Mel was the first to reach the manor.
The scene before her was a ruin. The once-majestic estate of House Divian looked like something dragged through time and spat back out. Smoke rose in thin, silent ribbons from the blackened remains of the west wing. Stone and bone mingled across the ground, broken pillars, shattered glass, bodies half-buried in ash.
The Divian crest, that proud insignia of gold and flame, was still there, but now it lay crooked, half-submerged in the earth as though the manor itself had tried to swallow it.
She stopped for a heartbeat, taking it all in. Her expression stayed flat, but every motion betrayed tension. The subtle tremors in her hands, the tight angle of her jaw. She scanned the wreckage as if her eyes could will Penelope to appear.
"Penelope," she muttered. "Where are you?"
She moved. She vaulted a fallen beam, skidded around a crater torn into the gravel path, and started hauling aside chunks of stone and shattered furniture with bare hands. Each time she lifted something, she braced herself for the sight beneath.
"Penelope!" she shouted. Her voice sounded thin against the roar of burning timber.
Bodies appeared instead. A maid crushed under a collapsed balcony, eyes open, staring at nothing. A man in a cook's apron, chest torn open like paper. Severed limbs scattered through the rubble with no matching torsos in sight. Every shape in the smoke made her stomach tighten, every limb she unearthed made her breath stutter. Maids. Workers. Guards. The faces she found were pale with shock, not peace.
"Penelope, damn it—where are you?"
Mel kept moving. She did not let herself stop long enough to count.
Another explosion rolled through the air, this one softer than whatever had hit the manor first but still strong enough to shake dust from the few walls still standing. Mel's head snapped toward the sound.
Something bright fell out of the smoke.
At first it was only light, a clear, translucent sphere hurtling from the broken skeleton of the manor toward the grounds. It twisted as it fell, shedding sparks, the surface warping like heat shimmer. Inside, a small form was curled in on itself.
Mel ran toward it without thinking.
The sphere slammed into the ground with a teeth-rattling crack, digging a shallow crater and sending a spray of dirt and broken stone outward. The bubble of light fractured on impact, splintering into threads that dissolved into the air, and the figure inside rolled limply onto the torn-up grass.
"Penelope," Mel breathed.
She dropped to her knees beside her.
Penelope pushed herself up on shaking elbows. Her gown was ripped from just above the knee in jagged streaks, fabric burned and singed at the edges. Light bruises marbled her arms and collarbone. Smoke streaked her cheeks. There were faint burn marks at her wrists and along the side of her neck, like fingers of heat had tried to close on her and almost succeeded.
Mel's gaze flicked over her, checking pupils, breaths, the way Penelope held herself.
"Talk to me. What happened?" Mel asked.
Penelope's lips parted. "It's—"
A shadow rose behind the broken masonry to their left.
Mel turned.
It stepped out from behind a half-toppled pillar.
Mel stared. She couldn't see it but she could sense the aether.
"You've got to be kidding me," she whispered.
"That," Penelope said hoarsely beside her, "that's what happened."
Mel nodded, still not quite believing what she was sensing. "You could have led with that."
Penelope gave a short, breathless sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn't hurt so much.
...
The afternoon had been quiet.
Penelope sat at her desk on the fifth floor, in the upper study where the light always fell warm. Papers lay fanned out in careful stacks, reports on the current case. Her beverage sat untouched at her elbow. The amber daylight leaking through the tall windows blended with the steady glow of the aether lamp, the two light sources weaving together in the glass until the world outside looked like it had been gilded.
She flipped a page, making another neat annotation. Her hand moved on autopilot; her mind was three steps ahead, arranging facts, tugging at inconsistencies.
She didn't hear anything come in.
The manor was never silent. Staff walked the corridors, boots against polished wood, heels clicking on stone. Voices rose and fell, occasionally spilling into laughter. Somewhere far below, a pot clanged. Penelope had lived above that noise long enough to let it blur into a constant, comforting hum.
Which was why, when it stopped, she noticed.
