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And Orin’s body jerks.

He’s ripped back like a marionette yanked by an unseen string, his hand torn from Elias’s chest so fast it leaves a mark. He stumbles once, just once, then straightens as if he was never anything but obedient. His eyes flash toward me—toward Elias—before he turns.

He doesn’t fight the call.

He wouldn’t.

Not with Branwen’s hand wrapped around his will like a noose.

He walks to her side with the silence of a man who has already decided what parts of himself he’s willing to sacrifice.

And Elias watches him go, one hand pressed to the spot where Orin touched him, expression unreadable.

I shift my gaze across the battlefield, my vision drawn to the center where Riven and Lucien have locked into something far beyond combat. What unfolds between them isn’t a fight—it’s something older. A reckoning carved in flesh and fury, in pride and pain, between two beings built to conquer and doomed to collide.

Riven is all raw force and fractured restraint. His body glistens with sweat and blood, muscles straining under the weight of power he was never meant to hold for long. The runes etched into his skin pulse like they’re alive, like they’re trying to warn him he’s gone too far—but Riven’s past caring. Each movement is fueled by pain, by betrayal, by rage so thick it vibrates in the marrow of my bones. He’s lost in it now, slipping further with every breath he draws. Not because he wants to—but because he has no choice. His wrath doesn’t obey him. Itdevourshim.

Lucien, in contrast, is stillness wrapped in command. He moves like he doesn’t need to—like the world bends to him before he has to lift a hand. Even with blood blooming across his jaw and one sleeve torn, he looks untouched by the chaos. Pristine. Precise. His magic isn’t loud. It doesn’t burn or scream. Itpresses. A gravitational force that coils outward from his core, subtle and suffocating. His words, when he speaks, aren’t barked orders—they’re verdicts. Smooth. Final.

“On your knees,” Lucien says, voice low and deceptively calm. But the moment the command leaves his lips, the worldshifts. The air tightens, not with tension but authority, somethingancient and absolute. Not just magic—butdominion. And I feel it, thick and cold and suffocating as it slides over my skin.

Riven doesn’t collapse—but he wavers. His boot drags an inch in the dirt, not by choice but by instinct, his body caught between resistance and submission. His pride fights it, claws at it—but Lucien’s power doesn’t care. Itconsumesresistance. Itthriveson pride. The more Riven pushes back, the more it turns against him.

Lucien steps forward, head high, voice a blade honed on cruelty. “Kneel, Riven. That’s what you’ve always done best, isn’t it? Pretending to be fury when really, you’re just another soldier waiting for orders.”

Riven growls, but the sound is wrong—hoarse, unhinged. His hands tremble. Blood drips from split knuckles, his breath coming too fast, too ragged. I know that look. I’ve seen it before. He’s about tosnap.

And then he does.

The shift is instant. One heartbeat he’s resisting, the next heerupts. Power explodes off him in a burst that makes the Hollow flinch, the ground beneath him cracking in jagged lines. The runes on his body ignite, casting violent gold light across his skin as if his veins are alight. His scream tears through the space between them—not human, not even Sin anymore. Just rage made flesh.

He lunges, fists like sledgehammers. Lucien barely avoids the first hit, sidestepping with a flicker of grace—but the second catches him hard across the ribs. He stumbles. For the first time, he looksrattled.

Riven doesn’t stop. Hecan’t. The pain is fuel now, and he’s burning fast. Every strike lands harder than the last. Lucien tries to retaliate—flicks of command laced in whispers—but theybounce. Riven is too far gone for language, too deep in the berserker’s pull to be shaped by words.

Lucien’s Aura flares, hitting me like a lash. Guilt. Doubt. That creeping rot of inadequacy he weaves into every opponent—but Riven doesn’t evennotice. His pride isn’t shaken. It’sconsumedby wrath, and that makes him dangerous in a way Lucien can’t outwit.

Lucien’s control slips. His footing goes. And for one second, just one, he’s beneath Riven—his body slammed into the dirt, Riven’s knee on his chest, his fist drawn back.

But Riven doesn’t strike.

He’s breathing too hard, too fast, and his eyes… they’re not entirely his anymore. He’s lost in the flood. Friend. Foe. Meaning. It all blurs. He stares down at Lucien like he doesn’t recognize him—and I realize,he doesn’t. Riven’s fury is so deep, so blinding, he can’t see Lucien as anything other than the threat in front of him.

Lucien, for his part, doesn’t look afraid.

He looks furious.

Not because he’s losing—but because he’sbeneathRiven. Because someone dared to pin Pride to the ground. I see the flicker of magic building behind his eyes, the subtle gather of power to his tongue—another command, no doubt. Another attempt to reduce Riven toless.

But he won’t get the chance.

Riven’s fist slams down.

And the world fractures.

Caspian

There are six of him. All grinning with the same crooked smirk, daggers glinting in each hand like promises I never asked for. Shadows lick at the edges of their forms, too fluid to be natural, too sharp to be illusions—because they’re not. They're allreal. Not copies. Not tricks. Just Silas, multiplied by something dark and volatile. He’s stolen a power, probably without meaning to, probably because someone else had it first and that alone made him want it. Classic Silas. Take first. Think never.