We stepped into empty air.

  For a heartbeat there was nothing beneath my feet, nothing to push against, nothing to orient by. The fall swallowed the light above us and repced it with cold rushing darkness. Air tore past my ears. My stomach lurched as gravity seized hold.

  Sir Veyne dropped first, a dark figure cutting cleanly through the void.

  Seraphine moved an instant ter. She did not fall so much as commit herself to the descent, Pulseweaver tight to her shoulder, eyes already tracking distance and timing.

  Phymera and I followed her in tight succession.

  The walls slid upward in a blur of bck stone. The main conduit below rushed toward us, a darker band across deeper shadow.

  Seraphine's hand cut through the air.

  A pale corona fred around Veyne ahead of us. His plunge softened, the vertical line bending into a controlled descent. He struck the stone in a rolling tumble—shoulder to hip to foot—and rose into a crouch with fluid precision, momentum spent without waste.

  Seraphine's focus snapped inward. The spell seized her next.

  It hurled her upward in a controlled surge, robes snapping in the rush of dispced air as she shot back toward our falling line.

  The maneuver was violent and exacting. She reached our altitude in a breath and pivoted midair, staff already tracking.

  It found Phymera.

  Air compressed beneath her metal body like an invisible cushion. Her descent resisted, slowed—but not enough. Her mass drove her through the pocket of pressure. The air burst outward in a soft concussion that rattled my teeth.

  Seraphine adjusted and cast again, instantly.

  The second field formed tighter, brighter. It fought Phymera's downward velocity, but the resistance only shaved the edge from her fall. Her limbs shifted, micro-adjusting against forces that were still too great.

  Then her silhouette fractured.

  Panels shifted. Joints unlocked. Her torso narrowed as her arms elongated, membranes snapping taut between extended digits and hip in a dark, angur spread.

  Panic, not a pn.

  Phymera's wings beat downward.

  The spell shattered, air smming into me from the side.

  My path skewed instantly. The clean vertical drop twisted into a snt. Rotation began before I could correct it.

  Stone rushed toward me at an angle.

  "Cire!"

  Seraphine propelled herself forward, closing on me. She thrust one hand outward, forcing the spell ahead of her rather than around herself.

  A column of air struck me from below, hard and sudden, tearing at my cloak and wrenching the breath from my chest.

  My descent bent into a glide, velocity bleeding away. My boots met stone harder than a step but far gentler than the drop should have allowed. Momentum carried me forward one staggered pace before I caught myself.

  Too gentle.

  The realization struck before I had fully straightened.

  Seraphine had held me for too long.

  I spun.

  She was still above us, falling fast, the glow of her magic flickering around her like failing breath. She had spent precious distance stabilizing me. There was no time left for her own deceleration.

  I ran.

  My lungs burned from the fall, legs still uncertain beneath me, but I ran toward the impact point, arms lifting without thought.

  "Oof."

  I collided with Veyne's back.

  He had moved first.

  Seraphine struck him a fraction of a second ter. He caught her at the waist and turned with the force of her descent, redirecting the momentum around his center rather than meeting it head-on. His boots ground against stone. I felt the impact travel through his frame in a solid, bone-deep shock.

  He completed the turn and released her on her feet.

  Seraphine bent forward sharply, breath tearing from her lungs. Pulseweaver flickered, light stuttering as her shoulders trembled.

  I stepped forward. "Sera—"

  She lifted a hand before I could finish the thought. "I'm fine," she said, grimacing.

  Her voice sounded steady. Her breathing was not.

  I pulled her into an embrace before she could protest. Her body was rigid with residual strain, shoulders tight, breath coming fast against my colr.

  "Just breathe," I murmured. "I've got you."

  Her fingers tightened once against my back, then loosened as she forced her breathing into rhythm.

  Behind us, Phymera settled into a stable bipedal form, wings folding away with soft mechanical clicks. Dust drifted through the air where her earlier downstroke had churned the tunnel's stillness.

  Sir Veyne watched us with a neutral expression.

  "In the end," he said mildly, "it appears you did not trust me after all."

  Heat crept into my face before I could stop it. I released Seraphine and looked away, suddenly intent on the dark stretch of conduit ahead.

  "I wasn't—" I began, then stopped.

  There was no clean answer that didn't sound like excuse.

  I adjusted the strap of my satchel and forced my voice back into steadiness.

  "We need to keep moving," I finally said.

  "Hm." Veyne's mouth curved faintly.