Her pen hovered above the paper. She frowned and looked up.
The door to her study was closed. The crack beneath it was a thin, unbroken strip of shadow. Beyond it, the hallway lay on the other side like a different world.
The silence pressed on her eardrums.
Penelope set the pen down, very carefully.
She waited.
Nothing.
"…Hello?" she called.
Her own voice sounded strange in the study, too sharp against the padded walls and the soft ticking of the clock.
"..."
The hairs along her forearms rose.
She stood. Light slid to her hand as easily as breathing, gathering at her fingertips in a faint shimmer. By the time she reached the door, there was a subtle glow around her knuckles.
She opened it.
The corridor outside looked perfectly normal. The blue runner rug was still straight. The portraits hung level on the walls, former Divians in stiff poses watching her with oil-painted eyes. The aether lamps along the hallway were lit.
Nothing moved.
Yet.
A smell threaded through the air. Something sharp like mineral and electric, as if lightning had struck stone somewhere close by and the scent of it had seeped up through the floor.
Penelope stepped into the hallway, leaving the door to the study slightly opened.
"Is anyone there?" she called.
Silence pushed back.
From the stairwell at the end of the hall, a sound rose, it wasn't a footstep, or a voice. It was the sound of displaced air, like breath drawn in and released by something too large and too patient.
The light around Penelope's fingers brightened. Her pulse had picked up, but her strides stayed measured as she walked toward the stairwell.
"You're an idiot," she muttered to herself.
She kept going anyway.
She reached the top of the stairs and looked down.
It was standing in the entrance hall below.
Her mind scrambled to classify it. For half a second she thought, intruder, then monster, then nothing, because none of those words fit.
It was tall. Six feet? Seven? It was hard to tell with the way it carried itself, but it loomed over the scattered furniture in the entrance hall. Broad shoulders filled the space where a man's would be, but everything below that narrowed. Its limbs were too long, arms dangling past where the knee joint should be, legs jointed in ways her mind refused to understand. The elbows seemed to bend in both directions at once when it shifted its weight.
Six fingers on each hand. She counted them. Couldn't stop herself. Each one absurdly long, jointed, like a mantis's limb stretched out and given a mockery of a human shape.
Its skin drank the light from the upper hall. Black wasn't the right word. It was absence, broken only by the faint, glowing lines running beneath the surface. Those lines flowed like veins but shifted in color, cycling slowly through muted blues, sickly greens, bruised purples, as if its blood couldn't decide what color to be.
Two horns curled backward from its head. They looked delicate from that distance, like glass carved too thin, filled with slow-turning storms. Light moved inside them like trapped weather.
It stood in the center of her entrance hall with the patience of something with everything in the world.
Penelope didn't think. Her body acted.
She made a gesture and the radiance spear answered her.
Light flooded her right hand, condensing in a single, sharp line that lengthened into a spear before she had fully shaped it. She snapped her arm forward, not worrying about form.
The spear flew.
The hall went white where it struck, light detonating across the creature's shoulder and into the walls, shredding plaster and shattering one of the huge front windows into a rain of glass. The floor cracked in a spiderweb pattern from the impact.
The brilliance died away.
The thing still stood there.
It had not moved. Not even a sway. The glowing lines beneath its skin brightened once, like something had fed it. Then they settled again.
Penelope's mouth went dry.
"You've got to be joking," she whispered.
Slowly, as if only now interested, the creature turned its head toward her.
She saw its "face" then. Its head was strange. The shape of a mantis, long, encased in overlapping chitinous plates where a face should have been. No eyes, no nose, just that vertical slit cutting down the front. The slit down the center of its skull unsealed, opening like a vertical wound.
A mouth unfolded, teeth interlocking in a flower of sharpness that clicked once as they flexed.
Every instinct screamed at her to run.
Pressure slammed down on her from nowhere. Her knees almost buckled. The aether field coming off it hit her like a wave, heavy and unforgiving, the way a predator's gaze feels when it finds prey that cannot outrun it. It was like standing too close to a storm front. Her skin prickled. Her chest tightened.
