Rowan ran through the woods, his feet barely touching the ground, the trees blurring past him in streaks of brown and green. The world narrowed to the path ahead, to the smoke rising from the mountain, to the growing pressure pressing down on his pathways like a weight on his chest. A seal. It had to be. And a powerful one at that—mythical-grade, maybe, something rare enough to make even Lyrielle struggle. He could feel it limiting him, dulling the edges of his aura, making every step cost more than it should. If she had been fighting under this for hours, it was no wonder the battle had stretched this long.
He pushed the thought aside. First, he had to see her. First, he had to know she was okay.
The Eclipse Collective.
The name nagged at him, familiar in a way he couldn't place. He had heard it before—in whispers, in warnings, in the kind of conversations that happened in dark rooms between people who knew too much. But they wanted the players. Why this particular set? There was nothing special about any of them. Nothing except—
He almost stumbled.
Koby.
It had to be. The dark energy Lyrielle had found in his pathways. That was the only explanation. Koby was human—completely, utterly human—and yet something had left traces in him. Something old, something dangerous, something the Collective would want. They weren't after players. They were after him.
And Rowan had taken him in. Taken all of them in.
He had wanted out. That was the truth of it. Out of the bloodshed, the senseless wars, the politics that ground good people into dust. He had lost too many friends, buried too many faces, carried too many names in his chest like stones. The outskirts of Camelot had been supposed to be peace. Training Axle, watching the seasons turn, letting the world forget he existed.
Then he had found the players. Half-dead, barely standing, fighting a yggthra with nothing but desperation and stubbornness. He had watched Koby refuse to fall, watched him claw for every breath, watched him look at death and spit in its face. Something in that moment had broken through the walls he had built. Something had made him step in.
He had given them a chance. A place to train. A future. And now this.
He quickened his pace, the forest opening into a clearing—a wound in the earth carved by violence, trees shattered, the ground scorched, the remnants of Lyrielle's Ramulus Dei looming above them like a broken monument. He saw Silas first, his blonde hair catching the grey light, his greatsword raised—
And then he saw Lyrielle.
The blade drove through her stomach. The sound was soft, wet, final. She grabbed his arm, held him there, and threw a punch that sent him flying across the clearing. She dropped to one knee, her head bowed, her breath ragged, her blood pooling beneath her on the scorched earth.
He was there before he knew he had moved.
She looked up at him, her eyes unfocused, her lips parting in something that might have been a smile. "Seems like I've started seeing things."
He knelt beside her, his hands moving to her wounds, his mind already cataloging the damage. Two injuries—her arm, her stomach. Both disintegrating. Both held in check by the fading green glow of her Healing Arts. She was still channeling, still fighting, still refusing to fall. It was a miracle she was still conscious.
"Why isn't the wound closing?" He cradled her head in his hands, trying to steady her, trying to see what was wrong.
Her eyes focused on him, and for a moment, something like relief flickered across her face. "So you're real." Blood dripped from her lips, tracing a red line down her chin. "You're late, dummy."
"Of course I'm real." He pressed his palm to her forehead, feeling the heat of exhaustion radiating from her skin. "Why aren't you healing, Ellie?"
The name slipped out before he could stop it. Old habit. Old comfort. She was precious to him, and his cool, collected self had vanished the moment he saw her bleeding on the ground.
She couldn't die. Not like this. She had already given up everything for him—her position, her title, her place in the world. She had followed him to the outskirts, had stayed in a cottage at the base of a mountain, had spent decades healing farmers and gathering herbs and pretending she didn't miss the life she had left behind. All for him. And now she was going to die for him.
No. Not while he was still breathing.
"Poison," Lyrielle managed, her voice barely a whisper. "Disintegration."
Rowan forced himself to be calm, to listen, to understand. "How far has it spread?"
"I stopped it." Her breath hitched. "With Healing Arts."
He pieced it together quickly. She had used her arts to contain the poison, to keep it from spreading through her body. But the affected areas—her arm, her stomach—were still disintegrating. The poison was still active. The healing was only slowing it down.
