The air distorts around the Hendroy’s hands, something jagged forming in his grasp—black, sharp, brimming with an energy that crackles and spits like living lightning.
I can’t think.
Kael is a statue, unmoving, unwavering, his entire being a blade poised to strike. But I know the Hendroy will be faster.
My body moves before my brain catches up. I shove forwards, the words tearing from my throat in pure, unthinking desperation. “He’s my mate!”
Time snaps.
Everything freezes.
The Hendroy halts, the deadly energy he wielded poised midair, humming with power, inches from unleashing hell.
My legs give out.
I hit the ground hard, pain ricocheting up my side, my lungs burning. Kael shouts something—distant, warped—but my ears ring too loudly to make sense of it.
Then a new voice slices through the chaos.
Sharp. Commanding.
“Enough!”
Iris.
A gasp claws up my throat, but I don’t have time to do more than register her presence before the world tips.
And then?—
Fuck it all to hell. Not again.
Darkness.