She realized, that she hadn't felt any of that before it had turned to her. It had masked itself completely until now.
"This aether…" The words slipped out of her. "How did you get in here?"
"..."
It didn't answer. It just looked at her without eyes.
She did the only thing her instincts would accept.
"Sevenfold," she whispered.
Light erupted around her, forming in the air like crystal panes. Seven distinct spears of radiance bloomed around her shoulders and hands, rotating as if drawn into orbit.
Boom.
They fired all at once, streaks of white-gold cutting through the air toward the entrance hall.
She didn't stay to watch them hit.
Penelope spun and ran.
...
Her office was on the fifth floor. Getting down was not the problem.
She threw herself off the top of the stairwell, light catching her and turning the fall into long, controlled drops. She hit the fourth-floor landing in a crouch, the boards shuddering, and immediately flared a burst of light in her palm.
The radiance blew out in a loud, concussive pop. The sound rattled doors along the hall.
"Everyone out!" she shouted, voice sharp enough to cut. "Now! This is an emergency, move!"
People spilled into the hallway in varying states of confusion, maids with dust on their skirts, workers rubbing at their eyes, one man still carrying a stack of folded linens. Fear warped their faces as they saw her expression.
"What's happening, Lady Penelope?" someone asked.
"Don't ask, run," she said. "Get to the exits, any exit. Avoid the main hall. Now."
They hesitated for half a heartbeat. Then someone at the back turned and bolted. The others followed, a growing flood of bodies pushing toward the stairwells and side corridors.
She moved with them for a few steps, then broke off toward another staircase, hitting the third floor, then the second in quick succession. On each landing she detonated another small flare, more for attention than damage.
"Out!" she shouted again. "If you can move, you run. If you can't, you shout until someone hears you. Do not go to the entrance hall!"
Her heart pounded. Every floor she passed added weight to the calculation in her head, how many people could she get out, how much damage could that thing do if it reached the servants' quarters, how much of the manor could fall and still leave escape routes.
She hit the second-floor landing at a run.
The air changed.
The aether pressure rolled over her in a single, crushing wave, so heavy she almost staggered. It came from ahead, down the corridor that led to the main stairs descending to the first floor.
The workers and maids who had been running in that direction all stopped as if someone had thrown invisible chains around their ankles. Their bodies locked, muscles screaming against a weight they could not see. Eyes went wide with panic.
"Keep moving," Penelope called, but even speaking felt like pushing words through syrup.
She forced her legs forward, every step an effort, and turned the corner.
The stairwell that led down to the main hall stood open. And at the bottom of those stairs, in the shadowed space of the first-floor landing, the beast waited.
It had gotten ahead of them somehow.
Its six fingers curled slowly at its sides. In each hand, it held something by the hair. It took Penelope a second to understand what she was looking at.
Two heads. Guards she knew by name. Their eyes glassy, mouths open in frozen surprise.
"Oh gods," someone whispered behind her.
The beast dropped the heads.
They hit the floor with dull, wet sounds.
Its teeth clicked together once. It raised one long-fingered hand toward the nearest maid on the stairs, still at least ten meters away. The fingers flexed, and it slashed downward through empty air.
The gesture shouldn't have meant anything. It did not touch her.
The maid's head slid off her neck as neatly as if someone had drawn a blade through it. It toppled backward. Blood sprayed across the steps.
Someone screamed. It broke the dam. Panic shattered whatever composure had remained. People tried to turn, to run, but the aether pressure held them frozen, legs refusing to listen.
"No," Penelope said. "No, no, no—"
The creature lifted its hand again, claws shaping into another invisible strike toward the packed cluster of bodies.
Penelope moved.
She stepped in front of them, planting herself as a barrier between the beast and the helpless crowd. Light flared from her palms, shooting outward in a wide sheet.
"Radiant Wall," she said.
