The road to Harrowgate was a blur of hoof and clatter and the stinging bite of wind. The city shrank and the bastille grew like the maw of a great sleeping thing. Smoke papered the sky and the smell of resin burned in the air. At the main gate, Orsic's men drew up with a command that made the pavement plead for breath.
"What's the situation?" Orsic barked without waiting.
"Prison breach," a lieutenant panted. "Multiple exits. Witnesses report razing work and empty wards. The cells—"
"Get me a perimeter," Orsic said. "Cordon the bridges. Airknights, give me overhead. Postknights — no one goes in without command."
Devon moved like a man who had encountered this particular kind of thing before — units of civilians freed in a single sweep could turn an orderly city into a hungry mob. "We need a surgical entry," he said. "We need to isolate the perpetrators and keep the prisoners contained."
Solis felt his pulse thud, an answering drum to the one that had been summoning him to the gate. "Razille," he said under his breath; the name fell like a stone into a well. He did not know whether to hope she had acted to set innocents free or to fear what the dark around her implied.
They moved. The first line was K.P.P — steel-clad, precise — forming a ring while Borderknights advanced in a wedge to break into the yard. Devil-sparked torches threw long shadows as teams sought the main cell block.
Inside, Razille had done more than free the prisoners: she had turned the Bastille into a throat with too many mouths. Men who had been given their liberty smelled like prey and fled. Some ran toward freedom with tears; some ran toward the gate like animals that had forgotten fences and only remembered hunger. Razille stalked among them like a conductor whose music was a war.
When Devon's team burst in through a side passage, a man with a fresh cut on his cheek swung a crowbar and bellowed — half-anger, half-elation. Devon met him like the ocean meets a cliff: with hard, inevitable pressure. He parried, stepped, and his fist landed with a satisfying hollowness on the man's chest. The man toppled and Devon pinned him with the severity of a lawman who also refuses faults.
Solis came behind, running a path that took him through the scattered prisoners. He had trained for this. He had practiced where blood and mercy braided in the same movement. His aura pulsed at thirty percent now—dangerous for endurance but precise — and it gave him a clarity that felt like a lens sharpening. He moved, and his sword cut not to kill but to break obscene momentum: a wrist snapped aside, a jaw received a glancing blow that made the attacker see stars and halt.
Ada was at his side, strong as a bastion. She used her shoulder to knock a fleeing prisoner off a parapet before he could leap down into the river's shallows. "Down!" she snapped, as if the man were a child about to fall out of a tree. She did not hate them; she only hated chaos caused by other.
Almond, nervous but steady, found himself face-to-face with a gaoler who had been freed and then taken up a knife with the aftermath of years' bitterness welded into his hands. Almond did not have Devon's practiced brutality, but he had another weapon: presence. He lowered his voice into a steady, even sound and spoke of home, of names, and of the small civic bargains that tie men to a place. The gaoler wavered, remembering a wife's face, and Almond used the moment to disarm him with a quick half-step and a hook across the wrist that sent the blade clattering.
The fights were short, intense, and without elegance: a thrust, a counter, a neat finish. Crests were knocked aside, armor buckled, and the air smelled of iron, smoke, and a dozen small fears. Yet even amid the measureless brutality of lockers being forced and men trying to take their first breaths of freedom like it was a sin, something else moved.
Razille stood on the inner dock under a broken lamp, the dark swirling around her like a cloak. She did not fight the men going free so much as she directed them — nudging those with ferocity and whispering to those with fear. Her voice cut like wind. When Solis reached the dock, he saw her face and at once recognized the girl who'd once been their comrade.
"Raz!" Solis barked. "Step away — now!"
Her head tilted; her eyes, which had always been calm like a lake, flashed black at the edges. "Solis?" she said. The name carried nothing of greeting. "You shouldn't be here. But now that you are here. I thinkI should complete my task."
Solis advanced, though he wasn't able to believe what is going on, still he roared. "You are under arrest for the breach and for—"
"For freeing what was bound," she replied. "And for fracturing what should have been built." The words were careful, yet some undercurrent carried them like a current.
Solis stepped forward, the aura around him still a halo of constrained heat. He looked at Razille and she looked back. For a split second something like recognition softened her features. He thought he glimpsed a human behind the black, a girl who had been with them in almost everything that went in Pompom.
"Get her," Orsic snarled. "Restrict those exits!"
Men surged. Razille moved faster than any of them expected — not in the swordplay of trained soldiers, but with a motion that bent rooms. She lifted her hand and a wave rolled out. It was not flame, but a violet smoke that tasted bitter and made throats catch. Men stumbled and dropped to their knees coughing.
Devon, not a man to be taken unready, stepped between Razille and Solis at a cost. Razille's dark energy struck him like a heavy hand; he staggered back but did not fall. She was stronger than a freed prisoner; she had strength drawn from something else.
Solis felt the sword at his back like a question. The red blade vibrated in answer, the intimate hum of the spirit inside reacting to Razille's dark thread. He did not fully draw, but his hand went to hilt. He could feel the aura rise to sixty percent, a dangerous burn that would take a toll on him — but the thought of Razille, the way she'd looked at him earlier that day in the market, made him decide.
"Not yet, stop." Devon rasped, sensing what Solis intended. "We need to contain her, not to slaughter." He looked to Bronn. "Net the exits! Hold them until we sort who is innocent!"
Bronn and a group of Postknights dropped to the ground and flung nets — Octaknight designed, rope-laced meshes that glinted with metal and held weight. Several freed prisoners tangled, the nets catching clothes, flinging men to the ground with a thud. The nets bought time.
Razille's eyes flicked. For a heartbeat, she looked almost human again — anyone could have read pity there. Then she screamed, a sound that slid like a blade across night, and pushed outward. The light around her exploded inward like a dropped star, and the net ropes snapped like twigs.
Solis, gritting his teeth, pushed through the smoke and lunged. He had reduced his released aura to thirty percent as his stamina depleting past. He double-wielded with the intention of disarming rather than killing. His sword flashed, a red arc, and clipped Razille's outer cloak. For one terrible instant, the dark around her flared — an ugly, animal thing — and the sword answered with a tiny cry that only Solis could hear.
Razille turned. For a moment, the world narrowed to two figures: she — enveloped in a living shadow — and Solis — burning like a little orchard of light. She stretched a hand toward him, and the dark seized at his chest.