Preta appeared on the horizon long before they reached its outer paths. It did not rise like a city so much as it marked the land like a wound; a ruin half-swallowed by smoke and the thin pallor of the morning haze, its contours blurred, as if the surrounding hills and fields were attempting to forget it existed. Even at that distance Aros sensed that something in it was fundamentally wrong. The air tasted metallic and bitter on his tongue, the way iron does after lightning has struck too close, and every gust of wind carried with it a faint residual heat, as though it still remembered the last screams that had clung to it before being torn away.

  By the time the five of them crossed the final ridge, the city lay fully exposed beneath a sky the color of watered milk. Whole blocks had caved in on themselves, rooftops collapsed inward like ribcages crushed under some immense and invisible weight. Scorch marks traced crooked lines across the walls, dark veins burned into the stone where fire had climbed and spread and finally exhausted itself. The gates, once thick and reinforced, had been rammed inward with such violence that they no longer resembled an entrance but a broken jaw, teeth shattered and pushed back into the mouth in a final, frozen snarl.

  They descended in silence.

  Digiera, whose tongue usually moved faster than most blades, rode without a word, her jaw locked so tightly that the muscles in her cheeks stood out in sharp relief. Legs, whose fingers never stopped moving, never, not even in sleep, let his hands rest motionless on the reins as he stared at the ruins with eyes that grew wider and dimmer with every step, as if his mind could not decide whether to understand or to refuse. Seren Dal kept his spear upright with a discipline that might have looked impressive in another context, but the faint tremor in the haft betrayed the strain that bled through his control. Gemma clung to Aros’s arm whenever her balance faltered, her feverish forehead brushing against his sleeve. She refused to be carried, yet every time her grip tightened he could feel the weakness in it.

  Aros walked carefully, favoring his side. Each step tugged at the half-healed wound across his abdomen, a line of pain that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The injury anchored him in a way he did not entirely resent; the sting kept him from losing himself in the strange, quiet relief that Gemma’s nearness brought him. He feared that relief more than he feared tearing the wound open again.

  When they reached the first street, devastation did not so much reveal itself as settle over them like a burial shroud being lowered over a body. Hinges hung empty where doors had been ripped away, leaving yawning thresholds that opened into rooms choked with debris. Shards of pottery lay scattered across the ground like broken teeth. Blood had dried in long, irregular streaks that dragged across the cobblestones, marking the paths where bodies had been pulled away or where someone had crawled until the strength ran out of their limbs. A crushed helmet rested beneath the blackened skeleton of a wagon. A warped beam, half burned and half soaked, pinned a limp shape to the ground.

  Gemma made a small strangled sound that barely reached her throat.

  Legs whispered, almost to himself, “By the stars,” and the words disintegrated as soon as they left his mouth.

  “This was not a battle,” Seren Dal said, his voice low and steady, though his knuckles had whitened on the spear. “It was a purge.”

  Aros did not contradict him. There was nothing in what he saw that could be named a clash between equal forces. This was something else, colder and far more deliberate.

  They moved forward, step by step, through streets where nothing living stirred. The only things that moved were the slow drift of gray ash and the remnants of banners that hung in tatters from broken poles, their original colors buried beneath soot and grime. The city felt emptied not just of people, but of purpose.

  Then, from somewhere ahead, there was movement. A shout. A sharp, practiced command barked from behind what remained of the stables.

  Four armored soldiers emerged at a run from behind a collapsed section of wall. Aros reached for his blade on instinct, muscles tense and ready, but his hand froze halfway to the hilt when he saw the face of the man at their head.

  Short blond hair. A narrow scar running along the temple.

  “Linard,” Aros breathed, the name escaping him before he could decide whether it was an accusation or a relief.

  Linard stopped so suddenly that the men behind him had to adjust their pace not to collide with him. His spear dipped a fraction.

  “Aros. Digiera. Legs. Seren.” His gaze moved quickly from one to another, and then finally found Gemma, pale and burning with fever as she leaned against Aros. “You are alive.”

  Aros closed the distance by a step. “What happened here?”