A light shield roared into existence, a barrier ten meters wide, five meters tall, its surface a shimmering plane of gold-white radiance.
She braced.
At first, nothing happened. Then the world slammed into her.
The impact against the wall wasn't visible. The beast never took a step forward. It only completed its gesture. But something immense crashed into her construct, a force that dragged at her insides. The shield rippled, cracked along one edge. Aether tore out of her like water through a broken pipe.
Penelope gritted her teeth. "You're kidding me," she hissed.
"That—was just a hit?" she thought, the words barely forming under the strain.
Her mind worked even while her arms shook. The fact that the strike connected at all meant it wasn't simple shockwave or pressure. The distance didn't matter. It was clawing through space itself, dragging its attack across the gap.
A spatial ability.
Aether drained in a gush. She reinforced the wall, patching the cracks before they could spiderweb.
Whatever this thing was, it was powerful.
At least A rank. Maybe higher.
...
"Listen to me," she snapped over her shoulder without taking her eyes off the beast. "If you can hear me, listen."
Her voice cut through some of the panic. People behind her sobbed, but they heard.
"Coat yourselves in aether," she yelled. "Now. Whatever you've got. Cover your bodies. It will help you move."
There was a moment of stunned hesitation.
"I can't," someone choked. "I—I can't move—"
"Yes, you can," Penelope said, tone sharp enough to sting. "You've all trained. Feel for it. Pull up from your core, push it to your skin. If you don't, you stay stuck and you die here. Move."
Something shifted behind her. A few people managed to drag on old training, to reach inside themselves and pull. Light flickered, pale blue along one woman's arms, deep green crawling like vines up another man's neck. A worker's hands glowed a faint, trembling orange.
As aether flared across their skin, the pressure slid off just enough to let them move again.
"It's—it's working!" someone gasped.
"Good," Penelope said. "Go. Side corridors, windows, servant doors. Do not go through the main hall."
Some ran immediately, stumbling, half carrying each other. Others stayed. A few, maybe a dozen—didn't turn away. Their fear showed, but something else sat beneath it.
"Lady Penelope," a broad-shouldered man said, his voice shaky but determined. "We're not leaving you to face that alone."
"You are absolutely leaving," she said. "That is not a request."
"Respectfully," he said, squaring his jaw, "no."
She stared at him for one furious heartbeat. "You're idiots," she said. "Brave idiots."
An enhancer among them let out a sharp breath and stepped forward. His muscles bunched, veins lighting up with a deep brown glow that spidered under his skin.
"I'll go first," he said. "If it bleeds, we can hurt it."
"Wait," Penelope called, but he had already launched himself down the stairs.
He hit the landing like a hammer. His fist crashed into the beast's torso with enough force to crack stone. The sound echoed.
The creature didn't move.
It turned its head toward him with the slow interest of something noticing an insect crawling over its food.
"Move!" Penelope shouted.
Too late.
The beast swiped one limb in a motion so fast that her eyes barely tracked it. One moment its arm hung at its side; the next, it had cut through the air in a blur.
The enhancer's head detached. It tumbled, his body staying upright for a fraction of a second before collapsing.
The hallway erupted. Screams, skills, the crackle of abilities.
"Don't rush it in a straight line!" Penelope snapped, but momentum had taken the group.
Mages threw bolts of energy, plasma spheres that sizzled through the air, arcs of compressed wind, jagged shards of stone. Mutants shifted mid-stride, eyes going feral, claws extending. Enhancers surged forward, limbs thickening, aether turning their blows into wrecking balls.
Impacts landed. Magic slammed into the beast's body from every angle. Penelope added her own strikes when she could.
The abilities hit. The creature's skin didn't tear. The glowing lines beneath its surface only brightened, each strike feeding the pulsing color instead of diminishing it.
"It's absorbing it," Penelope realized aloud. "Of course you are."
A mutant with scaled arms leaped at its back. The beast twisted, moving as if the space between them had shortened for its convenience alone. One long finger flicked. The mutant slammed sideways into a wall with a crunch that made Penelope flinch.
