Keiser felt his stomach drop as if the world had tilted beneath him, the echo of the elf’s grin returned sharper than any blade. He could still see the clever face in the gloom by the temple wall, the way the old man, the elven had leaned in, voice soft and sick with amusent while the chapel humd its prayer and every head in the nave bowed in silence.
They had been alone in the shadow of the arch, hands clasped for a bargain that tasted of iron and rot. Keiser had asked the one question that wouldn’t leave him... the specifics. On what had the elf carved into Lenko’s fate.
"He’ll die tonight," the elven had said, the words slow and deliberate, "by the hands of the one he loves."
Those words uncoiled in Keiser’s chest. His pulse hamred as hot dread spread under his ribs. He pictured Lenko, stubborn, defiant, that stubborn small fist Keiser had seen clench when plans frayed, and the image split him open.
Love, the elven had said... love as an executioner.
The thought was obscene and intimate all at once... so private, devastating convergence that would turn trust into weapon and rcy into murder.
He tasted bile and anger both. mory slid together with the present, the burning mana of the heart in Lenko’s hand, the princess braced on the ruined floor, the dragon child’s small fingers on his shoulder. The elven’s curse was a ticking thing with teeth.
Keiser didn’t think... he moved.
In one swift motion, he yanked the dragon child from his back and pushed her behind him. His eyes locked on Olga across the ruin. The faint tremor in her hand was all the warning he needed, the subtle shift of her fingers on the bowstring, the tightening of her stance, the way her breath hitched just before release.
She’s going to shoot.
"Stay behind, little fla," he hissed through clenched teeth.
The sigil on his arm flared, hot, sharp, alive. It seared through flesh and bone, and in that sa heartbeat, he felt Muzio’s mana surge inside him like molten light. The runes etched across his body sparked, slithering across his skin in fiery lines. He didn’t have ti to brace. He let it take him.
The dragon child’s hand caught his sleeve, eyes wide and confused. "Here..." she whispered, her gaze darting not past him, but at him, straight into him, as if she could see sothing buried beneath his skin.
Before he could ask what she ant, the air snapped.
Olga’s bowstring sang.
The arrow whistled toward Lenko, swift, bright, deadly.
Keiser lunged.
His arm tore through the air, sigil flaring so violently that light fractured across the room. The arrow struck his palm. The impact numbed his fingers, then pain tore through him, searing pain.
It burned as if the shaft was alive, trying to dig through him, to reach its original mark. The mana-laced rune on the arrow flared and snarled, its will clashing against his own.
Keiser gritted his teeth, every muscle screaming as he forced his hand closed around the arrowhead. He could feel it trying to push through, to force its way past his grip, through his skin, into Lenko’s chest behind him.
***
Lenko let out a sharp hiss as the sigil on his arm flared, burning hot enough to sear through cloth and skin. He didn’t even have a breath to think before the pull ca, sudden, violent, like being dragged forward by invisible strings of mana. His instincts scread at him. He’s coming.
Then the air split beside him.
In a flash of red light and crackling mana, Muzio appeared. He didn’t run or leap, he manifested, the mana shattering the air around them with a deafening snap. Before Lenko could blink, Muzio’s hand shot out, snatching the arrow from midair. The mont he touched it, the weapon hissed like it had bitten him, the runes on its shaft flaring bright as they scorched his palm.
Lenko’s breath caught. He stumbled forward on reflex, catching Muzio by the shoulder before he could fall, their weight colliding hard enough to knock the wind out of him. For a fleeting instant, Lenko thought his sister’s arrow had struck the tenth prince, his heart stopped, cold dread crawling up his throat, but no. Muzio wasn’t pierced. Just burned, again.
The prince’s jaw tightened as he glanced at his palm, smoke rising from the charred skin. His face twisted with pain, but his voice was steady, sharp and cutting through the chaos.
"What the hell happened here?"
His words bit through the silence like steel scraping stone.
Lenko couldn’t answer. His throat locked, his thoughts a ss of shock and disbelief. His gaze fell to his other hand, still clutching the heart. Tyron’s mother’s heart. Muzio calls it the dragon’s heart. The pulsing glow beneath his fingers was faint but alive, an eerie rhythm that made Lenko’s stomach turn.
