Thunk.

  The sound came from somewhere beyond the reach of our Holy Light, a hard metal impact against stone that the corridor carried too well. Each strike nded with enough force to suggest weight behind it.

  Thunk. Thunk.

  Footfalls.

  Fast.

  Pulseweaver snapped up. Light gathered between its prongs with a dry, crackling hiss, and another bolt unched down the corridor.

  The fsh carved the darkness into sharp shapes for a heartbeat... then colpsed into bck.

  The thumping did not slow.

  If anything, it accelerated.

  "Steady..." a padin commanded, dragging out the st sylble. He pnted his feet and raised his shield higher, angling it to overp with the man beside him. The line tightened, shields locking with practiced efficiency.

  They were trying to sound calm, but their hands gave them away.

  I watched the nearest padin's grip whiten around his hilt as he shifted his stance. The priest behind him swallowed hard enough that I saw his throat move.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunkthunkthunk.

  The strikes came close together now, a fevered rhythm that made the stone under my boots feel like it was vibrating.

  "Hold!" the same padin snapped, as if volume could substitute for certainty.

  The sound climbed past footsteps and became something dragged and smmed forward, again and again, with no pause for breath.

  Then the darkness broke.

  A humanoid shape barreled into the reach of the light and did not stop. It was tall and thick-limbed, shoulders squared, head low in its chest.

  Metal ptes caught the light and fshed dull gray, edges bolted and riveted like a patchwork of salvaged craft.

  It hit the shield wall like a battering ram.

  The padins lurched backward three feet in unison, boots scraping stone. Shields groaned under the impact. A few men stumbled, caught by the overp of the line and dragged back into position by sheer weight and discipline.

  For a moment, they held.

  Just barely.

  The creature shoved into them with a second heave, metal grinding against metal. Then before anyone could fully register it, it withdrew.

  It didn't turn.

  It reversed in pce. Not moving like anything alive. It vanished back into the corridor as quickly as it had come, leaving the line stumbling into emptiness.

  A breath went through the group, almost a ugh of relief that no one dared let out fully.

  "Is it over?" Tomás began.

  "No," I said, quiet but sharp. I lifted a hand. "Listen."

  They did.

  At first there was nothing but armor settling and the thin hiss of Holy Light above us. The corridor returned to its stale, dust-heavy stillness.

  Then, from the dark again:

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  It was resetting for another charge.

  The padin with the barked orders swore under his breath. "Brace."

  Seraphine's eyes narrowed. "Oh, for the love of..."

  She drew power like she was yanking it up by force. Pulseweaver hummed. Threads of violet-white light gathered so bright they edged into blue.

  "Incoming," someone warned, voice tight.

  The thumping accelerated, then turned into a continuous rattle. The shape burst into view again, low and fast.

  Seraphine fired.

  And hit center mass.

  The creature's chest fred red-hot where the lightning kissed the metal, heat blooming outward in a brief, ugly radiance.

  But it didn't slow.

  It hit the shields again, harder.

  The line buckled. One padin went down to a knee with a grunt. Another's shield edge slipped, exposing a gap for a heartbeat.

  The creature shoved into that weakness like it had been waiting for it.

  "Lock!" the leader roared.

  The men hauled themselves back into alignment, pushing shoulder to shoulder. Shields smmed together. The gap closed. The creature's forward motion stalled for a fraction of a second.

  Then it withdrew again, jerking backward into darkness as if pulled by a rope.

  The only trace it left was the smell of hot metal, faint and sharp, and the ringing in my ears from Seraphine's discharge.

  A priest beside me let out a sound that might have been a prayer.

  The padins adjusted their footing. One man spat blood onto the stone and wiped his mouth with the back of his gauntlet.

  "Let's fall back," someone said. Not the leader this time. Another padin, farther back, voice steadier than the look in his eyes. "This is a choke. If it's territorial over this corridor, there's no reason to bleed for it."

  It was the sensible call.

  I had said as much earlier. This was a dead end.

  And yet my mind had already turned, gears clicking into pce with cold certainty.

  "We have to stay," I said, jaw tight. "We have to beat it."

  They looked at me, faces half-lit by Holy Light. The leader's eyes narrowed. "Miss Cire—"

  Seraphine snapped toward me, incredulous. "You literally just told us there's no point going further."

  I swallowed. "I was wrong."

  The leader's jaw flexed. "On what grounds should we risk ourselves here?"

  "Because I recognize that thing," I said, keeping my voice low. Keeping it from turning into the kind of urgency that spreads.

  Seraphine's expression shifted, irritation sharpening into something more attentive.

  "It's not stone this time," I said. "But it's simir. The same kind of build. Those shoulders. That gait. The way it uses its weight like a weapon."

  Seraphine's eyes widened, just a fraction.

  "Nyxara's work," she breathed. "A golem."

  I nodded.

  Fast. Strong. Unreasonably agile for how rge they were. Built to overwhelm.

