The embers hadn't cooled yet.
Smoke coiled from the ruins of Emberhold, and the squad moved quietly through the shattered halls, their boots crunching against charred stone and glass.
No one spoke much.
Erza walked ahead, leading in silence. The Leo mark on his chest pulsed faintly beneath his torn robe—no longer blazing, but not dormant either. It was as if something behind it waited, watching.
Azren's presence lingered like the echo of a scream.
Selene walked beside him, still bruised from the battle. Her sword arm was bound in a strip of Kale's lightweave bandage, glowing soft silver.
"You held back," she said at last.
Erza didn't respond immediately.
She continued, "You could have burned the Echo down in seconds if you'd let him in."
Erza's fists clenched. "That wasn't me."
"No," she said. "It wasn't. But he's still you."
They reached the shattered antechamber where the squad's transport glyph was meant to activate. Kale and Ryse were already setting up the arc. Ryse looked up with a tired grin.
"Takes a special kind of dumb to fight a void-possessed constellation and survive."
"Good thing we specialize in dumb," Kale muttered.
Selene rolled her eyes, but the tension eased slightly.
Then the glyph cracked.
The air around them twisted, the sigils warping in sharp red coils.
A spear of void-iron burst from the wall—barely missing Kale.
"Contact!" Selene shouted, drawing her blade.
Figures stepped from the smoke.
Four of them. Each wore a twisted variation of old royal armor—blackened and sealed with reversed house sigils etched in blood and star-ink.
Their eyes glowed like dying suns.
Sigil Hunters.
Assassins of the Shadow Consortium—tasked with eliminating any who carried old royal bloodlines or constellation bonds.
And they had found Erza.
The lead assassin stepped forward. His voice was like broken glass.
"Prince of Duskfire. You weren't supposed to live past the fall."
Erza raised his blade. "And yet, here I am."
The assassin chuckled. "Not for long."
With a pulse of void-sigils, they attacked.
The first, a spear-wielder bearing the Taurus inversion, lunged for Kale. Ryse intercepted, arcs of electricity crackling across the floor. Their weapons met with a thunderclap.
Selene clashed with a dual-blade wielder, each swing distorted by spatial flickers.
Erza faced the leader.
Their blades met in a blaze of flame and starlight.
"You carry Leo's mark," the assassin hissed. "But do you understand it? It was meant to rule stars, not fall with them."
Erza gritted his teeth. "It was meant to protect them."
The fight roared on.
Each Sigil Hunter fought with ruthless precision—trained not just to kill, but to erase legacies. Their armor absorbed ambient aether. Their strikes tore through the forge like phantom artillery.
Erza's mind flickered again.
Azren's voice whispered.
"Let me out. We'll end them in seconds."
"No," Erza murmured, forcing himself to stay centered.
The Leo mark blazed without fury.
Instead, it blazed with resolve.
Erza let the flame spread—not as an explosion, but as a controlled burn. Golden light cloaked his blade. Solar aether coiled around his arms like coals reborn.
He didn't need Azren's rage.
He needed clarity.
Erza parried the assassin's blade, spun low, and severed the void-weave on their greaves. With a leap and a roar, he sent a golden arc of fire in a wide crescent.
The lead Sigil Hunter screamed as he burned.
Ryse finished his opponent with a burst of thunder from the ground. Kale's barrier held long enough for Selene to bisect her target with a gravity-fueled cut.
The squad regrouped.
Blood and embers.
They had survived again.
But Erza looked at the dead assassin's armor—and the twisted Taurus symbol—and knew it was only the beginning.
The Consortium was moving.
They weren't just hunting kingdoms anymore.
They were hunting constellations.