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I covered my mouth with both hands, holding back the sob building in my chest. My lungs screamed for air, but I didn’t dare breathe, didn’t dare make a sound that might betray us.

The creature hovered forward, wings brushing the ground, claws dragging lightly along stone as it moved between the tombs.

Samael didn’t breathe beside me, his body tense and unmoving, as though his very willpower alone might be enough to shield us.

My light flickered.

The creature twitched.

Its head turned toward us sharply.

And it charged—

I screamed, my spell flashing out of existence in a desperate, futile burst. The dark crashed over us, and I braced for its impact, every inch of me tensing for the ripping, the pain.

Steel sang through the air.

And the creature stopped.

A blur of movement—then a wet crack, deafening in the blackness, like a bone splitting beneath a hammer.

Blood exploded across the stone.

Warm droplets splattered across my face.

The creature collapsed with a horrible, gurgling shriek.

I blinked through the darkness, heart frozen.

Standing over the corpse was Leander.

The broadsword in his grasp gleamed with enchantment—etched with sigils that pulsed along the length of the steel, the edge slick with blood. His eyes were wild, his hair matted with sweat and grime.

“You okay?” he asked, panting.

I nodded dumbly, still crouched. “You—how did you find us—?”

“I didn’t,” he said, stepping over the ruined corpse. “I found that—and heard it hunting something. Followed it. Guess I was lucky.”

I scrambled up, adrenaline making my limbs shake.

Samael exhaled sharply from behind me, pressing one hand to his side as he rose.

“You’re bleeding again. I need to finish healing you,” I said, rushing to his side.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not—”

“I said I’m fine. We can finish healing it once we are out of here,” he repeated, more softly this time.

Leander watched him narrowly, then stepped past us both. “This way,” he said, pointing toward a narrow arch near the back of the chamber. “I think Lydia and Bethany went through there. There was a ward on the door—faint. Recent.”

I hesitated, glancing down at the creature.

Its body was already decaying—disintegrating into shadow and ash. Only its blood remained. And the whisper of its clicks still echoed in my skull.

“What was that thing?” I asked.

Leander’s jaw was tight. “A Nightshade Wraith. Or something close to it. Thought they were extinct.”

“Apparently not,” Samael muttered.

I looked at him again.

He was pale.

The wound on his chest had reopened. The healing spell I’d cast had bought us time, but not enough.

He caught me looking and shook his head. “Later.”

I clenched my jaw.

There might not be a later.

Still, I nodded.

The three of us turned toward the narrow passage Leander had indicated, and we moved. Slowly. Carefully. Every echo was a threat. Every corner a promise of something worse.

The path was forward now, and we weren’t alone.

The catacombs stretched ahead of us, curving into tighter halls lined with sealed tombs and crumbling stone alcoves. Our footsteps were cautious now, the threat of more nightmarish creatures keeping our senses taut.

For the moment, there was no danger. Just silence. Cool, heavy silence, broken only by the occasional drip of water echoing somewhere far in the dark.

Samael moved with effort, his breathing shallow. I stayed close to him, watching the way his jaw tensed with each step. Leander led the way, blade still drawn, eyes flicking over every shadow.

No one spoke at first.

Then Leander broke the quiet.

“When we got separated,” he began, his voice low, almost reverent in the quiet, “I tried to follow. I didn’t even think. The wall came down so fast I barely had time to blink. One second, we were behind you, the next—stone and dust.”

He glanced over his shoulder at us. “I thought you were gone.”

“We thought the same about you,” Samael said. His tone was even, but beneath it, I heard the weight of guilt. “That knight would’ve taken us both if Elvana hadn’t dropped half a temple on it.”

Leander gave me a brief, wry smile. “I’m not surprised. I always knew Elvana was a force to be reckoned with.”

“I just got lucky,” I blushed.

“So, how’d you end up down here?” Samael asked, wincing slightly as he adjusted the way he leaned against the wall. “This place isn’t exactly obvious.”

