Pain was everywhere. Not sharp, not clean, just a crushing, suffocating weight that pressed in from all sides. I clutched my shield to my chest and kept my grip on the sword, knuckles numb, fingers locked by instinct more than strength.

  The tunnel was gone.

  I tried to move. Nothing answered. No room to twist, no space to pull free. Only pressure. Stone packed tight around my limbs, my ribs, my throat. Panic flared hot and fast, clawing up my spine.

  I forced myself to breathe.

  Air still reached me, thin and dusty, scraping my lungs as it went in. Somehow, impossibly, I was alive. Buried, but alive.

  I shifted, just a fraction.

  The rocks responded at once. Something slid. Something heavier settled. The pressure increased until spots danced in my vision and my breath hitched in my chest. I froze, heart hammering, afraid that one more mistake would finish what the collapse had started.

  Slow. I had to go slow.

  My awareness narrowed to what I could feel. The grit against my cheek. The ache in my arms. The hilt in my right hand.

  The sword.

  A faint tingling crept along my fingers and up my wrist, subtle but steady. Not pain. Not relief exactly. Just… movement. Like a current beneath the skin, drawing something away from me, easing the familiar pull that lived in my muscles and bones.

  I focused on that sensation. Let it anchor me. Let it drown out the weight and the dark and the thought of never getting out.

  Then something stirred inside my head.

  A low, rough sound, like stone grinding against stone.

  “Foolish.”

  The word was never spoken, yet it rang through me all the same.

  I shifted without meaning to.

  “Be still.”

  I stopped. Muscles locked. Breath caught halfway in.

  The pressure changed. Not gone, but eased, like hands loosening their grip just enough to remind me they were there.

  The sword in my hand began to hum, a low vibration that travelled up my arm and into my chest. The stone pressed against the blade shuddered, then cracked. Pebbles rained down my sleeve. A larger slab crumbled, its weight vanishing as if something had been pulled out of it.

  Air rushed into my lungs and I gasped, choking on dust.

  I could move my fingers.

  “Slowly,” the voice whispered, the word barely more than breath.

  I stretched the blade forward, blind, searching for anything that was not my own body. My face and chest were still pinned, stone grinding against bone every time I shifted. I pressed the sword against the slab crushing my ribs and waited.

  The hum returned, and the weight eased.

  Time lost its shape. Seconds or minutes, I could not tell. The stone softened beneath the blade, veins of rock collapsing inward, strength bleeding out of it. Bit by bit, the weight lifted. The slab broke apart, then another. Chunks slid away and fell, replaced by open space and cold air.

  I dragged myself free, coughing, skin burning where stone had scraped it raw. My body screamed with bruises and shallow cuts, every breath sharp and painful.

  But I was alive.

  Buried. Crushed. And still breathing.

  I crawled there in the dark, clutching the sword like it was the only solid thing left in the world.

  “Slowly…” the voice urged again.

  I turned back toward the rubble. My hand reached for where my shield should have been.

  “Leave it.”

  I drew a shallow breath, dust scraping my throat. Whatever lived in the blade had pulled me out of the stone. I did not understand how. I only knew I should have been dead.

  I looked down at myself. I couldn’t see anything by I could feel a wet patch as what I assumed blood soaked my sleeve. Bruises bloomed along my ribs and legs. My left wrist throbbed with a deep, wrong ache that made my fingers tremble when I tried to flex them. Pain was familiar territory. Sorting this pain from the curse was harder than it should have been. Still, this was lighter. Bearable.

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  The image hit me without warning. Rob lunging. Amelia half turned. Stone breaking loose above us. I remembered the shove, the sudden weight, the way the world folded in. The rocks had come down on me, not them.

  My mouth was dry. I swallowed and forced sound past it. “Hello?” The word scraped out of me. “You… you alive?”

  Only the tunnel answered. My voice thinned as it bounced away, coming back wrong and empty.

  “Quiet,” the voice inside me warned.

  I went still, heart hammering loud enough that I was sure it could hear me.

  Something scraped in the dark. Stone and wood against rock. Soft clicks followed, uneven and deliberate. Survivors.

  My grip tightened on the sword. I could not see. The darkness pressed in from all sides. I was a sitting duck.

  “Calm yourself,” the voice said. “Think fire.”

  Fire?

  I had the thought and the blade answered. Heat flared along the metal and light bloomed, spilling out in a dull, wavering glow. Not Amelia’s roaring inferno, but a thin echo of it. Just enough.

  Two shapes stood ahead of me. Spriggans. Their bodies were cracked and scorched, limbs half broken, but their eyes burned bright. Angry.

  I limped forward and my boot struck something hard. It skittered across the stone with a sharp, ringing sound and came to rest between us.

  The bracelet.

  Silver. Unmarked at a glance, but wrong in the way it caught the light.

