Elsa
The explosion rattled through the stone corridor, and Elsa’s teeth clacked together hard enough to taste copper. Dust rained from the ceiling in gray sheets, and somewhere behind them—too close, always too close—the howl of feral Yzefrxyl rose like a blade through the chaos.
“Move!” Elsa grabbed Mia’s arm and hauled her forward, the younger woman’s legs barely keeping pace. Ari was already running, her dark hair whipping behind her as she navigated the narrow passage with surprising grace. Keth was somewhere behind them, guarding their tail.
The under-fortress tunnels twisted ahead of them like intestines carved from black rock. Elsa had been mapping them in her head for hours now—counting steps, memorizing turns, noting the placement of every flickering blue crystal that lit their path. Navigator’s habit. The kind that might save their lives if they could just make it to the extraction point.
Another tremor shook the ground. The manufactured crisis Vask had triggered was tearing through the fortress above likea fever—pit riots, sabotage, a staged Fallen breach. She’d heard the guards shouting about it before they’d been...distracted.
“Left,” Elsa called out, her voice raw from the acrid smoke that had begun seeping into the lower levels. “Thirty paces, then the tunnel splits.”
“How do you know?” Mia gasped, stumbling over loose stone.
“Because I’ve been paying attention.” Elsa didn’t slow. Couldn’t afford to. The howling behind them was getting closer, and she could feel the wrongness of it scraping against her nerves—something in the sound that spoke of broken minds and hunger without end. The Fallen. Or whatever poor souls Vask had unleashed to force Sylas’s hand.
They reached the split, and Elsa pulled up short. The right tunnel climbed toward the surface—toward the rescue team, toward safety. The left descended deeper into the pit levels.
Toward Rowan and Milo.
“Elsa.” Ari’s voice was steady despite everything, her hand closing on Elsa’s shoulder. “We need to go right. Ryxin’s team will be waiting.”
“They’re still down there.”
“They might already be dead.”
“They’re not.” Elsa didn’t know how she was certain, but she was. She’d heard Rowan’s voice just hours ago—hoarse, exhausted, but alive. She’d looked into Milo’s hollow eyes and told him to wait for the second alarm. “I promised them.”
“You promised us too,” Mia whispered, her face pale as bone in the crystal-light. “You said we’d get out. Together.”
Elsa’s chest tightened. She looked between them—Ari with her hard-won composure, Mia with her fragile hope—and felt the weight of the choice pressing down on her skull.
The howling grew louder. A crash echoed from somewhere behind them, followed by the scrape of claws on stone—fast,heavy, closing from the right-hand tunnel. Elsa shoved Mia behind her and braced, but the figure that rounded the corner was one she recognized.
Keth. Breathing hard, weapons drawn, blood dark on his forearms. Five Lux Sabers fanned out behind him, psyblades already angled toward the howling at their backs.
“The Alpha King sent them.” His gaze swept over them—quick, assessing, cataloguing injuries the way all of Sylas’s warriors did. “Extraction point is topside. Maintenance shafts, two levels up.”
“I know where it is.” Elsa stepped forward. “Take Mia and Ari. Get them to the surface.”
Keth’s ears flattened. “My orders are to move all three of you—”
“Your orders just changed.” The words came out hard, clipped—a voice she barely recognized as her own. The bond pulsed hot behind her ribs, lending her a certainty she hadn’t earned. “Rowan and Milo are still in the pit levels. I’m not leaving without them.”
A beat of silence, swallowed by the distant howling.
Keth’s jaw worked. His gaze shifted between Elsa and the descending tunnel, and something flickered behind those amber eyes. Not quite deference. Recognition, maybe—as if he were seeing a thing Sylas had already seen and he was only now catching up.
“The Sabers go with you.” Not a question.
“Yes.”
He turned to the two women. “Stay close. Move fast. Don’t stop for anything.”
Mia’s fingers caught Elsa’s sleeve. “Elsa—”
“I’ll be right behind you.” She covered Mia’s hand, squeezed once, then let go. “I promise.”
The lie tasted like copper. She swallowed it anyway.