Darius sprinted through the twisting corridors of the Keep, his boots echoed like war drums in a tomb. The Spirit of Death throbbed in his grip like a second pulse, yet it did not drag him into that dreadful trance as it had before.

  The blade felt different now—dense and solemn, as though burdened by the memory of the blasted plain it had shown him.

  Whatever force had torn his mind from his body and cast him into that desolate vision had withdrawn, leaving only a lingering chill behind his eyes. He would have to confront that mystery later. For now, there was no space for doubt.

  He forced the unease down into the pit of his stomach and ran.

  Screams trailed him as he passed cell after cell. Terror spilled through iron bars and beneath warped doors like a living thing.

  A woman’s voice drifted after him, broken and feverish, muttering about drowning in milk that filled her lungs and burned like acid. From another cell came the trembling whisper of a boy, probably no older than fifteen, calling for his mother in a voice that cracked with despair.

  Darius did not slow.

  Each cry struck him like an arrow, yet he pressed forward because he understood what this was. The illusion was spreading, seeping through the Keep like poisoned smoke, clouding minds and turning fear into shackles stronger than steel. And at its heart, it had to be Silas.

  No other prisoner possessed such dreadful reach. No other man he has heard of could twist thought and terror into a weapon so vast.

  He reached a chamber that might once have been a banquet hall in a brighter age, now forgotten and left to rot beneath the Keep.

  An immense iron door sealed the entrance, its surface etched with runes that pulsed in a sickly green light. The symbols crawled like worms across the metal, alive with malice. Through the narrow slit in the door, he saw the others suspended in chains.

  Tilda hung upside-down, her face swollen and purple, eyes rolling back as she choked on air that was not there. Tristan writhed as though invisible hands throttled him, snarling curses at phantoms only he could see.

  Marshal stood in his true form once more, straining against iron links that bit into his wrists while a wordless roar tore from his throat. Favian dangled limp and still, and the small bird that had once perched upon his shoulder lay motionless at his feet.

  At the centre, crucified against the far wall, hung Silas. His head lolled forward, lips moving in what might have been prayer, though no sound reached Darius’s ears.

  Darius struck the door with the pommel of his sword. Sparks burst and scattered across the stone, but the runes did not falter. He stepped back and raised the Spirit of Death. The blade answered him at once, black fire licking along its edge like oil igniting on water.

  When he brought it down against the runes, the chamber rang with a shriek of splitting metal. The seals cracked once, then again, fissures racing through their glow like fractures in ice.

  With a final thunderous blow, the enchantment shattered. The iron door groaned as though in agony and fell inward, crashing to the floor with a force that shook dust from the rafters and sent echoes rolling through the Keep.

  Darius stepped inside. The chains did not lash out at him. They hung slack and swaying, as if awaiting his command.

  Silas slowly lifted his head. His eyes were wrong. The pupils were wide and devouring, and his irises flickered between gold and black in uneven pulses, as though something behind them struggled for control.

  “Silas,” Darius said, keeping his voice steady despite the dread in him. “It’s me. I am a friend, and a Truther as you are.”

  Silas’ lips curled into a smile that did not belong to him. “Kriger,” he whispered. “You have been freed.”

  Darius frown. He had not spoken his name aloud. He moved a step closer, wary, and the Spirit of Death was lowered but ready. “The flare in the sky. The barrier and the chains. You did this.”

  A hollow laugh rattled from Silas’ throat, dry as bones in a crypt. “Not me. Not anymore.”

  Darius circled beneath the crossing chains, studying him carefully. “Then who?”

  Silas’ head jerked sharply to one side, as though unseen fingers tugged at invisible strings. “The Valiants,” he rasped. “They took my mind apart piece by piece. Broke it open. Emptied it. Then they filled the hollow places with themselves.”

  His voice fractured, grief and fury bleeding through. “Now I see everything. Every fear and lie. I taste them as they bloom. And I cannot stop it.”

  Darius glanced at the others. Tilda’s lips moved in silent pleas, her struggle no longer against iron but against whatever nightmare gripped her mind. Tristan’s eyes were squeezed shut, tears carving tracks through the grime on his face. They were not bound by chains alone; they were imprisoned within themselves.

  “You are controlling them,” Darius said, and there was no question in his tone.

  Silas nodded once, slow and mechanical. “I do not wish to. But the spell is alive. It feeds on what they fear most. And I am its conduit.”

  Darius stepped closer until he stood directly beneath Silas, smelling copper and ozone on his skin, like lightning striking blood. “Then let me cut you down,” he said quietly.

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  Silas’ voice fell to a brittle whisper. “No. If you free me, the spell will snap back into itself. It will tear through them to survive. It will kill them all.”

  Darius froze where he stood, the Spirit of Death humming faintly in his grasp.He steadied himself and forced the words out through clenched teeth. “There has to be another way.”

  Silas laughed again, but the sound had changed. It was now brittle and edged with despair. “You think you can kill a curse? You think your death-blade can sever what’s woven into bone?”

  Darius lowered his gaze to the Spirit of Death. The blade did not feel cruel in his hand. It felt inevitable. “I’ve killed worse,” he said.

  Silas’s eyes narrowed, the gold and black flickering within them like a storm trapped behind glass. “You don’t understand. I’m not the prisoner. I’m the cage. Every time I breathe, they suffer. Every time I blink, they see horrors clawing at their minds. If you kill me, the spell dies with me—but so do they. If you leave me, I keep feeding it. Forever.”

  Darius frowned and he answered with a harsher voice, louder than the doubt rising within him. “That is why we break the spell. Tell me what to do, Silas. I know you are still in there. You are stronger than what they made you.”

