Keiser could feel Muzio's mana before he even knew he was being pulled, cold, precise, and thrumming like a live current beneath his skin. It wasn't gentle. It never was. The sigil carved into his arm flared, molten light searing through veins already raw, before the world blinked out and snapped back in with a violent rush of pressure.

The air was thick with ash and mana. The taste of iron filled his mouth.

He didn't have time to breathe.

The arrow was already in motion, whistling through the dim, cutting through the smoke.

Keiser didn't think. He moved.

His hand shot out. The impact jolted through his hand. For a moment, he thought he had stopped it, until the searing mana laced within the arrow started to crawl through his palm like something alive, writhing and drilling forward.

He hissed, a sharp sound between clenched teeth, as blood burst from his hand in thin rivulets. The arrow's light shimmered, pressing, pushing, trying to force its way through him.

And then he realized where it was going.

Lenko.

Keiser twisted, throwing his weight backward, pushing the boy, shielding him with his own body. The impact sent them both staggering back, almost crashing into the tilted floor.

The scent of burnt cloth and scorched flesh filled his nose. His vision wavered, the edges swimming. He could feel the sigil on his body burning hotter now, Muzio's mana still gripping him, steadying him, keeping him here.

He looked up through the haze.

Olga stood at the far end of the crater, her bow still raised, her eyes wide, not the focused glare he remembered, but vacant, distant. The string trembled in her grasp.

Keiser's jaw tightened. He glanced down at his hand, at the arrowhead passed through his flesh, smoke rising from the already charred wound. His skin had blackened around it, mana still sizzling through the veins.

He swallowed the pain. His voice, when it came, was rough, but sharp enough to cut through the chaos.

"What the hell happened here?"

The words echoed across the broken floor, ringing through the silence that followed.

For a moment, no one answered.

Not the princess, not Tyron, not even Olga, whose hand was trembling as she lowered her bow, eyes glassy, fixed on something Keiser couldn't yet see.

Only the faint hum of mana, and the crackle of his own blood burning against the rune on his arm.

It rang in his ears, echoing through the wreckage, his voice cutting through the still-rising screams of beasts below and the frantic shouts of men somewhere deeper in the ruins below. The noise was growing louder, closer, crawling up through the undercroft.

Keiser's pulse pounded with it. He could feel the tremor of movement beneath the floor, the shifting weight of something large clawing its way upward.

He had left the dragon child down there. He remembered the tug at his cloak when he'd tried to bring her through the teleportation sigil, remembered how it failed, how the mana folded around him alone and tore her from his grasp.

A flicker of guilt twisted through his gut. He had meant to bring her. He had tried.

Now, as the noise below grew sharper, cracking wood, tearing metal, the wet snarl of beasts, he knew she was still there. He just hope that whatever barrier or rune she carried was still active…

He forced himself to glance away, toward Lenko. The boy was half-kneeling, one hand gripping Keiser's shoulder to steady him on the fractured, tilted floor. Everything around them leaned at a dangerous angle, yet it held, suspended in a way that defied weight or reason. The air shimmered faintly with mana, vines of light crawling along the edges of broken stone and splintered beams.

And in Lenko's other hand…

Keiser's eyes fixed on it.

The heart.

No longer beating, but still radiant, throbbing with slow pulses of mana that gleamed like molten gold veined with crimson. It wasn't flesh anymore, not truly. It was crystalized core, the condensed mana of something sacred.

The dragon's heart.

Tyron's mother's heart.

The thing they had risked the entire mission for.

Keiser's breath caught in his throat. He could feel the faint hum of it from where he stood, resonating against the sigil scorched into his own arm. His fingers itched, the old ache stirring, the part of him that knew what it meant to touch something so pure, so volatile.

He tore his gaze away only to catch sight of movement higher up across the ruined floor.

The sixth princess stood there amid the rubble, one hand pressed to her temple where blood trailed down her face, streaking the pale line of her neck. Her once-gold hair was no longer gold at all, its sheen shifting, deepening, strands bleeding into green.

