"Marra! Marra... it was just a dream!" Jax's voice cut through the haze as he leaned over her, eyes wide with concern.
She jolted upright, drenched in sweat—but her expression was focused. Determined.
She threw the blankets aside and shot out of bed pulling on her boots.
Jax followed, confused, calling after her. "Marra! What are you doing?"
"I need rope. Now." Her voice was sharp. Clipped. Commanding.
Jax didn't ask. He vanished into the supply closet without a word and came back with a coil of thick, reinforced rope.
She snatched the rope from Jax's hands before he could finish reading and met his eyes with a look that froze the breath in his lungs.
"Follow me! I need your help!" she barked — and gods help anyone who even thought about getting in her way.
Marra didn't wait. She tore down the corridor, skirts whipping behind her, vaulted the last three steps in one leap, slammed through the back door, and sprinted across the courtyard toward the treeline. Her soul knew where to go long before her mind did — she felt it like a hook tugging deep in her stomach.
Jax cursed and sprinted after her.
Troops were already flooding the courtyard, armor flashing in the torchlight, moving fast — too fast. None of these units were scheduled to be anywhere near here.
Something was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
Marra didn't stop until she hit the treeline. And there —
Three portals.
Standing like wounds torn open in the world, five feet apart, pulsing with a sick, unnatural light.
Aeron lay collapsed in front of them, unconscious, blood smeared across the ground.
Marra's heart dropped. Her body moved before her mind could.
She ran straight for the left portal — like something inside her pulled her there.
Aeron was collapsed on the forest floor, black rain hitting his back.
"Jax!" she shouted over the roaring wind pouring out of the rifts. "Help me get Cael — and don't let the rain touch you!"
Jax was staring at Aeron in horror and looked through the portal to see something else. His best friend collapsed in front of the near the second portal, motionless.
And the rain — if it could even be called that — was pouring out of the rifts sideways, like a storm being pushed through a door. Ink-black droplets that hissed when they hit the ground. Each drop burned the dirt like acid.
Instinct hit him hard. Jax tied the rope and in one fluid motion.
Loop. Twist. Throw.
It arced cleanly through the air.
Wrapped around Cael's torso.
Tightened.
War instincts roared awake inside him — sharp, cold, unstoppable. He braced his feet in the mud, muscles locking.
Jax pulled him through the portal dragging his body. There was no time to be gentle. Cael's body collapsed limp on the ground in front of the portal, part of his skin burned raw, muscle scorched, bone visible where his forearm had split open.
"Don't touch either of them!" Marra barked, already rushing forward.
Cael and Aeron lay motionless before the now-flickering portals, black smoke curling off their bodies like warning signals from the gods themselves.
Marra dropped to her knees between them. Her eyes burned gold.
Words spilled from her lips—not her words. Foreign. Ancient. Power-laced. Incantations she didn't know, yet her mouth moved like it remembered.
All three portals snapped closed with a sound like glass shattering underwater.
Jax froze behind her, stunned. "Is—Is Aeron channeling through you?" he asked shocked.
It felt like Aeron's magical signature in the air. He surprised himself with the fact that he even knew Aeron's signature but at this point, he did.
Marra didn't answer. Truth was—she didn't know.
"What do we do?" Jax asked, crouching beside her, eyes flicking to the scorched flesh on Cael's arm.
"Buckets of water. Protective gloves. Mindlink Elias now." Her voice was steel.
Jax obeyed instantly, sending out the alert just as the pounding of boots echoed down the corridor—Fin, sprinting.
His eyes landed on Cael's body—and the blood drained from his face.
"Don't touch him." Marra snapped, not even looking up.
Her eyes flared gold again. Her hands hovered above Cael and Aeron. More words flowed out of her, impossible syllables braided with ancient magic.
Black smoke rose from Cael and Aeron, curling violently upward — unnatural, sentient, and laced with dark magic.
Jax's eyes snapped open—sapphire, glowing with power. An orb of searing sapphire formed in his palm, his hand rising instinctively as if his body moved on ancient instruction. The orb pulsed once, then the black magic coming from their bodies hurdled towards it.
At the same moment, Fin's body ignited in gold. Pure, celestial light surged through him — a shield of golden energy wrapped around Marra, Jax, and himself, rising from beneath their feet in tight, body-shaped domes. The ground hissed where the magic made contact.
Between Fin's hands, a sphere of white light materialized, spinning slowly like a miniature sun. From the ground everywhere the rain had touched, black magic rose. It was drawn to it — howling, whistling, funneling into the orb in thick streams.
None of them — not Fin, not Jax, not Marra — understood what they were doing. It was as though they were conscious passengers in their own bodies. Aware, but not fully in control.
Colonel Sterling skidded into view, mid-sprint — only to slam into the edge of a fresh gold shield that formed around him on impact.
He froze, stunned. "Did it touch you?" Fin barked.
"No—Alpha," he managed, catching his breath.
Marra turned to him, eyes glowing gold. Her voice was hers, and yet not. Something ancient guided it. "Don't let it touch you. Keep every warrior away from this area."
Sterling stared. "Yes, Gamma."
"Wait for our orders before releasing anyone. We need to check all of them first." Her voice was steel. Commanding. Irrefutable.
Sterling nodded and vanished toward the eastern ridge.
Far away, Elle gasped in pain.
Her body jolted as if struck — an invisible force ripping through her chest. Elias, already tending others inside the ward, reached for her.
In the same breath, Fin mindlinked Elias:
Fin:Buckets of water. Cael and Aeron. They're alive, but we're losing them.
He left the link open to make Elle aware.
Elias: Yes, Alpha.
Jax just notified them, but when Elle collapsed, they paused to help her. At his mindlink, she stumbled away from him — out the door, across the courtyard to the edge of the forest.
As soon as she approached, Fin instinctively raised shields. Separate shield. Elle and Elias. Protective. Isolating.
Elias's assistants rushed behind them, and shield went up around each of them as well. Protecting them from black steam rising from the ground. The air tasted like ash and lightning.
More golden bubbles rose around them, encasing each like sanctified armor, even as dark magic hissed from the soil — reaching, grasping, but unable to pierce the light.
"On Cael and Aeron. Now." Marra commanded in a voice different than her own.
Elias stepped towards them, trying to ignore the fact that he was in a dome. To his surprise, when he poured it onto Cael's scorched chest, it went through the dome like air.
Steam exploded upward as the water struck his clothing and skin. None of it entered the dome.
At the edge of the shield, Elle screamed. "Let me go to him!" She threw herself against the golden barrier, sobbing. "Let me go—Fin, please—he's mine—LET ME GO!"
But Fin didn't lower the shield. Couldn't.