The attack came three days later, at dawn when guards were tired and people were slowest.
Kaelen was in the warehouse training room, running through morning forms with Soulrender, when the alarm crystal flared red and began screaming. The sound—a high-pitched magical wail—meant only one thing: a Shadow Hunter position was under assault.
Selene burst into the room already armed and moving. "Eastern safe house, heavy assault, minimum twenty hostiles. Grab Lia and move. Now."
Kaelen didn't waste time with questions. He sheathed Soulrender and ran for Lia's quarters, meeting her in the hallway already pulling on her combat gear.
"Heard the alarm," she said tersely. "East house?"
"Yeah. Let's go."
They followed Selene through Eredor's waking streets at a dead run. Other Shadow Hunters materialized from various positions, all converging on the same location. By the time they arrived, smoke was already visible above the buildings.
The eastern safe house was three stories of reinforced stone that should have been nearly impregnable. Should have been. But as Kaelen rounded the final corner, he saw the defensive wards flickering and failing, shadow magic tearing through them like tissue paper.
Cultists in dark robes swarmed the entrance. Not the usual converted civilians or low-level shadow mages, but Marcus's elite—well-trained, well-equipped, and operating with military precision.
"They knew," Ronan growled, appearing beside Kaelen with his crossbow ready. "They knew our defenses, our shift schedules, everything."
"Or they've been watching long enough to learn our patterns," Selene replied, her silver eyes calculating angles and odds. "Doesn't matter now. We have seventeen people in that building—guards, analysts, three families under protection. We get them out."
"Through twenty cultists and whatever shadow magic they're throwing around?" one of the Shadow Hunters asked.
"Through," Selene confirmed. "Kaelen, Lia—you're front assault. Your resonance technique can disrupt their magic. Everyone else, flanking positions. We hit fast and hard."
Kaelen drew Soulrender, feeling the blade eager and ready. Beside him, Lia's hands already glowed with building rune-light.
"Like we trained?" she asked.
"Like we trained," he agreed.
They moved.
The cultists' attention was focused on breaking through the safe house's last defenses, which gave Kaelen and Lia precious seconds of surprise. They didn't waste it.
"Now!" Kaelen called.
They fell into the resonance sequence—shadow from Kaelen, purification from Lia, spiraling together faster and faster. The hybrid energy built between them, silver-blue and crackling with power. When it reached critical mass, they released it in a wave that swept across the entire entrance.
The effect was immediate and devastating to the cultists. Their shadow magic simply stopped working. Spells fizzled mid-cast. Corrupted weapons went inert. Defensive wards they'd erected collapsed.
And in that moment of confusion, the Shadow Hunters struck.
Ronan's crossbow sang, bolt after bolt finding targets with mechanical precision. Other Hunters poured in from the flanks, weapons and minor magic overwhelming the suddenly vulnerable cultists. In less than thirty seconds, half the assault force was down.
But these weren't amateurs. The cultists adapted fast, falling back to defensive positions, abandoning shadow magic for conventional weapons and tactics.
"They're regrouping!" Selene called. "Don't let them—"
The safe house's front wall exploded outward.
Kaelen barely had time to throw up a shadow barrier before debris rained down on their position. Through the dust and smoke, a figure emerged—tall, wreathed in shadow magic so dense it was almost solid, wielding a blade that pulsed with familiar, terrible power.
Not Marcus. But someone carrying a Forbidden Blade fragment—a piece of Mindbreaker or one of the lesser artifacts, channeling enough power to level buildings.
"Fall back!" Selene commanded. "Everyone fall back now!"
The figure raised his blade, and shadow energy coalesced into a massive projectile aimed directly at the clustered Shadow Hunters. If it hit, dozens would die.
Kaelen moved without thinking. He channeled everything he had into Soulrender—the absorbed corruption from weeks of site cleansing, his own trained skill, and the desperate need to protect everyone behind him. The resulting shield of shadow energy was the largest construct he'd ever created, a wall of darkness that met the cultist's attack head-on.
The collision of powers was catastrophic. Kaelen felt the impact through his entire body—bones rattling, teeth aching, soul straining. But the shield held. The attack dispersed harmlessly against it, and when the energy cleared, Kaelen was still standing.
Barely.
"Lia," he gasped. "Another resonance. Full power."
"That'll drain us both completely," she warned.
"Do it anyway."
They began the sequence again, but this time there was no build-up, no careful spiral. They poured everything they had into the resonance—weeks of practice, perfect synchronization, and absolute trust in each other. The hybrid energy exploded into being, not a wave but a focused beam that Kaelen directed at the fragment-wielding cultist.
