The city was already screaming.
Harrowick burned like a kiln, the night swollen with smoke and heat. Ash fell in soft, lying snow. Roofs collapsed in showers of sparks. The air tasted of copper and old coins.
"Move!" Kaelen barked, dragging a wounded man under a splintered beam, his forearm mini-crossbow cocked in his other hand. "South lane—keep low!"
Miro ghosted ahead, twin daggers flashing in the firelight, kicking a door open so two coughing women could stumble out, then pivoting to flick a blade across a masked throat. "Street's choked," he called back. "Cart on its side—"
"Top of the right," Serenya said from above, calm as bowstring. Perched on the stump of a balcony, smoke curling around her silver hair, she loosed three arrows in quick rhythm—each a clean, wet stop. "Alley clear. Go."
A mother's scream cut through the chaos. "My boy! Where's my boy?"
Kaelen spotted him in the middle of the street, soot-streaked, clutching a bundle of wooden trinkets—a crooked horse, a whittled bird, a string of carved stones. He didn't cry, just stared, as if the world might unburn if he held still enough.
Arrows stitched the dirt around him.
Kaelen ran. Heat curled his eyelashes. Sparks bit at his skin. He slid to one knee, scooping the boy tight. A bolt hissed past—he swung his crossbow and fired without thinking. The shot punched through a mask and pinned it to the wall, skull and wood cracking. "Got you," he muttered into the boy's hair. "Hold tight."
"Left!" Serenya called.
A cloaked figure lunged from an alley with a hooked knife. Kaelen's sword met it with a jolt to his shoulder. He cut low—through tendon. The figure folded.
"South lane," Miro said, sliding in beside him, one dagger bloody, the other catching firelight. "Mom's with me. Go!"
They moved as one: Serenya above, cutting flanks; Miro darting ahead, slicing paths; Kaelen in the center of the civilians, shield and storm both. The boy's tiny fist never let go of his carved horse.
The street ahead flowered into light.
Crude charges—glass globes bound in twine and studded with pale crystals—tumbled from a rooftop. They burst with a sound like laughing metal, white fire crawling the stones. The smell of burned hair hit so hard Kaelen gagged. A man screamed until his voice melted away.
"Silent Flame," Miro hissed. "They're rolling the quarter."
"Through," Kaelen snapped, forcing the group toward a narrow gap between buildings. "Serenya, cut them off!"
Two thunks answered. One man went down with an arrow through the throat. Another tripped on the body and fell hands-first into fire, skin blistering and sticking to stone. The third came on, teeth bared.
Kaelen drove his hilt under the chin—crack—then steel through soft palate. He pushed the body aside.
"Keep moving!" he yelled.
For a hundred breathless heartbeats they carved a path. The south gate was close. Almost.
The street widened. The screaming ebbed. The masked figures stopped coming.
A shape stepped out where the road bent toward the gate.
He didn't hurry. He didn't need to. The lesser members melted back into alleys as if ashamed to share his shadow. A half-mask of scorched bronze clung to his cheek; the other half of his face was beautiful and cold. His blade rested bare at his side, edge gleaming like it had been oiled in moonlight.
They stopped because their bodies knew nothing else.
"Why?" Serenya's voice trembled with fury. "Why burn a city? Why slaughter families?"
His gaze drifted over her, the civilians, the boy clinging to Kaelen's tunic. His voice was soft, polite, and terrifying.
"It is a noble sacrifice. We are tired of these fucking animals thinking they are above the law of nature."
Nobody breathed.
Then he moved.
Kaelen had seen fast. This was something else—like a page torn from time. One heartbeat the blade was at his side; the next, it crossed the distance. Kaelen's sword came up almost in time.
Metal rang. Pain detonated.
His left forearm—his crossbow—was gone. He saw it on the stones a pace away, glove fingers twitching, crossbow scraping, blood painting the cobbles. Heat slammed into the stump and he screamed.
"Kaelen!" Miro's voice—high, the way it got when fear and anger were the same. Kaelen shoved the boy toward his mother and lurched forward.
Miro intercepted the leader, blades crossed. For a heartbeat it worked. Then the leader twisted; one dagger spun away, the other with it, Miro's fingers breaking in delicate pops. He didn't scream. He lunged.
The leader let him.
Steel opened Miro's chest like parting curtains. His grin faltered. Breath left him in a wet cough. Blood poured dark and thick. He tried to say Kaelen's name and made a sound like drowning. The leader eased him off the blade. Miro crumpled, daggers ringing once, twice, then silence.
Serenya's first arrow hit the leader's sword and sang. The second should have taken his eye—it found nothing. She drew again.
He was on her before she loosed the third.
Kaelen staggered toward them, red fog in his head. The leader caught Serenya's bowstring and tore it free in a whispering snap. The blade went into her sternum, slipped between ribs with obscene grace, the guard kissing her throat. Her eyes widened. Blood bubbled over her lip. When he drew the blade out, the sound would haunt Kaelen forever. She collapsed against the ruined balcony post, leaving a smeared handprint as she slid down. Her silver hair caught a spark.
Something broke behind Kaelen.
The civilians they'd fought for were running. Masked shapes met them. Blades went low. A woman folded silently around her wound. A man took a rusty hook through the cheek and was yanked away. The mother tripped. The boy went sprawling, wooden trinkets scattering. He crawled for the horse. His hand stuck to the burning street. He looked up, not crying, just asking why. A boot crushed his wrist; the horse cracked like a bone. The blade that followed was almost gentle.
Kaelen's legs moved without thought. He closed on the leader, close enough to see where mask met flesh. He swung, a clumsy hack with one hand.
The leader slid aside. His counter was almost a caress.
White noise filled Kaelen's chest. He tasted iron from inside his own throat. The world tilted. His sword fell. He saw Miro's face slacken, Serenya's hand curled around nothing.
He tried to breathe. The last thing he saw was the boy's wooden bird spinning in a puddle, catching fire, then stopping.
Darkness should have taken him. It didn't.
Instead, the ground dropped and caught him somewhere else. Stone, water, and dirt slid past each other underfoot. Threads of light—golden and black—drifted in the air, heavy with a low hum that made his teeth ache. He was standing. Bleeding. Falling without falling.
A shape coalesced—many faces, no face. A man, an animal, a shadow, all edges of the world at once. The not-ground shifted when it moved.
The voice came from everywhere and inside his bones.
"You are not the hero of this world, Kaelen. You are its flaw."
The slabs split. Threads pulled tight and snapped. He plunged into the gap, with nothing but the memory of heat and the certainty he would wake where the world still pretended not to be broken.