He felt the killing intent behind him before he saw Silas move. The man was rising, his jaw hanging at an unnatural angle, his eyes fixed on them with something that might have been calculation. But Rowan wasn't playing. He turned, and he let Silas see exactly what he had done to her.
The stare that followed was not a warning. It was a promise.
Silas stopped. His hand fell from his sword. His breath caught in his chest. For a long, frozen moment, he did not move. He could not move. And Rowan knew—knew with the certainty of a man who had faced death a hundred times—that this was not over. But for now, it was enough.
He turned back to Lyrielle.
"Ellie." His voice was softer now, the edge gone. "Can you still handle regeneration?"
She shook her head, a small, exhausted movement. "Too weak. No aura."
"I'm going to need you to try. With whatever you have left." He extended his hand, aura gathering at his fingertips, sharpening into something that could cut. "I'm going to cut off the affected part."
He started with her arm. His fingers found the boundary between living flesh and disintegration, the line where the poison had spread and been halted. He dug in, tore out the chunk of flesh that would have killed her, and let it fall to the ground. Blood welled up, dark and hot, covering his hands. Lyrielle groaned—a small sound, swallowed before it could become a scream. She was too tired, too weak, too far gone to even cry out.
But it worked. Her Healing Arts flickered, guttered, and began to close the wound. Slowly. Too slowly. But it closed.
He moved to her stomach. The damage was worse here—the blade had passed through, cutting organs, tearing through flesh. She should have been dead already. If not for the Healing Arts, she would have been. He examined the wound, found the edges of the poison's spread, and prepared to cut.
Her hand closed over his wrist. Weak. Trembling. But insistent.
"You can't." Her voice was a thread, fraying at the edges. "Too weak to regenerate organs. Need herbs. Potions. Time."
Rowan looked at her. At the blood pooling beneath her. At the wound that would not close. At the face of someone he had known for longer than he wanted to remember, someone he had promised himself he would not lose.
He lifted her into his arms. Princess style. Careful. Gentle. The way he had carried wounded soldiers off battlefields in another life, when he had believed he could save everyone.
He looked at Silas one last time.
The man stood frozen in the rubble, his face pale, his eyes wide, his hands empty at his sides. He did not move. He did not breathe. He simply watched as Rowan turned and vanished into the trees.
Silas stood alone in the clearing, the wind picking up the ash and scattering it across the scorched earth. His jaw throbbed. His hands were cold. He could still feel those eyes on him, could still hear the promise they had made.
He smiled.
A rift tore open beside him, and a figure stepped through—white robes, hooded face, presence that filled the space between one breath and the next.
"Have you gotten the vessel?"
Silas pulled a bottle from his belt, uncorked it, and drank. The elixir burned going down, spreading warmth through his chest, knitting his jaw, sealing the cuts inside his mouth. He rolled his shoulders, flexed his fingers, let the feeling return to his hands.
"Working on it."
"You know we don't tolerate failure."
"And I said I'm working on it." He tucked the empty bottle back into his belt, his smile never faltering. "Rowan will be busy with Lyrielle. And since he's here, the kids are probably at his cottage."
The figure watched him, face hidden, presence heavy. "You have to be fast. You know you can't face Rowan one on one."
Silas laughed. It was a small sound, quiet, almost private. "Oh, I know." He touched his jaw, where Lyrielle's fist had connected, where the pain still lingered beneath the elixir's warmth. "Our earlier encounter is proof of that already."
He turned toward the path that led down the mountain, toward the cottage where the kids would be waiting, toward the mission that was not yet complete.
"Don't worry." His smile widened, his eyes bright with something that might have been anticipation. "I already have precautions in place. Just for him."
He began to walk, his steps light, almost skipping, as if he had not just watched a legend carry his opponent away, as if he had not frozen under the weight of a stare, as if the hunt had only just begun.
The figure watched him go, then stepped back through the rift, leaving the clearing empty and silent, the ash settling over the blood, the smoke rising toward the grey sky.