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“They are blocking the path.”

Fifteen hunters between us and safety. An army with coordinated precision that speaks of careful planning and inside knowledge of our location.

This isn’t random. This is assassination with military planning behind it.

Kieran’s jaw tightens as he catalogs our situation—odds, ammunition, energy reserves. All the calculations painting the same picture.

We’re fucked.

Then his hand moves to his chest, fingers pressing against dark patterns that pulse beneath his blood-soaked shirt. The lines writhe like living things, responding to his touch with eager hunger.

“There is another way,” he says grimly, voice carrying the weight of prices about to be paid.

“What—”

Agony rips across his features. The dark lines beneath his skin flare with violent silver light, writhing through his torso like lightning trapped under glass. His back arches as something buried in his very essence responds to his desperate summons.

The sound hits first—bone cracking under pressure, cartilage tearing as something foreign forces its way through flesh designed to contain it. Then the blood, darker than human red, spraying in arterial patterns as his chest tears open from within.

The spear erupts through his sternum like it’s been living inside him his entire life.

Six feet of gleaming silver with runes that writhe like living things along its length. Ancient magic rolls off it in waves that buckle my knees and make reality itself seem negotiable. The weapon pulses with its own heartbeat, silver light bleeding from symbols that hurt to look at directly.

The Spear of Truth. One of the Four Treasures.

Living inside Kieran’s chest. Part of his flesh and bone and beating heart.

“Holy shit.”

His smile is sharp as winter wind, ice-blue eyes holding agony that goes deeper than physical pain. Blood streams down his chest where the manifestation tore through skin and muscle. “Indeed.”

The hunters freeze as the Spear’s power washes over them like a tsunami of absolute authority. This isn’t just ancient magic—it’s royal magic, the kind that wrote the laws reality follows.

More than that—recognition flickers in their eyes. They know what they’re seeing.

“The Unseelie heir bears the Spear,” one whispers, voice carrying across the sudden silence. “The treasure hidden for centuries.”

“Stand down,” Kieran commands, voice carrying the weight of mountains and the finality of winter. Silver light bleeds from his eyes as the Spear’s power flows through him.

They resist—elite forces trained against magical compulsion, disciplined enough to fight divine authority.

Kieran’s expression shifts to something colder than arctic wind.

“I said STAND DOWN.”

This time, the Spear doesn’t ask. It demands with the voice of creation itself.

Every hunter drops to their knees as if yanked by invisible chains, armor clattering against stone as they’re forced into submission. But their eyes remain alert, calculating, recording everything they witness.

They’ve seen too much. They know too much.

Kieran’s expression shifts to the cold calculation I recognize from my own mirror. Professional assessment. Tactical necessity.

“Close your eyes,” he says quietly, voice gentling in a way that makes my stomach drop.

“What?”

“Close your eyes, troublesome thing. Trust me.”