She threw up another barrier, a narrower one this time, blocking an invisible strike that would have sliced half the hallway in two. The impact rattled her bones.
"Fall back!" she shouted. "Pull back to the side rooms! Stop hitting it directly!"
Some listened. Some didn't. Some were too close already.
The first floor groaned under the abuse. Flames licked along one wall where a misfired skill had caught the paneling. Cracks split the ceiling. The manor was holding, but only just. Every new burst of aether, every deflected blow and shattered skill, chewed another chunk out of its structure.
"Lady Penelope!" someone screamed as they were thrown to the ground.
"I see you!" she yelled back, already casting a shielding arc to deflect another unseen swipe.
For a breathless minute, it was chaos, bodies moving, dying, the beast at the unmoving center of it all.
Then it stopped.
The creature went still in a way that made Penelope's stomach tighten. The aether lines beneath its skin paused their lazy shifting and then, all at once, flared into a uniform glow, a purple-pink hue that filled every vein at the same time.
Its horns darkened, not to black, but to something deeper, like a hole torn in the fabric of color itself.
"Back," Penelope said quietly. "Everyone back. Now."
The ones who could still move listened, dragging wounded away, staggering out of immediate range.
She didn't retreat.
A golden sphere of light formed around her and what remained of the fighters, expanding until it enclosed them all in a tight circle. The surface glowed, brightening with each passing second as she poured more aether into it.
The creature lifted one finger and pointed to the center of the hall.
Space warped.
It started as a shimmer, a slight distortion in the air, as if heat were rising from an invisible flame. Then the point tightened, drawing everything around it inward. The boards of the floor creaked, then tore free, dragged toward that expanding gravity. Plaster dust lifted off surfaces and flew backward. Bits of glass skittered across the ground.
The point deepened into a widening sphere of collapsing space, sucking everything into itself.
The force latched onto her shield and pulled. Her construct flexed, its outer surface rippling as she fought to keep it intact. The aether cost was brutal; it felt like the shield was ripping her open from the inside, but she had no choice.
Above, the manor began to unravel.
Floors did not collapse in a single cinematic plunge. They failed in pieces. She heard the supports go, one by one, sharp cracks, long groans. Sections of ceiling tore free and were dragged downward toward the writhing point at the hall's center. Furniture tumbled through holes, chandeliers wrenched from chains, portraits ripped off walls.
Her shield held for a breath. Cracks formed, each one a spike of pain in her ribs.
Boom.
The world exploded outward.
It was not an explosion of fire or sound alone. It was space itself rebounding, shoving everything it had pulled in back out in one violent exhale. The shockwave slammed into Penelope's shield, which shattered under the strain, turning into shards of light that dissolved as they flew.
Heat rode the wave. The accumulated plasma and distorted air burst outward with the force, scouring walls, flipping furniture, driving debris ahead of it like shrapnel.
Penelope felt the push a fraction of a moment before the wave hit her fully. It was enough for her to throw up a smaller shield around her own body, a tight shell of light.
Then the ground floor came apart.
...
There was no single, clean moment where the manor fell. It had already started dying the second that point had appeared.
Penelope rode the destruction.
The shockwave shattered the floor beneath her, sent her hurtling sideways through what used to be a corridor. Something clipped her ribs. The temporary shield around her body absorbed enough of it to keep her whole, but the rest of the force punched through.
She hit the floor hard. The impact knocked the air from her lungs.
For a moment she lay there, face pressed against dust and splintered wood, ears ringing. Then she forced herself onto her hands and knees and spat blood, red against gray dust.
"Still here," she rasped.
The manor groaned around her like a wounded animal. The ground floor was barely a floor anymore. Through gaps in the boards and torn stone beneath her, she saw fire licking at the basement, felt heat crawling up through her boots. The ceiling overhead sagged in places where support beams had given way. Chunks of plaster hung at wrong angles, held up by nothing she trusted.