  I grimaced. It only occurred to me now that I was experiencing it here in the flesh—Nyxara had probably modeled them after the warriors of the First Men.

  "That means something," I continued. "If this golem is here, committing this much to an empty corridor... then it's probably guarding one of the seal's focal points."

  Seraphine's mouth tightened.

  Here, deep in a fortress with an enemy she intended to imprison forever, Nyxara would need something stable. Persistent. Something that wouldn't decay with time.

  The golem's survival was the clue.

  Her constructs in the Forest had been strong, but they weren't built to st long. Only long enough to defend their home, after which point they would crumble, returning to the earth.

  So what fed this one? What kept it going after all these centuries?

  "There's got to be something sustaining it," I said. "A mana source. A crystal, maybe. Or an active conduit."

  Seraphine's gaze flicked down the corridor. Toward the waiting dark.

  The leader dragged in a breath. His eyes flicked across his men, assessing injuries, posture, fatigue. "We are not equipped for repeated impacts. A third hit like that and we may lose the line."

  "Then we don't take a third hit the same way," I said.

  Seraphine's expression turned intent. "You have a pn?"

  "Yes—"

  Thunk.

  Our heads snapped to the sound.

  "Just hold it here," I said quickly. "Get arms around it and keep it from retreating again."

  Seraphine inhaled sharply. "Fine."

  She pivoted, staff angled down. Light gathered once more, only this time it bled away. Into something colder.

  Thunk. Thunkthunkthunk.

  "Shields!" the leader barked, voice rougher now.

  The padins braced, lower this time, shields pnted at an angle like the face of a barricade.

  The golem burst out of the darkness.

  Krak.

  Frost crawled across the stone floor in a slick, pale sheet, spreading out from Seraphine's boots into the corridor like a spill.

  The golem hit the edge of the ice at speed. Its forward momentum carried it, but now it skidded, friction screaming. The metal of its soles threw sparks as it tried to correct.

  It smmed into the shield wall off-bance.

  The line still jerked backward, but not as far. The golem's limbs filed for traction. Its hands, too rge and too blunt, scraped uselessly at the smooth frost.

  "Now!" I shouted.

  The padins surged.

  They threw weight onto its arms, its shoulders, its torso, trying to pin it and keep it from sliding back into the corridor. Tomás hooked an arm around its neck like he was wrestling a man. Another padin jammed his shield edge under its elbow joint and levered, teeth gritted, trying to lock it.

  A dogpile.

  The golem swung wildly. Not with intent, but with force.

  A backhand caught one padin across the helmet and smmed him into the wall hard enough that I heard the impact through the armor. He crumpled, dropped like a puppet with cut strings.

  A second man went flying, boots leaving the ice, then skidding across the stone with a strangled shout.

  A priest staggered forward, but the leader grabbed him by the colr and yanked him back. "Stay behind the line!"

  The golem thrashed. Metal scraped. Men swore. Someone screamed as a gauntlet pinched between ptes and twisted.

  They were struggling, but by some miracle, they held.

  That was my window.

  I ducked under a swinging arm, feeling the dispced air brush my hair, then slid low across the ice on my knees, palms out for bance. Pain fred at the impact, but I ignored it.

  "Cire!" I heard Seraphine's voice call out.

  It was too te. I was already past the pile, already running.

  The corridor beyond was darker than it had any right to be, even with Holy Light fring above me. The light moved as I ran, jittering as my arms pumped, shadows jumping along the walls.

  Doors. More doors. Iron bands. Dust.

  My eyes strained for anything else.

  The cmor behind me had dulled, the grind of metal faded to a distant, arrhythmic thunder. The golem was still trapped—still tearing at the line by brute force—but the corridor was swallowing the sound.

  I ran toward the far end where the darkness narrowed into deeper shadow.

  Then I saw it.

  A glow.

  Not the pale reflection of Holy Light, but something colder. Steadier.

  I stopped in front of a door, breath tight, chest heaving. The dim light was coming from a small aperture, a narrow opening set too high for me to look through without effort.

  I jumped, fingers catching the iron rim. My shoulders jolted. I hauled myself up enough to press my face to the opening.

  Inside was another cell, not empty.

  A runic circle was etched into the stone floor, lines precise and faintly luminescent. I recognized them as Nyxara's. They were elegant in the way a knife is elegant.

  Above it, seated like a heart inside a body, was a mana crystal the size of a person's head.

  Its surface pulsed softly, feeding the circle with a slow, insistent rhythm.

  A keystone.

  I dropped back to the floor and grabbed the door handle with both hands.

  I pulled. Then pushed. Either way, it did not yield.

  I pnted my boots and tried again, muscles straining. The door might as well have been fused to the frame.

  Of course.

  It was built for bodies rger than mine. Built to be locked and stay locked.

  I reached into my satchel.

  Thunk.

  I froze. The sound rang out from behind me.

  It was close.

  Too close.

  I pivoted, eyes wide, searching the darkness.

  Thunk. Thunk.

  My stomach dropped.