The air twisted.
Not wind. Not Pulse. Something else. A weight folding into itself until it cracked.
Tavian looked up just as a shadow screamed through the trees.
Then fire.
It split the canopy like a judgment. A body moved within it, descending faster than thought. The earth trembled as it landed between Tavian and the Juza vanguard.
Ashara.
She rose from the cratered moss, braid half-undone, dust streaking her shoulders, but her eyes were alight. Her cloak smoldered at the edges. Behind her, something far larger landed with thunder.
A Lord-class Griffin, talons the size of butcher knives, wings veined with flame and ash. Feathers of molten gold rippled across its back, and its leonine hindquarters smoked with heat. It shrieked once, and the trees leaned away.
Tavian staggered back. "Ashara?"
Raijara pulsed, equal parts approval and exasperation.
"That is her. Your sister walks like flame remembering how to burn."
Ashara didn't look back. Her voice was calm, clear.
"Step away from my siblings."
The Juza priest stilled. His guards faltered.
Kaelenna held her staff tighter, Tross and Yema circling warily. Tavian barely stayed upright. His Pulse still ached raw.
The priest lowered his bronze mask, holding it in one hand.
"We were told you would not return this season, Ashara of Kaltrava."
"I don't ask the Juza Empire when I may walk my land."
"You were across the mountains," he said. "Hunting firepaths."
"I was." Her gaze flicked to Tavian. "Then I felt the storm."
The priest tilted his head.
"You are too late."
"No," she said. "You are too early."
The air behind the Juza shimmered.
The Veil stirred.
Three figures emerged.
They wore deep red fiber-wrapped robes, faces hidden beneath cracked porcelain half-masks. Their movements were not human, not steady. Like dancers caught mid-pose between one step and the next, their limbs swayed with half-memories. Whispers shivered through the Pulse.
Raijara flared.
"Red Echo."
Kaelenna hissed. "Juza's twisted version of Speakers."
Raijara's tone turned bitter.
"They mimic Ith, but only fragments. They force meaning into shapes not meant to hold it. Their tongues bleed power, not truth."
Tavian's skin crawled as the first Echo stepped forward, arms outstretched. Her fingers jittered through the air, drawing jagged signs with none of Sariah's grace.
"Vo'theren kar-tel Shun," she rasped. The words were carved more than spoken. Wrong. Like poetry whispered by a knife.
The Veil convulsed.
A root near Tavian cracked and bled black sap.
Sariah stepped between them. Her eyes were lit with fury. The glyphs on her skin ignited, glowing with Hollow and Verdant. Maerith and Seyla flanked her, energy humming in rhythm with her breath.
"That is not how the language is spoken," she said. The air stilled to hear her.
The Red Echo hissed.
Sariah raised her hand. Not a gesture, a declaration.
"Ith is not yours to break."
Then she spoke.
"Keshtar Vel ith Mirun."
It was not volume that gave it power. It was shape. Intention. The Veil bent. Roots surged up from the earth, spiraling around the Red Echo like serpents of living wood. The Echo shrieked, half-formed glyphs shattering in the air.
But another stepped forward.
This one dragged a beast behind her. A malformed hybrid. Ash clung to its back like smoke trapped in flesh. Its eyes were hollow sockets, and from its jaw hung a second, smaller mouth that whispered without pause.
Kaelenna cried out.
"They're circling!"
The third Echo struck from the right. Her fingers flared with red symbols. Energy twisting in response.
Tavian reached for Raijara, but she flinched inside him.
"You are wounded. Let the others-"
"I can't let them take my sisters."
"You will not stop them alone."
Kaelenna shouted and spun forward. Tross, her ash-hound, lunged first, jaws smoking. Yema, her drake, followed, wings tucked and eyes blazing.
The clearing erupted into chaos.
Ashara roared a command, and her Griffin surged forward. It smashed through a Red Echo and sent her beast flying into the trees.
Sariah stepped deeper into the Pulse.
She was not speaking now. She was singing.
Ith flowed from her mouth like a wildfire turned into a river. Her glyphs flared brighter. She was shaping reality with her voice.
But the Veil doesn't bend twice without snapping.
The Juza priest snarled.
"The boy. Take the boy!"
The Echoes pivoted.
Not toward Ashara. Not toward Sariah.
Toward Tavian.
Raijara rose like a shield.
"Now."
Tavian threw his hand up. The bondmark sparked, but the Pulse misfired. His storm twisted sideways. A tree exploded nearby. He fell to one knee.
The first Echo reached for him.
Sariah screamed a word Tavian didn't know.
Veil and Hollow met.
The world cracked.
Energy burst from her like a tidal wave. All around her, earth split. Roots curled outward and the Veil thinned. Everyone was thrown backward, siblings, beasts, enemies alike. Tavian hit the ground hard. Something cracked in his shoulder. He saw stars.
Kaelenna tumbled beside him. Reached for his arm. A Juza soldier grabbed her first. She was yanked into the trees, screaming his name.
He tried to rise. Couldn't.
Ashara's Griffin returned, fire curling from its wings. The beast pinned two Juza guards to the earth. Ashara shouted something, trying to reach her siblings.
But the Veil roared again.
And Sariah vanished.
She didn't fall. She was taken. Pulled sideways. Into the Veil's thinnest place.
Then came the second arrival.
Gold. Iron. Purpose.
Paladins crashed into the clearing atop beasts plated in mirrored armor. Their blades hummed with Echo Pulse. One lifted Tavian into their saddle.
"He's the one," someone shouted. "Get him clear!"
Ashara turned to intervene. But a tree behind her exploded.
She disappeared into the deeper grove, her Griffin shrieking in rage.
A figure blocked the Paladins' retreat. An elder Speaker, veil heavy with moss, eyes unreadable.
"She is not yours to take," the Speaker said, gesturing toward Ashara's form in the distance.
"She is wounded."
"She is ours."
The Paladin hesitated. Then lowered their blade.
Tavian, half-conscious, felt the world collapsing around him. The bondmark on his wrist glowed dull, like a memory trying to stay awake.
Kaelenna. Gone.
Sariah. Gone.
Ashara. Lost.
Raijara. Silent.
The forest moaned. The Veil rang hollow.
Only ash remained.
And the sky began to weep.