She didn't look for the workers.
She didn't dare. She already knew what she would see if she turned her head.
"Focus," she told herself.
She pushed to her feet.
The corridor around her was a ruin. Walls cracked open, a doorway caved in, broken portraits lying face-down in dust. At the far end, through the haze of smoke and drifting ash, she could just make out the shape of the main hall, what remained of it.
The beast stepped through the smoke at the far end.
It moved unhurriedly. The aether lines beneath its skin pulsed in slow, rolling waves, brighter than before, as if its own explosion had fed it instead of harming it. Its horns caught the firelight, bending and scattering it into strange patterns across the broken walls. Each step it took felt patient.
"Of course you're fine," Penelope said.
She lifted both hands. Light gathered instantly, drawn to her like it had been waiting.
"Fine," she thought. "Come on then."
Four spears formed in quick succession, smaller than the ones she'd thrown in panic, but better aimed. She didn't give them time to fully crystallize before releasing them.
They streaked toward the creature, one high, one low, two aimed at the torso.
The beast tilted its head slightly.
It raised one hand, extending a single finger. The air between that finger and the incoming spears stretched. Space itself seemed to thin, elongating, as if someone had grabbed reality and pulled.
The two spears aimed at its torso slowed. Their path warped. They slid uselessly past its side and detonated in distant explosions that showered the hall with debris.
The strike aimed at its head met nothing but empty air as it leaned. The one at its legs missed as the floor beneath it didn't seem to be quite where it should have been anymore.
"It can distort space itself," Penelope thought, already moving to the side. "Not just send attacks."
Worse than she'd hoped.
The beast stopped. Its horns dimmed, then brightened again as the aether lines flickered.
It lifted its hand, veins shifting with rhythmic light. A tight coil of purple energy gathered at the tip of one finger, so bright it almost hurt to look at.
"Oh, absolutely not," Penelope said.
She didn't bother trying to block it. Instead she threw herself sideways, sliding through a collapsed doorway into what had once been a sitting room. The ceiling above was mostly gone, open to smoke-darkened sky. A broken chandelier lay on its side near the fireplace.
The bolt ripped past where she'd just occupied.
Boom.
The explosion that followed was savage, obliterating what remained of the wall behind her and sending shards of stone and wood into the room.
Penelope sucked in a breath, planted her feet, and pulled.
Light came, heavier this time, drawn into a different shape in her hands. A prism, facets overlapping, angles sharp and precise. It hummed in her grip with focused power.
The moment the beast stepped through the ruined doorway, she threw it.
"Catch this," she said.
The prism flew straight and fast. The creature stretched space in front of it again, but it was a little late. The prism clipped the edge of reality's warp and slid in.
It detonated into form.
Chains exploded out of it in all directions, luminous and snapping. They coiled around the beast's limbs, its neck, its ankles, tightening in a net of radiant links.
"Got you," Penelope breathed.
The creature flexed. The chain on its right arm snapped as if it had been made of paper. That was fine. She hadn't expected to hold it long.
"I only need a moment," she said.
She pulled light into a single point in front of her.
Flash.
The world went white.
It wasn't just light. It was radiance compressed to a screaming singularity and then unleashed at point-blank range, aimed directly at the chitinous plates of its faceless skull. The blast tore through the air, not with fire or force, but with the pure shock of energy trying to overwrite reality in that one small space.
Penelope threw her arm up to shield her own eyes.
"You see the world somehow," she muttered. "Let's see you see this."
The flash went off like a small sun.
The beast stopped moving.
For a few precious seconds, it stood perfectly still, chains still wrapped around three of its limbs, head tilted back into the radiance. The aether lines beneath its skin flickered wildly, colors stuttering.
Penelope didn't waste the opening.
"Come on," she growled, forcing her tired muscles to move.
She concentrated everything she could afford to lose into a single point in front of her chest, then shoved it all forward.
