The world ruptured.
Stone screamed. The ceiling buckled. Dust exploded in a blinding wave of debris.
Seraphine raised a flaming shield instinctively, heat pressing back the collapse just enough to stay standing.
When the dust cleared?—
Vaela was gone.
No blood trail.
No trace.
Just a scorch mark where the shadows had swallowed her.
Seraphine staggered back, fire dimming.
Cassian caught her, one hand on her arm.
“You okay?”
She turned toward the altar. But then a scream tore through the chamber.
Not human or animal.
Hollowborn.
Cassian pulled his blade, eyes dark.
Seraphine’s fire reignited.
Shadows spilled from the stone. Figures emerged. Too many.
Cassian looked at her, voice low. “Ready for round two?”
Seraphine grinned, teeth bared.
“Let’s burn them all.”
TWENTY-FOUR
CASSIAN
They came like shadows unbound.
From the cracks in the ceiling, from the walls themselves, the Hollowborn poured in—twisted bodies slick with decay, limbs too long, mouths unhinging with gurgling shrieks.
Cassian reacted first.
“Behind you!”
Seraphine spun, her glaive already aflame, cutting through one before its claws could find her throat. The creature shrieked as it disintegrated, Whitefire unraveling it from the inside out.
Cassian’s sword caught the next one mid-lunge, stormfire flaring up his arm as he pivoted into a brutal strike. Another creature dropped at his feet in a heap of twitching limbs and wet ash.
But there weretoo many.
One leapt from above, slamming into his back. He rolled, bucking it off, then drove his blade upward, straight into its jaw.