“I found a stairwell,” Leander said. “Hidden behind a collapsed mural. It wasn’t marked, just—felt wrong. Like the air shifted. I followed it, hoping it might connect with wherever you’d fallen. It didn’t. Not at first.”

He paused, tapping the sword gently against his leg.

“That’s when I found this.”

I looked at the blade again—long, two-handed, its hilt wrapped in dark leather worn smooth by age. Sigils were etched into the steel, glowing faintly with a silvery light.

“It was mounted in a stone coffin,” he went on. “No name. No plaque, but the runes on the walls—they weren’t like the ones above. Older. Pure enchantment.”

He hesitated.

“I think it’s a relic.”

Samael raised an eyebrow. “You pulled a relic sword from a tomb?”

“I pulled a useful sword from a tomb,” Leander corrected dryly. “One that just happened to slice a flying demon in half, so you’re welcome.”

I gave him a sideways glance. “And it just—let you take it?”

Leander shrugged. “Maybe it liked me.”

“Or maybe it knew we’d need it,” Samael murmured, less amused. “If this place is crawling with more of those wraiths—”

Leander’s expression darkened. “Then we find the others and get out of here fast.”

I nodded. “We have to. Bethany screamed. She sounded terrified.”

“We should’ve never split,” Leander said, more to himself than anyone else. “Not in a place like this.”

“But we did,” I said, “and now we fix it.”

Leander slowed near another fork in the passage, holding his blade up to catch the light of my Lucenara spell. The tunnels branched left and right—one descending further, the other curving upward at a shallow angle.

He glanced back at me. “Which way?”

I paused, focusing.

The Raven’s Echo pulsed once—warm against my chest. I closed my eyes. The image of the ruined tower blazed behind my eyelids.

“Up,” I said. “The tower. Samael and I saw it from the courtyard. Glowing windows, high above the walls. That’s where we need to go. I don’t know why, but I know that’s where these leads.”

Leander gave a short nod. “Then that’s where we’ll find them.”

Samael’s voice came quietly beside me. “If they’re hurt—”

“They’re not,” I said before he could finish. “They can’t be. They’re waiting for us.”

He didn’t argue.

Together, the three of us turned up the path, the stone groaning beneath our feet as we rose—slowly, but surely—toward the surface, and whatever waited at the top.

The passage curved one final time before the chilly night air struck my face like a blessing.

We emerged through a jagged break in the catacomb wall, stepping into what must’ve once been a stone garden—now just a patch of open ground half-swallowed by brambles and broken pillars.

The ruins stretched above us in jagged silhouettes, and the sky had begun to pale from midnight to indigo, stars slowly blinking out overhead.

There, in the garden—I saw them.

Bethany was sitting against the wall, one leg extended, the other bent.

Her topaz green leggings were torn and stained, and she was grimacing as Lydia knelt in front of her, gently pulling off her boot.

Her hands were glowing softly at the fingertips, magic pulsing faintly, her brows drawn in focus.

Lydia looked up at the sound of our approach—and her face crumpled.

“Elvana!” she cried, scrambling to her feet.

She ran to me, arms wrapping around my shoulders in a crushing embrace that nearly knocked the breath from my lungs. I clung to her in return, her warmth anchoring me, the smell of parchment and lavender familiar and grounding.

“You’re safe,” she whispered. “I thought—gods, I thought—”

“We’re okay,” I breathed, voice thick. “We’re here.”

She pulled back just enough to look at me—then shifted to Leander.

Without hesitation, she stepped into his space and cupped his jaw, lifting herself to kiss him softly on the lips.

I blinked.

Leander froze for a heartbeat—then melted into her, his arms winding around her waist, holding her like he’d been waiting years instead of hours.

Samael made a soft sound beside me. “Finally.”

I elbowed him lightly.

Lydia pulled away, cheeks flushed, eyes wet, and turned to return to Bethany without a word of explanation. None was needed.

I hurried over and dropped to my knees beside Bethany. She offered me a shaky smile.

“Nice of you to show up,” she muttered. “We were just discussing how abandoned we felt.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, scanning her for signs of anything worse than her ankle.