  Seraphine drew one final slow breath and straightened, exhaustion still etched around her eyes but control firmly back in pce.

  Without another word, we turned and ran.

  Rocher flew.

  One moment he was there, a wall of gold and steel holding the creature's attention; the next he was airborne, hurled back across broken stone like something discarded.

  Evelyn was already moving.

  She slipped through the opening he left behind before the line could colpse into it, boots skidding on shattered fgstone as she drove straight toward the Demon Lord.

  The creature turned.

  Good, she thought.

  Without the tail, it would be forced to meet her like a human. That, she was trained to deal with.

  She wove beneath the first strike—a wide, compensatory sweep meant to clear space—and stepped inside its reach. Her arming sword snapped forward in a tight thrust, then another, precise and economical.

  Steel bit.

  Bck flesh parted.

  And sealed almost immediately.

  The wounds closed in wet, knitting ripples that swallowed the edges of her work as if the bde had never touched it.

  She gritted her teeth, then breathed.

  That was fine.

  She wasn't here to kill it, she reminded herself. She was here to buy time.

  She slid left, letting a hooked cw whistle past her ribs, and drove another cut across the inside of its thigh. The blow was shallow. The muscle tightened and smoothed itself whole before she could even withdraw the bde.

  Behind her, boots thundered as the padins surged to close the gap Rocher had torn open.

  Too close.

  Their shoulders were locked too tight, their movements too forceful. The infected were among them—she could see it in the fever-bright flush across their faces, the wet sheen at their temples, the brittle eagerness in the way they leaned into the fight.

  "Press it!" one shouted, ughing breathlessly. "It bleeds—it can die!"

  "Forward! Forward! It falters before the Goddess!"

  Evelyn's jaw tightened. That wasn't discipline. That was fever.

  Her hand brushed the orb at her belt. She couldn't fire it.

  Not with so many infected in the line. One pulse would drop half of them to their knees and leave the rest exposed.

  "Damn it," she muttered, slipping past a grasping hand that snapped shut where her throat had been.

  What exactly was Seraphine expecting her to do with it?

  Then again... Seraphine was the sort of woman who would've fired it twice by now and dealt with the consequences ter.

  Evelyn ducked inside again, compressing the distance until the creature's reach worked against it. The Demon Lord's shoulders hunched, its remaining arm forced into tight angles. It struck with elbows, drove a knee toward her abdomen, snapped forward in a grab meant to crush.

  She slipped past them all.

  Close was better. Close meant fewer options.

  At that moment, something sang past her head.

  A line of fire opened along her cheek. Warm wetness followed.

  She twisted away and saw it—bck tissue knitting outward along the creature's shoulder, slick and pulsing.

  A wing.

  Its edge hardened even as she watched, the membrane thinning into a bded arc.

  The monster was beginning to recover flight.

  "Wing!" she shouted. "Left side!"

  The padins answered with a roar and surged from behind, bdes fshing as they drove toward the exposed fnk.

  For an instant, she thought they might actually stagger it.

  The tail swept.

  It wasn't bded now—Rocher had seen to that—but the mass and speed remained. It cracked through the air like a whip and took the front rank off their feet in a brutal sweep of armor and limbs.

  So much for fighting like a human.

  Evelyn leapt, clearing the sweep by a hand's breadth.

  The creature's fist caught her in midair.

  Impact erased the world. Air left her lungs in a soundless burst as the blow drove her sideways. Stone smmed into her back and skidded her across the courtyard before friction finally dragged her to a stop.

  She y there for half a heartbeat, staring at a sky the color of old iron, trying to convince her lungs to remember their purpose.

  Then she rolled onto an elbow and looked up.

  Rocher was standing above her, wide-eyed, one arm slung over Lumiere's shoulder.

  Behind them, priests moved in urgent clusters, robes snapping as they bore Danzig's limp form toward the triage line.

  He and Lumiere gnced at each other once.

  Then she shifted, letting Rocher stand on his own.

  "Hold still," Lumiere said, already crouching.

  Evelyn spat blood to the side and pushed herself upright anyway.

  "Later," she rasped. "I'm not tapped out yet."

  Her bance wavered.

  A hand entered her vision.

  Rocher.

  She stared at it for the briefest instant, then csped his forearm and hauled herself the rest of the way up. His grip tightened in reflex, steady despite the tremor running through his arm.

  He released her once she found her footing.

  "Neither am I."

  Behind them, steel rang again.

  Together, they turned to face it.