He forced his gaze up, past the prince’s shoulder, to the other side of the crater.
The sixth princess stood there, her once-elegant dress torn and stained, blood trickling down her temple. Her expression was no longer dazed, it was sharpened, calculating, her narrowed eyes fixed on them with a mixture of horror and understanding. Tyron stood beside her, pale and shaking, his hand gripping her arm to steady her. His gaze, too, was locked on them.
Then, slowly, he lifted his eyes toward the far edge of the ruin, where Olga stood.
His older sister.
Her bow was still drawn, another arrow already nocked, the string taut and trembling from the tension in her fingers. Her green eyes, usually bright and calm, glead cold under the mana light. They were locked on him. Not on anyone else, but him.
Lenko swallowed hard, unable to breathe for a second. The air between them felt heavier than the smoke curling through the broken hall.
How... did it co to this?
***
[Twenty Minutes Ago , After the Undercroft Explosion]
The world had cracked open beneath them.
Dust and smoke billowed thick as ash, choking the air and turning the torchlight into a dim, trembling haze. The shouts of nobles, servants, and rcenaries echoed through the collapsing theater room as the floor trembled, each vibration heavier and closer than the last.
"Everyone out! Move!" soone barked from the stairwell above.
Lenko barely heard them. His ears rang, his heart thudding in his chest as he crouched low beside the sixth princess. She hadn’t moved since the first explosion, her pale hair clung to her face, eyes wide as she stared down the newly-ford crater that swallowed most of the floor.
The floor was torn apart, what once stretched as solid stone now gaped wide, revealing jagged tal, broken cages, and shattered beams tangled like ribs. Below, the faint red glow of smoldering mana still pulsed through the cracks.
"Muzio..." Lenko muttered under his breath, trying to peer down through the dust. He couldn’t see clearly, only the vague, chaotic flicker of movent, the sound of clanging steel and faint, distant shouting.
He rembered the prince’s words before they split. ’Keep your eyes on Mr. Genevra’s n. You’ll know when the plan is on, act until the cue.’
That was supposed to be it. The signal.
But this, this chaos, the explosion, the mana backlash, are these really was supposed to happen?
He tried to make sense of it all, but the smoke below was too thick. The ground around the crater was still hot, warping the air. Beside him, Olga’s voice rose in alarm.
"Lenko! Move back!"
Her hand clamped around his shoulder and yanked him backward just as another plank of wood collapsed into the crater with a groan. The sixth princess staggered, her heel catching on broken stone, but Olga grabbed her too, pulling both of them away from the edge as another tremor split through the ground.
"Careful!" Lenko hissed, coughing into his sleeve. "It’s not stable."
But Olga wasn’t listening to him. Her eyes sharp, scanning the chaos below.
The princess straightened, still catching her breath. "What, what is that?" she murmured, pointing down toward the pit.
Lenko followed her gaze.
Amid the wreckage, broken tal, scorched wood, and shattered sigils glowing faintly blue, sothing moved.
At first, he thought it was smoke twisting in the light. Then he realized they were alive. Small, sinewy shapes slithering and crawling between the wrecked cages, beasts. Not large, but vicious, their scales gleaming wet under the light. One of them let out a low growl that reverberated through the hollow space, like sothing half-born, half-starved.
Olga’s expression tightened. "Gods," she whispered, her voice half awe, half horror. "Are those..."
"Beasts," Lenko said grimly, cutting her off. "Young ones, but... that’s not the problem."
Because he saw it, the epicenter of the destruction. The largest cage, though mangled, still held its shape. The bars were blackened, runes along the tal cracked and faintly glowing. The floor around it was scorched, as if a blast of energy had erupted outward, not in.
He felt the hair rise on his arms. That wasn’t from Muzio’s cue of fire or explosion. It was sothing else.
"...that’s mana," the sixth princess whispered.
Her voice was almost lost in the noise, but both siblings turned toward her. She stood rigid, her gaze locked on the ruin below, her fingers curling against her chest as if she could feel it.
"Mana?" Olga echoed, confused, frowning as she glanced back at the crater. "No, that can’t be just mana. No human could..."
"It isn’t human," the princess said quietly.
Lenko and Olga exchanged a look.
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