The Titan came on like a storm—like the black squall clouds that used to roll across the old lake during Riftwater’s rainy season. Kar remembered Nat barricading the hut, remembered peeking through cracks in the door while wind and waves tore at the boats outside.

  The Shade-Titan was bigger than it had been the night before. It rose higher than the fortress wall, and when it reached the gatehouse it dropped its shoulder and drove through stone in an explosion of dust and screaming mortar.

  Kar’s ears rang. At the edge of his vision, he saw Melisdra shouting and waving commands to her Valorcryst captains, but he couldn’t bring himself to look away from the voidcryst Titan. It paused amid the rubble, then reoriented—toward Kar.

  Toward Ember.

  Cylinder bearings and javelins sparked and bounced off its crystal shell, without noticeable effect.

  “I… am scared, Karalinde. I sense much fear, and darkness all around.”

  Kar could hardly hear anything for the ringing in his ears, but Ember’s voice came through clearly.

  He squeezed Ember tightly with his Encryst hand and ran along the wall—away from the gatehouse and the crush of defenders there. He couldn’t let that thing break through the main wall. Had to draw it away.

  The Titan turned and followed, crashing through another section of wall as it kept pace beside them.

  A deafening clap split the skies above it, so loud Kar’s vision wavered. A small figure snapped into existence, floating amidst the smoky haze. It wore dark robes that fluttered lightly in the wind, similar to the clothing worn by the void herald Kar had encountered the day before.

  Kar blinked, not comprehending.

  Then a schism tore open in the ground beside the wall, directly in the Titan’s path. It lurched forward and fell into the fissure, releasing a raging roar that forced Kar to clap both hands over his ears. The Titan struggled, scrabbling at the edges of the widening rift.

  The figure above flashed out of existence…

  …then reappeared atop the battlements just ahead of Kar and Ember with another thundercrack that made Kar stumble to his knees.

  The figure was a woman, with raven hair and an angular face, skin pale as bone. Her expression was passive, faintly disinterested.

  She raised one hand toward Kar.

  He brought his Encryst arm up without thinking, shielding Ember.

  Her eyes flicked to the Prism. A tight frown. Then, confusion. Kar would have bet anything she had just tried some kind of dark Focusing on him.

  A moment of tense stillness followed, then the stone beneath Kar cracked, as if answering her silent call. Kar was swallowed by collapsing rubble.

  “Rift!” he screamed, even as an Ember-forged suit of armor clicked into place around him. He wished he’d thought to forge it from the start instead of settling for a pouch.

  He forged a pair of Encryst picks—one in each hand—and slammed them into the stone as he fell, forcing them to bite and slow his descent.

  With every piece of Encryst he forged, Kar’s voidcryst arm seemed to weaken a little more. It trembled—then gave out entirely, and the pick in that hand ripped free.

  Kar dropped the last few yards and hit hard behind the wall, vibrating shock numbing his heels and backside. He’d slowed enough to escape injury, at least.

  Above, the battlement had split into an ugly V.

  To Kar’s left, the Herald drifted down on nothing but air. Kar edged away from her, reconfiguring the armor over his voidcryst arm—loosening it, peeling it back to let the dark crystal breathe.

  It practically crooned at the freedom.

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  The Herald alit soundlessly on the grass beside the rubble she’d spilled. She lifted a hand toward Kar again—

  —and nothing happened.

  A flicker of frustration crossed her face, sharp and sudden, as if the world had refused an order it always obeyed before. The Encryst of Kar’s armor and left arm pulsed faintly, as if something he couldn’t see had been nullified.

  “That was powerful!” Ember shouted in Kar’s head.

  A rocking collision drew Kar’s attention back to the wall. The Shade-Titan burst through the weakened section in an explosion of stone.

  The Herald vanished.

  Kar turned and ran as chunks of dust and rock rained down around him, clattering off his back and helm.

  “I cannot stand being blinded to what is happening around us Karalinde!”

  “Trying not to get us killed!” Kar shouted back.

  A bellowing roar pushed Kar onward. He was in the shadow of the wall now, no sign of the Herald, though he kept whipping his gaze around, searching for even a flicker of those dark robes.

  He chanced a look over his shoulder, the ground heaving beneath his feet with every step his giant pursuer took.

  The Titan scraped along the wall behind him, one thick arm straining toward him. Jagged, obsidian teeth jutted from its massive maw, and a swarm of smaller Shadowcryst poured through the breach in its wake.