  The spriggans’ attention snapped to it at once. Their clicking shifted, urgent and sharp, claws twitching as they edged toward the jewellery.

  “Strike the band,” the voice said.

  The band?

  “The bracelet.”

  The pieces slid together with a sickening clarity. I lifted the blade and struck the silver bracelet before the spriggans could move.

  The bracelet burst apart on contact. Metal popped and fizzed, coughing sparks into the air as the rune inside it flared red and was dragged screaming into the black edge of my sword. Ash drifted down around us. The spriggans recoiled, claws scraping stone, their clicking rising in pitch. Then they froze, eyes locked on the blade in my hand, hunger burning bright and raw.

  Something cool spilled through me. Not water. Not wind. More like the relief after plunging into shade after standing too long in the sun. The itch beneath my skin dulled. The sharp throb in my wrist eased, just a little. Enough to notice.

  My hand slipped into my pocket, fingers brushing the glass vial there. The foundation elixir. Doyle’s voice echoed in my head. When you’re almost spent.

  Not yet.

  I drew a slow breath and let it out, setting my feet despite the ache in my legs. The spriggans crept forward again, cautious now, their gazes flicking between my face and the blade, measuring me like prey that had suddenly grown teeth.

  I took a step forward and angled the sword low.

  “Come on then.”

  They launched themselves at me with a speed that stole my breath. I barely had time to react. I swung on instinct and hit nothing but air as they darted past the blade’s arc. One slammed into me low, claws raking for my throat. I brought my shield arm up too late and felt talons scrape across my cheek. The other hit my wrist, small but strong, fingers locking around my grip as it tried to wrench the sword free.

  Pain flared hot and close. I snarled and shoved back, my sore hand smashing into bone and bark. The blade flared in the cramped space, its dull fire licking along the edge. Smoke curled up at once. The spriggan gripping my wrist shrieked as the flame bit into it, wood blackening, joints popping as it recoiled and tumbled away, clutching at itself in a frantic attempt to smother the fire.

  The second one crawled up my chest, claws digging in. I struck at it again and again, blows glancing off stone-hard limbs. Something cracked against my cheekbone. Wood scraped skin. Stars burst behind my eyes.

  I screamed and swung without thinking, slamming the flat of the blade across its back.

  The impact sent a jolt up my arm. Fire bloomed. The smell hit me next, scorched wood and something sour and living. The spriggan shrieked, tumbling off me as flames danced across its limbs. Both creatures writhed on the stone now, clicking turning into broken, panicked noises.

  Blood ran warm down my forehead and into my mouth. I spat and staggered forward.

  “Fucking little shits.”

  I brought my heel down hard. Once. Twice. The tunnel rang with sharp cracks as stone and wood gave way. The writhing stopped. Smoke drifted low, curling around my legs as the echoes faded into silence.

  I stood there, blood running warm down my face, breath rasping in my chest. The tunnel was quiet again. Too quiet. The blade’s light held steady in my grip, its dull glow painting the stone in soft, breathing shadows.

  I looked down at it, trying to understand how it still burned. That was when I saw it. A glowing rune along the metal, faint but unmistakable. Doyle had described it before. A holding rune. Something meant to catch and keep magic.

  Amelia’s flame brushed my memory. The heat that had washed over me before the collapse.

  Had the sword taken it?

  The weight in my hand felt different now. Not heavier exactly. More present. Like a palm pressed against my back, steadying me. The sensation made my skin prickle.

  Too many questions pressed at once.

  “What do I do now?” I whispered.

  The blade answered with a low hum, vibration thrumming up my arm and into my bones. I stared at the new rune. A warped curve, almost an S, with a small dot on either side. Cold slid across my skin, gentle and deliberate. Active.

  I wondered how many runes it could take.

  The idea tightened my chest. It thrilled me and terrified me.

  The blade hummed again.

  “There,” the voice said.

  “What?” My whisper barely stirred the air.

  The tunnel dimmed. Not the light. My sight. A pull settled behind my eyes, firm but careful, guiding rather than dragging. A warning wrapped in reassurance. Amelia’s face filled my mind. Not a dream. A memory. Clear and sharp. Her voice echoed as if she stood beside me, talking about spriggans. About their nature. About how they horde around treasure.

  I swallowed.

  “Do you know if there’s a way out?” I asked, knowing the answer before it came.

  The hum shifted. “No.”

  The word landed like a stone in my gut.

  I stood there for a long breath, shoulders sagging, the weight of it sinking in.

  “Then what do we do?”

  The darkness brightened at the edges of my memory. The bracelet bursting under the blade. The training dummy splintering apart. The training blade turning to ash. Images stacking, overlapping, building into something like intent.

  I exhaled slowly as the memories faded and the tunnel returned. The path ahead felt sharp. Narrow. Unforgiving.

  “I guess we move forward then,” I said.

  The voice answered, close and certain. “Together,” it said. “We eat.”