The explosion that blossomed against the creature's torso was bigger than any she'd thrown today. Light roared, flooding the hall and the ruined sitting room. Heat seared the cracked floor, carving a fresh crater into the already-destroyed ground.
The shockwave hit her, throwing her back into a half-collapsed wall. She grunted, but stayed conscious.
She waited for the light to fade.
It dimmed.
The beast stood exactly where it had been.
Not a mark.
Slowly, almost curiously, it turned its head toward her again.
Something in that motion made her stomach drop. The lines beneath its skin were cycling faster now, colors racing. Its horns brightened, drinking in firelight and giving it back.
"Oh, you liked that," Penelope said.
It moved.
There was no warning. One moment it stood at the far side of the room. The next, the space between them compressed, and it was crossing the distance in less than a heartbeat, every long limb a blur. The world seemed to skip.
Penelope barely had time to throw up a shield.
"Radiant Wall!" she shouted in desperation, her hands slamming together.
A plane of radiant light flared into being between them. She angled it, not straight-on but slightly off, remembering her training: a shield doesn't always need to hold. Sometimes it just needs to redirect.
The hit landed like a meteor.
The wall held for one instant, just long enough to twist the force sideways. Then it shattered.
The redirected impact still slammed into her. She flew across the room, hitting the far wall hard enough to crater it around her shoulders. For a second, everything went black at the edges.
She slid down to one knee.
"Okay," she rasped.
Pain shot through her ribs, her back, her arms. She slapped one hand against her chest.
"Halo of Renewal," she said through gritted teeth.
A divine halo of radiant light manifests above Penelope's head. Golden light bloomed around her, encasing her body. Flesh knit. Bones that had cracked but not fully broken pulled themselves back together. The pain dulled, but another, more worrying sensation tugged at her awareness.
Her aether pool was burning faster than it should. Every skill cost more than it had earlier in the day. The beast's presence seemed to drag more out of her, like casting in molasses.
The creature closed the distance again, this time at a walk. It stopped three meters away, looming over her.
It raised its hand. Extended one finger between them.
The air in front of her warped. The space between them elongated, stretching her further away without her moving.
Penelope realized what it was doing a split second before it happened.
A point formed in the air before her, small and black, tugging everything inward like a tiny, impatient star.
"No," she said. "We're not doing that again."
She threw her hands up.
Light slammed together around her, forming not a simple sphere this time but a hexagonal construct—six overlapping panels arranged around her like a rough globe, each one angled outward at a slightly different pitch. It wasn't her prettiest work, but it was fast and strong.
"Please hold," she whispered to it.
The black point shot toward her like a bullet.
It hit the shield.
BOOM.
The explosion was smaller than the earlier one, more focused, all that displaced space and violent rebound aimed directly at her. The hexagonal shield held for half a second, then its layers began to fail, one after another, each one shattering with a crack of light.
The last one broke as the blast flung her up and out, through what remained of the manor's outer wall.
She saw sky. Then earth. Then sky again.
The world reasserted itself when she hit the ground outside.
The last scraps of the shield absorbed enough to keep her spine intact. She rolled, dirt and dust smearing across her torn dress, and came to a stop face-down on shattered stone and ash.
The light around her skin flickered and died.
For a moment, everything was quiet in her head, just the distant roar of the burning manor and the crackle of fire.
Then someone's hands closed around her arms.
"Penelope."
Her ears twitched.
She knew that voice.
Mel's face hovered above her, framed by smoke and flame, a worried expression so rarely seen worn.
"Took you long enough," Penelope rasped, trying to push herself up.
Mel huffed. "You're welcome."
She slid an arm under Penelope's shoulders, lifting her.
"You're bleeding," Mel said.
"I noticed," Penelope replied, coughing. "It's mostly cosmetic."
"That's a lie," Mel said.
"Yeah," Penelope agreed. "Are you going to help me up?"
Mel sighed through her nose, braced, and helped her to her feet.
...
The creature stood there, motionless, as if watching them with eyes it didn't have.
"We're not done," Penelope Said quietly.