The beam struck. The cultist's shadow armor shattered. His fragment blade cracked with an audible snap, leaking uncontrolled energy. And the man himself was thrown backward through the ruined safe house wall, crashing into rubble and moving no more.
Kaelen collapsed to one knee, vision swimming. Beside him, Lia swayed dangerously before Ronan caught her.
"They're retreating!" someone shouted. "Cultists are pulling back!"
Indeed, the surviving cultists were fleeing, dragging wounded with them, their assault broken by the resonance attacks and the loss of their leader. Within minutes, the battle was over.
But the safe house was a ruin. Fire spread through the upper floors. Bodies—both cultist and Shadow Hunter—lay scattered in the street. And through the smoke, Kaelen could see injured civilians being carried out by rescue teams.
"Casualties?" Selene demanded, already coordinating the response.
"Three Hunters dead, seven injured. Hostages... checking now."
Kaelen forced himself to stand, to help with the evacuation despite his exhaustion. Room by room, they cleared the building. Most of the civilians had survived, huddled in reinforced inner rooms. But not all.
Garrett's daughter—the younger one, maybe eight years old—was found crushed under a collapsed support beam. Dead before the rescue team even reached her floor.
Kaelen stood over the small, broken body and felt something crack inside him. They'd promised protection. He'd promised protection. And this child had died anyway because the Cult was willing to murder anyone to make a point.
"It's not your fault," Lia said quietly, appearing beside him.
"I promised her father we'd keep his family safe."
"We did. The rest of them survived."
"That's not enough."
"It never is." Lia's hand found his. "But it's all we can do. Save who we can, mourn who we lost, and keep fighting."
The cleanup took hours. By midday, temporary shelters had been arranged for the displaced civilians, wounded were in healers' care, and the dead had been respectfully covered and prepared for final rites.
Selene called a debrief in a nearby warehouse they'd commandeered for the purpose.
"This was escalation," she said without preamble. "Marcus is responding to our success with overwhelming force. He's willing to spend elite units and resources just to hurt us."
"Because we're actually threatening his plans," Ronan said. "The site cleansing is working. We're denying him corruption nodes, disrupting rituals, costing him time and resources. So he's trying to break our spirit."
"Is it working?" one of the Hunters asked.
Silence.
"No," Kaelen said firmly. "It's not. They killed three of us and one child. That's horrific. That's a tragedy we'll carry forever. But they lost eleven people including a fragment-bearer, failed to destroy the safe house completely, and didn't kill or capture anyone with strategic intelligence. They traded heavily for minimal gain."
"Spoken like someone calculating victory," Selene observed.
"Isn't that what we need right now? Clear-eyed assessment instead of emotional reaction?" Kaelen met her gaze. "I'm furious. I'm grieving. I want to make Marcus pay for every death he's caused. But feeling that way doesn't win wars. Action does."
"Then what do you propose?" Selene asked.
"We respond. Harder. Marcus escalated, so we escalate right back. Hit his highest-value targets, force him to defend instead of attack, show him that intimidation doesn't work on us."
It was Ronan who answered. "That means taking bigger risks. Potentially higher casualties."
"We're already taking casualties," Kaelen pointed out. "At least this way, we're trading them for something that matters."
The debate continued, but eventually a consensus emerged. They would shift from purely defensive operations to including offensive strikes. Target Cult leadership, supply caches, critical infrastructure. Make Marcus pay for every attack with losses he couldn't easily replace.
As the meeting broke up, Kaelen found himself alone with Lia in a quiet corner.
"Are you alright?" she asked softly.
"No," Kaelen admitted. "A child died because we weren't strong enough, fast enough, good enough. How is anyone supposed to be alright with that?"
"They're not. We're not." Lia took both his hands. "But we keep going anyway. Because stopping means more children die. That's the nightmare we're trapped in—the only way out is through."
"I hate this," Kaelen said quietly. "I hate that doing the right thing costs so much. I hate that we can't save everyone. I hate that Marcus sleeps soundly while we bury children."
"Then let's make sure he stops sleeping soundly." There was steel in Lia's voice. "We hit him where it hurts. We make him regret ever teaching you about Soulrender. We show him that choosing mercy isn't weakness—it's restraint we're choosing not to show him anymore."
Kaelen pulled her into a hug, needing the contact, the reminder that he wasn't facing this alone. They stood like that for a long moment, drawing strength from each other.
*Vengeance,* Soulrender observed. *You are learning what we have always known—sometimes, mercy must be set aside for justice.*
"Not vengeance," Kaelen corrected silently. "Justice. There's a difference."
*Is there?* the sword asked. *We shall see.*
Maybe there was a difference. Maybe there wasn't.
But either way, Marcus Blackwood had crossed a line.
And Kaelen Voss was going to make sure he regretted it.