They were escorted down a corridor that seemed to constrict a little more with every step, as if the keep itself were drawing breath and exhaling around them in a slow, oppressive rhythm that made the very air feel thicker. The walls were built from uneven blocks of stone that had been darkened over years of smoke, moisture, and violent histories now lost to memory. Torchlight clung to those surfaces with a sickly sheen, creating shifting patterns that made the stones resemble bruised flesh. The soldiers walking alongside Aros and the others did not speak, but their breathing betrayed them: steady, strained, the breathing of men who had been commanded to expect trouble and were silently praying that none would come.

  Gemma stirred faintly in Aros’s arms, a fragile shiver passing through her. Her skin felt too hot, burning against his chest as though fever and exhaustion had fused into something heavier, something that weighed not only on her body but on the air around her.

  Linard led them forward, holding a torch high in front of him. Its flame bent and recoiled with every draft of air that wafted through the corridor, stretching his shadow across the walls in gigantic, broken shapes. At one moment he seemed impossibly tall, and in the next he appeared diminished, consumed by a darkness that swallowed his outline as though the keep wished to erase him entirely. When they reached a bend in the passageway, a second torch flickered farther ahead, creating the illusion of another figure waiting just beyond sight. They found no one there. Only stone. Only silence.

  The corridor curved down, and they descended a final staircase carved directly into the bedrock, the steps worn concave over generations of feet: boots marching with purpose, boots fleeing in panic, boots dragged by prisoners who had lost the strength to resist. A cold current of air rose from below, carrying a scent that suggested damp earth and secrets forgotten for too long. Aros felt Gemma’s breath falter against him.

  Legs muttered something under his breath as he walked, an indistinct string of half-thoughts he used whenever fear crawled too close to the surface, though this time even his compulsive finger-tapping had stopped. That stillness worried Aros more than anything Legs could have said.

  Seren Dal moved like a man carrying a weight far older and heavier than his armor, his shoulders rounded, his eyes fixed ahead as though every step demanded conscious effort. Digiera, deprived of her knives, looked incomplete, yet her posture carried the unmistakable poise of someone who needed only her hands to become dangerous.

  At the base of the stairs stood a barred gate. Linard paused before it, lowering the torch instead of immediately reaching for the lock. The gesture had the quality of a warning, as though he wanted the prisoners inside to see light before they heard the scrape of iron, as if announcing himself gently could soften what would follow.

  A faint rustle stirred within the shadows beyond the bars. Linard let out a slow breath.

  “They are here,” he murmured, his voice subdued, and then he slid the bolt free.

  The metal groaned, a sound that echoed along the stone like the sigh of something ancient beneath the keep.

  Aros stepped through first, adjusting Gemma’s weight carefully in his arms. The cell was larger than he expected, a half-circle carved directly into the keep’s foundation. Its floor was rough and uneven, as though it had been chiseled in haste, and the ceiling dripped steadily, each drop landing with a patient persistence that spoke of long, unbroken confinement. The air smelled of damp stone, stale sweat, and that familiar iron tang that always accompanies fear, even when no one acknowledges it.

  Shapes shifted in the dim light as several figures turned toward them.

  Broko was the first Aros noticed. He rose abruptly, broad-shouldered despite the exhaustion clinging to him, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and soot. The abruptness of his movement startled Harla, who sat beside him with her back straight and her expression guarded.

  “Saints, Aros,” Broko breathed, his voice cracking under the weight of too many sleepless hours.

  His eyes dropped to Gemma immediately. “Is she… is she alive?”

  Aros knelt and eased Gemma onto a cloak that someone had folded and laid over the stone. She seemed too light, too frail. He placed a hand on her cheek for a moment, grounding himself before he answered.

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  “We found her outside the city,” he said. “Beaten. Fevered. Barely conscious.”

  Broko blinked rapidly, as though torn between the impulse to rush to her side and the fear of what he might see if he did.

  “There were bodies around her,” Aros added quietly. “At least a dozen. Lexordo among them.”

  The name landed like a stone dropped into still water. Broko exhaled sharply, and in that exhale there was no grief for Lexordo, only a conflicted combination of relief and disgust.

