The stairs up from the scrying chamber were already filling with smoke.
Kazeal took them three at a time, bow in one hand, Lira's wrist in the other. Seraphin sprinted beside them, violet glyphs flaring and dying across her skin like living tattoos. The deeper they climbed, the louder the chaos became: steel on steel, the wet thud of bodies hitting stone, the high, animal shriek of shadow-wrought dying.
They burst onto the second terrace into hell.
The market stalls were burning. A ranger lay draped across a table, arrows bristling from his back and throat. Two shadow-wargs tore at another body while a third elf, a boy barely older than Lira, tried to drag a wounded comrade toward cover. His leg ended in a red ruin.
Kazeal's arrow took the nearest warg through the eye. It dropped without a sound.
"Get him out!" Kazeal shouted to the boy, already nocking again.
Lira's staff spun. A mercenary in black half-plate lunged at her; she parried the sword, felt the impact shudder up her arms, then drove the iron-capped butt into his visor. Cartilage crunched. He went down choking on his own blood.
Seraphin laughed, wild and delighted, and flung both hands forward. A whip of violet fire lashed out, slicing three attackers in half at the waist. Their top halves kept crawling for a heartbeat before they realised they were dead.
"Up!" she yelled. "They're after the pool!"
They fought their way toward the main stair. Every terrace was a battlefield. The exiles were good, disciplined, lethal, but there were too many raiders. Black-clad humans with void-runes branded into their faces, wargs, things that had once been elves but now moved wrong. And above them all, drifting like smoke given shape, a figure in a hooded cloak of living darkness, eyes burning cold blue.
Seraphin saw it too. "Wraith-captain," she spat. "Valthor's pet necromancer."
Kazeal's next arrow passed straight through the figure and buried itself in a stalactite. The wraith-captain smiled.
They reached the top terrace, the one that opened onto the rope bridge and the outside world, and found the last line of defence: six rangers in a half-circle, shields locked, facing twenty raiders and the wraith-captain gliding forward.
The scarred ranger from last night stood at their center, blood running down her face from a split brow."Fall back to the pool!" she roared. "Protect the seer!"
Too late. The wraith-captain raised one hand. Black ice exploded across the stone, flash-freezing three rangers where they stood. Their screams cut off as their lungs turned to crystal.
Kazeal skidded to a halt beside the scarred ranger. "How many left below?"
"Maerwyn and four. The rest are here or dead."
Seraphin stepped forward, palms blazing. "Then we hold the bridge. No one gets past us."
The wraith-captain tilted its hooded head, as though amused. Its voice slithered into their minds like cold oil.
The girl of living fire. Come quietly and the rest may live.
Lira felt the words crawl across her skin. Something inside her chest answered, hot, furious, almost eager.
She stepped past Kazeal and Seraphin.
"No," she said aloud
The heat that had been banked since Emberhollow flared white-hot behind her ribs.
The wraith-captain hissed and raised both hands. Shadows boiled toward her.
Kazeal and Seraphin moved at the same instant. Kazeal's arrow flew true this time, tipped with a shard of moonstone Seraphin had enchanted on the run. It punched through the wraith's chest and burst into silver fire. The creature shrieked, form unraveling.
Seraphin flung a sphere of violet flame that exploded mid-air, shredding the shadow tendrils.
And Lira simply opened her hands.
Fire answered.
It poured out of her like sunrise given teeth, gold and white and hungry. Raiders caught in its path didn't even have time to scream; they were ash before they hit the ground. The heat rolled over Kazeal and Seraphin without touching them, recognising its own.
When the light faded, the terrace was silent except for the crackle of cooling stone. The wraith-captain was gone. Only a scorched outline remained where it had hovered.
The surviving raiders broke and ran. The exiles let them go.
Lira swayed. Her knees buckled.
Kazeal caught her before she fell. His arms were shaking.
"Easy," he murmured against her temple. "I've got you."
Seraphin stared at the blackened circle where the wraith had been, then at Lira, eyes wide with something that might have been fear or hunger.
"Well," she said softly. "That was new."
From below came the sound of running feet. Maerwyn appeared at the top of the stair, leaning on a younger ranger, face streaked with soot but triumphant.
"The pool is safe," she called. "And the girl chosen by fire has shown her teeth."
She looked straight at Lira.
"Now," the seer said, "we talk about the price of miracles."
Behind her, the Hollow burned in patches, but it still stood. Bodies lay cooling. The air stank of blood and scorched magic.
Kazeal kept one arm around Lira's waist as though afraid she'd vanish if he let go. Seraphin stepped close on her other side, fingers brushing Lira's wrist, grounding.
Three heartbeats, synchronised. Whatever came next, they would face it like this: side by side, burning.