It wasn't the light. It wasn't a trick of mana.

She was changing.

Her gaze met his, sharp, almost desperate.

A warning. A plea. Both at once.

Keiser felt the tension coil tighter in his chest. Whatever was happening, she was holding it together by sheer will, he could feel her mana thrumming through the floor, the same energy that kept the tilted structure from collapsing entirely into the crater below.

And beside her, Tyron.

Pale. Shaking. His hair was dusted with soot, one sleeve torn, blood staining the collar at his throat. He was gripping the princess's arm, either to hold her upright or to steady himself. Keiser couldn't tell. But his eyes, wide, flicking from Keiser to Lenko, then to the heart clenched in the boy's hand, said enough.

He knew what that was.

They all did.

Keiser's burnt hand throbbed in response, his heartbeat hammering against the charred flesh. The dragon's heart mana pulsed again, faintly, as if answering him.

Keiser's gaze lifted, slowly, warily, back up toward the upper level.

There stood Olga. Her expression was unreadable, carved in cold focus, her posture stiff but steady despite the shaking structure beneath her feet. And her eyes, those clear green eyes, usually soft and watchful, were nothing of the sort now.

Keiser's stomach turned, a deep unease threading through him.

He hissed through his teeth, his voice cutting low. "Did that damned elf come here…?"

He felt Lenko stiffen behind him at once, the boy's hand tightening at his shoulder. Keiser didn't turn right away. His boots skidded slightly on the uneven surface as he tested his footing.

"How did you…?" Lenko's voice trembled behind him, barely audible.

Keiser didn't answer at first. His right hand was still bleeding, the arrow's shaft buried deep in his palm. The wood burned faintly, black smoke curling where the mana seared the wound. Instead of pulling it out, he gritted his teeth, drew his dagger with his left hand, and, slowly, methodically, cut the arrow, slicing off both ends and leaving the slender middle still embedded in flesh.

Blood trickled down, hot and steady, splattering against the glowing runes beneath them. The golden light flickered in response.

He hissed again, this time from pain. "Because…" he rasped, his voice sharp between clenched teeth, "they have to be nearby for their curse to reach."

The words made Lenko's breath hitch behind him.

Keiser's eyes flicked back toward him, his tone heavy, almost grim. "That means…", he exhaled, low and certain, "it's almost midnight."

The words hung in the air like a warning.

And the sound of the bowstring snapping through the air was sharp.

Keiser moved before the sound even finished.

His instincts screamed louder than thought, muscle memory and training taking over. In one smooth motion, his dagger flashed from his hand, the steel catching the glow of the runes as he twisted to meet what he knew was coming.

Another arrow.

Olga had loosed again.

He'd heard that sound too many times before, knew the rhythm of her draw, the tension in her release, the precision of every shot. There was no archer like her.

Not among their ranks, not among the royal guard, not even among the sharpshooters who'd once sworn oaths to the temple. And worse, this wasn't any ordinary bow she wielded. It was a sacred weapon forged from a beast's bone and core, bound by ancient sigils.

Keiser had seen her arrows tear through solid shields, pierce through armor, and curve mid-flight to meet a target that had already moved.

He knew the truth... once Olga released her string, the arrow would hit its mark.

Unless he hit that mark first.

The thought flickered in his mind as fast as the arrow's gleam.

He pivoted, the floor groaning beneath him as the tilted surface threatened to drag them both toward the gaping crater below. He didn't have time to steady himself, not even to call out, only to act.

The dagger in his right hand burned from the blood seeping into its hilt, his still-injured palm stinging where the embedded shaft remained. He didn't care.

With a snarl, he swung.

Steel met mana-infused tip. The collision cracked the air, sparks of light scattering between them as the sacred arrow shattered off course.

At the same instant, his free hand shot out, shoving the boy behind him, hard.

"Little flame!"

"Fuc---Son of a---!"

Lenko's startled cry tore from his throat as his footing slipped, just as Keiser's shout for the dragon child somewhere below.

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