  Silas’ face twisted with pain and guilt. It was as if he wrestled with something darker beneath his skin. “It’s in my blood,” he whispered. “In my marrow. You would have to rip me open, tear the magic from my veins. And even then…” His gaze flicked upward toward the cracked ceiling vents where the flare had once burst through. “They would know. They are watching.”

  Darius scanned the chamber again, this time with a warrior’s eye rather than a prisoner’s panic. The pillars were not merely supports; they were etched with binding sigils that glowed faintly in dying green light.

  The chains were not restraints alone but conduits, feeding power upward through pulleys and into the carved ceiling. The entire hall was a ritual circle disguised as a dungeon. It was not a prison but an altar.

  “The flare wasn’t an alarm,” Darius said slowly, piecing it together. “It was a beacon. You were calling something.”

  Silas nodded once. “They’re coming. The true masters. They are worse than the Valiants you already know. They are older than the Keep itself.”

  Darius’ grip tightened on the hilt until his knuckles whitened. “Then we move now.”

  He lunged, not toward Silas but toward the nearest pillar. The Spirit of Death sang as it bit into the carved stone, a deep metallic note that echoed through the chamber. Sparks burst outward, and the runes flared in violent protest.

  Pain shot up his arm, cold and electric, as though the pillar itself sought to bite him in return, but he did not relent. He struck again, and cracks began to spread across the etched symbols like veins across fractured glass.

  Silas screamed, not in fury but in raw agony. “Stop! You’re tearing me apart!”

  Darius spared him a glance, and in that glance he saw Tilda’s lips moving in silent pleas, Tristan trembling as tears carved paths through the grime on his cheeks, and Marshal straining uselessly against metal that no longer truly held him. They were still fighting their own nightmares.

  Darius turned back to the pillar and drove the blade deeper. “Good,” he growled. “If it hurts you, it hurts the Valiants too.”

  With a final blow the pillar groaned and collapsed, stone crashing against stone in a thunderous roar. The ritual circle faltered. Chains began to rattle overhead, their tension failing as the flow of magic stuttered and broke.

  Without warning, Tilda dropped from the air and struck the ground hard, gasping as though she had truly been strangled. Tristan fell next, rolling onto his knees and clutching at his chest. Marshal crashed down like a felled oak, the impact shaking dust from the rafters. Favian struck last, curling into himself before drawing in a sharp, desperate breath.

  Silas writhed against the remaining chains, his body arching as the circle destabilised. “Darius, stop—”

  But Darius was already turning toward the final pillar. The air tasted foul, like burnt hair and storm-split wood. He swung once, twice, and the carved sigils shattered under the blade’s dark edge. The last of the green light guttered out, and the chains snapped free with a metallic scream.

  Silas plummeted from above.

  Darius reacted on instinct. He let the Spirit of Death fall from his grasp and leapt forward, arms outstretched. The impact drove the breath from his lungs as they both struck the ground in a tangle of limbs and iron, but he held Silas long enough to break the worst of the fall.

  Silas coughed, dark blood spilling from his lips. “You… idiot,” he rasped.

  Darius eased him down and rose, retrieving the Spirit of Death from where it lay humming against the stone. When he turned back, Silas was crawling away, one trembling hand lifted as though to ward off an executioner.

  “I already told you,” Silas said weakly, “killing me would kill them all.”

  “I know,” Darius replied, stepping forward, the blade angled toward Silas’s chest. “But this sword brought me out of my own trance. It devours what binds the soul. If it can pull me from death’s edge, it can tear this curse from you.”

  Silas squeezed his eyes shut, his face contorting in dread. “You don’t know that.”

  “No,” Darius said quietly. “I don’t.”

  He drove the Spirit of Death forward.

  Silas screamed as the blade pierced his chest, the sound echoing against the broken pillars. Darius held the hilt firm, bracing himself as the runes along the sword flared to life.

  Darkness began to pour from Silas’s eyes and mouth, not blood but something thicker, like smoke made solid. It flowed along the blade’s edge and seeped greedily into the metal, which drank it with a low, resonant hum.

  Darius watched in a mix of horror and grim satisfaction as the corruption drained away. The flickering gold and black in Silas’s eyes steadied, then faded to their natural hue.

  At last the flow ceased. Silas collapsed sideways, his blood now merely blood, dark but mortal.

  Darius pulled the blade free and knelt beside him, turning him onto his back. Silas’s breathing was shallow and ragged, and though the curse was gone, death still lingered close.

  Around them, Tilda and the others stirred, confusion replacing terror in their faces as they looked about the ruined hall.

  Darius reached into his uniform and withdrew a small glass vial—the portion of the mend he had carried in case he or Favian fell in battle. Without hesitation he uncorked it and held it beneath Silas’s nose. “Breathe,” he commanded.

  Silas inhaled deeply, draining the vapour until the bottle lay empty in Darius’ hand. Colour slowly returned to his face, and the bleeding lessened, though he remained weak.

  Tilda rose and came to them at once, taking Silas’s arm over her shoulder to support him. Marshal steadied himself and looked around the shattered chamber. “What happened?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  “I will explain when we are beyond these walls,” Darius said, rising and reclaiming the Spirit of Death. “For now, we leave. The Valiants will feel this collapse. They will come.”

  No one argued.

  Together they moved toward the corridor, battered but free, as Favian’s bird fluttered ahead of them. It had seemed lifeless moments before, yet now it beat its wings with renewed strength, guiding them out of the broken ritual hall and away from the enchanted prison before its true masters could arrive.