Nyxara and Torin waited until Stillreach pretended to sleep.

She stood across the street from the service arch they'd scouted earlier, cloak drawn close, her attention fixed on intervals rather than faces. Torin leaned in, close enough that anyone looking would see something intimate instead of intentional.

She kept track of the Wardens, but Torin's leather and cedar scent drifted closer than it should have—warm, steady, and far more distracting than it had any right to be.

Two Wardens entered the arch. Two exited. Unhurried. Predictable.

When their footsteps dissolved back into the city's rhythm, she moved.

Torin fell in beside her without a word. Offset just enough that anyone glancing their way would see coincidence, not coordination.

They slipped beneath the unmarked arch and down a roughly hewn staircase that descended and curved out of sight.

The stairs opened into a maintenance corridor, wide enough for two if they didn't mind brushing shoulders. Old heat grooves scored the walls, worn smooth by centuries of rain and heat. No signage. No locks. Just a place the city pretended didn't exist.

The Mark beneath Nyxara's left shoulder stirred—not flaring, not burning, but present in a way that made her skin prickle. Her stride shortened, then stopped.

"What is it?" Torin murmured.

"Give me a second," she said.

She closed her eyes for half a breath and focused on sensation instead of thought. The corridor was quiet. No voices. No movement. But beneath it all—a pull, quiet but undeniable, as if something ahead was expecting her.

The passage curved for a few more feet before abruptly ending.

Nyxara frowned and stepped closer.

"Where did the Wardens go?" Torin said quietly.

She didn't answer. Her attention was fixed on the wall to their right. The clay there was smoother. It radiated heat.

She took one step closer. Her breath caught, sharp and unwelcome.

"Move," she said.

Torin didn't ask why. He stepped back as she pressed her palm flat against the white wall.

The Mark surged, heat snapping through her shoulder like a reprimand. She swore under her breath and tore her hand away, fingers flexing as if she'd touched open flame.

Torin's brow furrowed. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." She wasn't. She was unsettled—nervous in a way she rarely allowed. But she wasn't about to admit that to Torin.

The wall shifted, subtle as a held breath being released. An archway formed without sound, revealing a narrow passage beyond, its ground coated in dust. The same color that clung to the Warden's hems when exiting the archway.

Behind her, Torin let out a low whistle. When she glanced back, the corner of his mouth had lifted—small, satisfied, like he'd just confirmed something he'd been expecting.

Nyxara watched him a moment before entering. The air inside was dry, carrying a heat that had nothing to do with comfort. The space felt wrong in a way she couldn't name. The Mark pressed—steady and insistent, like a hand at her back guiding her forward whether she wanted it to or not.

The passage angled downward again, walls closing in.

Nyxara paused again, breathing slow and deliberate.

Torin waited behind her. She could feel his attention—not intrusive, not impatient. Ready.

She hated how useful that was. And how quickly she'd started to rely on it.

They came to a fork. One way kept going forward, another to her left rose upward and to her right, down.

The warmth on her shoulder changed, as if she was being pulled to the right.

"I think it's this way."

"How do you know?"

"I don't."

He nodded once.

They continued to the right, quiet and measured, but Nyxara kept count with each step. The Wardens looped every fifteen minutes. They were already cutting into the next pass.

The air grew warmer still. Drier. The passage widened slightly, revealing reinforced metal embedded into the stone—ancient work, layered and careful.

She reached out again, slower this time. Her fingers brushed the metal. The Mark flared in warning—sharper now, almost impatient with her caution.

An unseen entrance appeared next to where she had touched. Heat slammed into her from the opening, immediate and suffocating.

Nyxara staggered back a step, breath raspy.

Torin caught her elbow, steadying her without pulling her closer than necessary. His grip was firm, precise. He released her the moment she reclaimed her footing.

She stepped inside the sweltering room with Torin on her heels.

The chamber was large enough to hold a hundred people. The walls were smooth. Metal brackets protruded from the ground and lanced up the walls, meeting high above around a circular hole.

In the center, a massive stone hovered above the floor, easily a foot taller than she was and narrow enough that she could have wrapped her arms around it—if she'd been foolish enough to try. It turned slowly in the air, burning like a living ember, red and orange deepening toward an intensity that hinted at something far hotter beneath. Heat rolled off it in waves, the air rippling like a desert mirage.

Thin channels cut through the floor, carrying water in steady lines. As the Ember Stone pulsed, the surface shivered in answer, heat pulling faint steam from its edges before it smoothed back into stillness. The metal rings embedded in the walls hummed faintly in response.

A lance of golden-blue light erupted from the Ember Stone's crown and vanished into the shaft above.

The shield.

The Ember Stone was beautiful in a way that made Nyxara want to reach for it. Deadly in a way that told her she shouldn't.

For a moment, the rest of the world fell away—the Wardens, the city, the plan—leaving only the Ember Stone and the pull of it.

She didn't notice when she stepped closer. Or when her steps slowed, shifting into a quiet circle around it, her gaze fixed on the turning surface as if following something only she could see.

It wasn't just power.

It was something deeper. Older.

And it felt...familiar.

Her breath caught as the Mark stirred beneath her skin, not in warning this time, but in recognition—like something inside her had finally found what it had been reaching for.

A thought slipped in before she could stop it—

I need to protect this.

Too close.

Too right.

Nyxara forced herself to breathe, dragging her attention back into her body, back into the room.

"I was expecting a machine of some kind. Not this," Torin murmured. He kept to the outer edge of the chamber, circling wider, his attention shifting between the Ember Stone and her, as if deciding which one concerned him more.

"Me either."

Nyxara didn't look away from it. The thought of taking it should have come easily. It always did. But standing here, with the heat of it pressing into her skin, she wasn't thinking about how to steal it. She was wondering if she wanted to.

Footsteps echoed from the entryway, measured and deliberate, the same unhurried rhythm she had heard aboveground. The Wardens didn't rush—they never needed to—and the sound of them arriving always carried the quiet certainty that they had already won.

Nyxara's hands hovered over her blades.

Behind her, Torin shifted, subtle enough that no one else would have marked it, but she felt the change all the same—the quiet adjustment of balance, the kind that meant he'd already chosen where the first strike would land.

At her back, the Ember Stone pulsed.

Heat rolled outward in a slow, living wave. Her Mark answered immediately, flaring beneath her skin in a rhythm that did not belong to her. Nyxara locked her jaw against it, against the instinctive pull that tried to turn her attention away from the Wardens and back toward the source of it all.

Three Wardens entered from the opening she and Torin had come through.

Nyxara recognized Warden Kavra immediately.

A seam split open along the far wall, revealing a second door she hadn't seen before, and three more Wardens stepped through.

There was nowhere to go. Every exit had already been claimed.

There would be no easy way out.