  What do I do—

  There was a spark left in him, the last dregs of his own Energía. The stuff of Valor. Kar Focused, slamming it down through his legs and into his feet as a blast of energy that propelled him skyward.

  The Focusing came out more powerfully than anything Kar had done before.

  He shot into the air—barely escaping the Shade-Titan’s grasp—and arced up past the battlements. The wind tore at him and Kar’s eyes went wide…

  …and then it clicked.

  The focal rings he’d worn were Encryst. His armor was Encryst. Everything Kar Ember-forged could act as a focal point to amplify his Focusings.

  Despite the peril, Kar couldn’t stop the hoot of triumph that burst out of him.

  “Ooh, I did not know you could fly on your own!” Ember said, gleeful.

  Kar smiled—a grin that then faltered, as what little of the non-Ember Energía within him sputtered out. The blast from his feet cut off abruptly.

  He kept rising momentarily, in a gently slowing arc. The hub realm spread out below: the ruined bones of Darby, the fortress—a levee now breached, a black tide rushing through a narrow channel to spill across formerly protected emerald grounds.

  The Herald appeared directly in front of him, the noise of her arrival punching through Kar’s armor to rattle his insides.

  Fascination softened her face, as if he’d become a puzzle she was eager to take apart.

  Kar’s upward momentum reached its peak. He clenched for the fall… but instead slowed to a halt and hung there, suspended. As if the sky had decided to keep him after all.

  No—this was no miracle. This was her doing. Somehow.

  She drifted closer, circling him. Studying his armor, his voidcryst arm.

  She guttered something he couldn’t understand, though he recognized the tongue—the Herald at the Causeway had spoken it too.

  “I can’t understand you!” Kar shouted, the wind up here ripping the words from his mouth.

  Her eyes narrowed. “You are a strange little bird, aren’t you?” The wind died away, and her words funneled to his ears with impossible clarity, heavily accented.

  “Erio says the inner fortress gate is about to be overwhelmed,” Ember whispered, cutting in.

  Jumbled thoughts tumbled through Kar’s head. Could Ember even sense this woman? Or was she a blank spot to him? He chanced a look down.

  The Shade-Titan had hauled itself up onto the wall directly below, craning its massive head to stare at them. How did he kill something like that?

  He looked back into the woman’s eyes. She still studied him intently, the way a predator stared down its prey before pouncing.

  “Why are you here?” he asked her.

  She smiled, “Because all other fields open to us have been conquered.”

  Well. That made her intentions clear.

  Kar smiled too.

  He’d just thought of a way to snag three fish with one hook.

  He Ember-forged a chain of Encryst and snapped it out, whipping it around the Void Herald’s torso, binding her tightly. Surprise—then concentration—then sharp concern flickered across her face in rapid succession…

  …and then they were falling together, her control overruled.

  First.

  “I’m going to need your help here, Ember!” Kar yelled, twisting in the plunge to angle them toward the waiting Titan below. He thrust out his Encryst arm and hauled as much Energía from Ember as he could bear. He felt a sharp crack in his voidcryst arm. It forced him to grit his teeth against a strange, radiating agony. He pushed it away, and Ember-forged Encryst.

  A lance of crystal erupted from Kar’s hand. It kept growing—lengthening, thickening—until its sharpened point rammed straight into the roaring mouth of the giant beneath them.

  Second.

  Kar released the chain—letting the woman drop away into open air—then forged a pair of picks and drove them into the massive Encryst stalactite now jutting from the Titan’s maw. He skidded down it, scraping and grinding, boots slipping, while his right arm creaked from the strain.

  Just before reaching its forced-open jaws and thrashing fangs, Kar pushed off. His stomach turned as he free fell, then he slammed the picks back into where he could find purchase along the Titan’s torso.

  Kar skidded precariously down. His Voidcryst arm gave out entirely as he leapt free ten paces from the top of the wall. He thudded against the battlements, his armor clacking loudly.

  Third.

  The Titan fell from the wall, ripping chunks of stone free, and slammed on its side against the fortress grounds.

  Kar scrabbled away, narrowly avoiding the collapse.

  He pulled himself upright, aftershock tremors vibrating up his legs. Kar braced hands against his knees to steady himself, then stood—panting—while he surveyed the wreckage splayed out before him.