“Yeah, well—aside from falling through a rotted floor and nearly getting eaten alive by shadow demons, I’d say I’m having a great night,” she said with a tired grin.

“What happened?” Samael asked, crouching nearby.

Lydia was already back at work, her hands pressed gently to Bethany’s swollen ankle, magic flowing soft and steady.

Bethany exhaled. “After we got separated, this creepy shadow thing came crawling down the corridor. All long limbs and creepy clicks. We tried to outrun it, but I tripped and went straight through a patch of floor that gave way. Dropped like ten feet, maybe more.”

“She twisted her ankle,” Lydia said, not looking up. “Badly.”

“I heard her scream and jumped down after her,” Lydia continued. “We couldn’t get back up, and we had no idea where you were, so we found cover. Waited it out.”

“Hid behind a broken slab and didn’t breathe for a solid hour,” Bethany added. “It sniffed around for a while, then just—vanished. Like it melted into the floor.”

“That’s when we found a crack in the wall that led back out here,” Lydia said. “I think it was part of a collapsed corridor. It got us away from the thing, but Beth needed rest.”

“I’m fine now,” Bethany said, wincing as the last bit of Lydia’s healing spell stitched through her tendons. “Well. Almost.”

She tried to smile, letting out a shaky laugh that was part sob.

Samael stood and offered his hand to Bethany, helping her up.

I glanced at the tower in the distance. The light still burned behind its broken windows.

“We’re close,” I said. “I don’t know what waits inside, but we made it this far.”

Leander brushed his thumb against Lydia’s hand. “Then we finish this together.”

Bethany stood, wobbling only slightly, and gave me a determined look. “Lead the way, Elle.”

The path beyond the courtyard narrowed again, flanked on either side by crumbling stone. Whatever gardens or walkways once thrived here had long been consumed by twisted roots and frost-bitten ivy. The ruins climbed high and wild around us, silent as tombs.

We moved in a loose formation now, each of us worn and wary—Bethany leaning slightly on Leander, Lydia clutching her satchel tighter than usual, Samael still moving slower than he let on, though he refused help.

I kept to the front, the glow of my spell casting long shadows against the ruined walls.

The tower glimmered faintly ahead of us, its fractured peak lost to the night sky. From this distance, I could see its base was partially sunken into the earth, the foundation shattered in places as though the ground had tried to swallow it whole.

“We’re almost there,” I said, more to myself than the others.

The Raven’s Echo pulsed softly against my chest, its voice a hushed murmur in the back of my mind—not with warning, but recognition. “This place—it knows you.”

We passed what might have once been a grand hall—though now it was only a sunken depression in the stone, half-filled with debris and melted snow.

Ancient archways loomed over us like the ribs of some great beast long dead.

Columns lay broken, their carvings worn down to almost nothing.

Here and there, fragments of stained glass littered the floor like scattered jewels, catching the light from my spell and reflecting in fractured patterns across the walls.

Bethany stepped over a pile of rubble and gave a low whistle. “You sure this place won’t collapse on top of us?”

“No,” Samael muttered, “but we can’t stop now.”

“We’ve made it this far,” Lydia said, voice quiet. “It would be a shame to turn back just before we learn what’s inside.”

As we moved deeper, the air changed—thicker, colder. Charged.

Magic, old and half-forgotten, clung to the stone here. Every step forward felt like trespassing on something sacred. Or cursed.

We passed beneath a broken archway, and suddenly the ruins opened up again.

We stood at the base of the tower.

It loomed above us, taller than I’d imagined—its stone dark with moss and time, windows like empty eyes peering down. The soft golden glow from earlier still shimmered faintly in one of the upper chambers, like a single candle refusing to die.

The entry was choked with fallen stone, the original door long collapsed. To the right, a narrow set of worn steps ascended into the tower—partially hidden by vines and half-fallen archways. The tower, it seemed, had more than one way in.

“That’s our path,” Samael said, nodding toward the side passage.

“Looks safe,” Leander added dryly.

“It’s not,” Lydia said.

Yet we moved forward anyway.

Because the tower had waited long enough, and whatever truth lay inside—it was time to face it.