  “Lexordo,” he muttered. “I won’t pretend I mourn him. But Gemma… if she lost control again, that worries me more than anything else.”

  Toward the back of the cell, Seravin stood motionless, watching with an expression carved from the exhaustion of someone who had run out of language. Harla, her braid half burned and her face streaked with soot, kept shifting her gaze between Aros, Linard, and the guards outside the bars. Every movement suggested calculation, as though she were triangulating every possible threat and every potential exit.

  And then Aros’s gaze reached Candriela.

  She had not risen when they entered. She had not moved at all. She simply stared at Gemma with an expression so profoundly empty that it unsettled Aros more than anything else in the room. Her eyes were open, fixed, but devoid of any flicker of emotion. No anger. No fear. No tenderness. Nothing that resembled the Candriela he knew.

  It was a silence deeper than silence, a blankness that felt like the aftermath of something catastrophic.

  Aros swallowed hard. He told himself he would ask her later, because whatever hid behind that emptiness was not meant to be unraveled in the presence of so many witnesses.

  Linard stepped further into the cell, lifting the torch enough that its light spilled across his features. He looked older than he had hours ago, as though guilt had carved fine lines around his eyes, pulling his expression downward.

  “This is not what I wanted,” he said. “Any of it.”

  No one responded. The silence that followed was not accusatory; it was simply a space that did not need to be filled.

  Linard lowered his gaze and stepped back through the gate, closing it behind him with hands that trembled slightly. The lock slid shut with a finality that seemed to chill the air.

  When his footsteps had faded into the corridor, Aros turned to Broko with quiet urgency.

  “What happened?”

  Broko dragged both hands down his face, as though trying to scrub away the memory.

  “They came before dawn,” he said. “The Valval Priesthood’s forces. No heralds. No messages. Just armor, torches, and that symbol painted on their shields.”

  Aros felt Digiera stiffen beside him.

  Broko continued. “Rupert Din saw them first. You remember Rupert. The boy who sharpened everyone’s blades even when no one asked.”

  Aros nodded slowly.

  “He stepped forward,” Broko said. “Only to ask what they wanted. He didn’t even finish the sentence. They executed him where he stood.”

  Harla turned away. Seravin closed his eyes.

  “Everything broke after that,” Broko whispered. “The line fell apart. People ran. Others fought blindly. I tried to reorganize them, but there was nothing left to hold. Just fire. Panic. Screaming.”

  His fists tightened until his knuckles whitened.

  “I wasn’t ready. I should have been ready. If you had been there…”

  “Broko,” Aros said gently, cutting him off, “this was not your fault.”

  Broko released a sound that was meant to be a laugh but came out as something hollow and painful.

  “Yes, it was. They trusted me. And I failed them before the first blade was drawn.”

  Aros shook his head, but Broko was no longer looking at him; his eyes had retreated into a landscape made entirely of guilt.

  After a long moment, Broko spoke again.

  “Renn and Maria are dead. Cut down at the north barricade.”

  He swallowed hard.

  “And Talon… I haven’t seen Talon since the attack began.”

  Legs looked up sharply, his expression suddenly alert.

  “You don’t think Talon could have talked, do you?”

  Broko flinched. Aros did not.

  “No,” Aros said. “There is no possibility. Talon was our first defender, our first shield. She would never betray the Knights of Light. And if she is alive, she is still fighting.”

  Silence drifted through the cell once more, heavier now.

  A droplet fell from the ceiling and struck the stone with a soft pat that sounded far too loud.

  Gemma inhaled.

  Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing eyes clouded with fever and exhaustion. She did not look at Aros or Broko or Digiera.

  Her gaze traveled across the room, slow and deliberate, until it reached Candriela.

  Candriela’s expression did not change immediately. But her eyes sharpened almost imperceptibly, catching on some recognition or memory or private truth that Gemma alone seemed to draw out of her.

  Then Candriela spoke, her voice soft and unshaken.

  “Hello, Snowy.”

  Gemma blinked, as though waking from a dream where that name had already been spoken.

  Aros felt something shift in the air, a quiet and seismic change.