“Here.” She knelt, brushing debris aside. “The core mounts integrate with the nav computer. Should be—”
A growl.
Not from Sylas. From outside.
Every Lux Knight tensed. Xar moved to the breach, his posture shifting from guard to hunter in a heartbeat.
“Fallen,” he snarled.
Sylas’s head snapped toward the sound, ears pinning back. “How many?”
“At least three. Maybe more. They’re circling.”
Elsa’s blood went cold. The Fallen. The mad ones. The creatures that had consumed too much Moon Tear and lost their minds to feral hunger.
Another growl, closer now. Then another from a different direction.
They were surrounded.
Sylas turned to Elsa, his expression grim. “Can you find the core? Now?”
Her hands shook as she pried open the access panel. Inside, a tangle of wiring and crystal matrices greeted her. The navigation system’s heart.
And there—nestled in its mounting cradle—a Moon Tear crystal the size of her fist. It pulsed with pale blue light, unmarred by the crash, its facets catching the dim illumination and throwing it back in prismatic beauty.
“Found it.” She reached for the release mechanism.
A shadow moved past the breach.
Xar lunged, intercepting something that Elsa only caught in peripheral nightmare—matted fur, wild eyes, teeth too many and too sharp. The impact sent both creatures tumbling into the snow outside.
More shapes materialized from the storm. Four. Six. Too many.
“Get that core!” Sylas roared, launching himself at the breach.
Elsa’s fingers fumbled with the release. It was designed for human hands, but the mechanism had warped in the crash. She pulled, twisted, slammed her palm against the housing.
Nothing.
Outside, the sounds of battle—snarls and screams and the wet thud of bodies hitting frozen ground. The Lux Knights fought with brutal efficiency, but the Fallen kept coming.
Elsa grabbed a piece of twisted metal from the floor and jammed it into the release mechanism as a lever. Then threw her weight against it.
The crystal popped free.
She caught it, the surface warm against her frozen fingers. Energy hummed through the facets, resonating with the bracer on her wrist in a way that made her bones vibrate.
Too much. Too intense. The crystal was magnifying whatever the bracer did, feeding power through her nervous system faster than her body could handle.
Her vision blurred. The world tilted.
“Elsa!” Sylas’s voice, distant through the roar in her ears.
She stumbled toward the breach, the crystal clutched against her chest. Made it three steps before her legs gave out.
Strong arms caught her. Fur against her face, heat radiating through the cold.
Sylas lifted her as if she weighed nothing, the crystal still pressed between them. She felt his heart hammering against her cheek, felt the vibration of his growl reverberating through his chest.