  Linard swallowed, the movement visible in his throat. “Someone talked. The Priesthood struck at dawn. No envoys, no questions, no proclamations. Just fire and forced doors and executions in the streets. We lost half our fighters in the first hour.”

  Digiera’s eyes narrowed, her voice sharpening even before the words left her. “Who talked?”

  “We do not know.” Linard shook his head. “But the Knights, Talon’s people, many of them were taken. They are being held in the keep.”

  Aros felt his whole body harden. “Then let them go.”

  Linard’s spear rose at once, his training reacting faster than his thoughts. “Aros, stop.”

  “You will release them,” Aros insisted, taking another step forward, the hand on his sword tightening.

  “No.” Linard’s fingers clenched around the shaft of his spear. “Those are my orders.”

  Aros drew his blade in a single controlled motion.

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  Linard lifted the spear fully, setting the point between them.

  Behind him, the soldiers raised their shields in almost perfect unison, the scrape of metal against stone ringing out in the hollow street with a volume that felt almost sacrilegious in a city that had fallen so quiet.

  Digiera’s hands hovered near the empty places where her knives used to rest, the habit still engraved in her muscles. Legs steadied his breathing in short, deliberate bursts, as though he could force his fear into alignment by will alone. Seren Dal shifted his stance just enough to match Aros’s angle, ready to move when he did.

  For a heartbeat the air seemed to thicken, as if something unseen were pressing down on all of them, holding violence suspended in place only a moment more.

  It was Linard who broke first.

  “No. No, please,” he said, and his voice cracked in a way Aros had never heard. He lowered his spear, not entirely, but enough that the threat became a plea.

  “Aros, listen to me. If you fight here, we will kill you. Not because we want to, but because that is how we were trained. They will strike first and they will not hesitate, and you know it. Do not make me stand here and watch that happen.”

  Aros did not blink. He kept his blade raised, as if the weight of it were the only thing keeping him upright.

  Linard moved a step closer, palms open now, approaching as one might approach a wounded animal that still had teeth. “I know what you want,” he said. “I know what you think you have to do. But you are outnumbered. You are exhausted. You are hurt. And…” His eyes flicked to Gemma. “She will not survive a fight. You know that is true.”

  Gemma swayed slightly, her weight heavier against Aros’s side, her breath shallow and uneven, her fever burning away whatever strength she might have had left.

  Digiera hissed, every word shaped by fury. “We are not surrendering.”

  Linard took another breath, one that sounded painfully careful. “You are not being executed. You are being detained. The same as the others. Hirias wants the city secured before anything else. If you resist, you will die quickly. If you do not resist, there is a chance you live long enough to be heard.”

  Seren Dal spoke, his voice hard and unyielding. “You swear that?”

  Linard faced him. “On my life.”

  The street seemed to hold its breath. Aros’s hand tightened on the hilt of his sword until the leather bit into his palm. His arm trembled, just slightly.

  Gemma whispered his name. It was barely a sound, only a trace of breath and fever, but Aros heard it with perfect clarity. There was no plea in it, no order, only recognition. And with that single word he understood that the decision had already been made by something beyond pride or rage.

  He lowered his weapon.

  Linard exhaled in a rush, the sound too sharp, like a man drowning who has just reached the surface and is not entirely sure how much air he is allowed to take.

  “Disarm them,” he said to his men, his tone quiet. “Carefully.”

  The soldiers advanced with caution, as though one wrong gesture might reignite the violence they had just avoided. Digiera resisted until Aros met her eyes and gave a single, small shake of his head. Seren Dal released his spear last, his jaw set in a line that spoke of humiliation and necessity in equal measure. Legs surrendered his daggers with hands that trembled despite his best efforts to hide it.

  Bindings followed. The ropes were rough, not cruel, but tight enough to remind them that any illusion of freedom had now ended.

  Aros allowed them to take his sword only after he had shifted Gemma properly into his arms, making sure her head rested against his shoulder, her body secured against the jostling steps to come.

  Linard tied the knot around Aros’s wrists himself, his eyes avoiding Aros’s face.

  “I am taking you all to the keep,” he said quietly. “To the lower cells. The others are there.”

  Digiera’s eyes widened, her anger cracking just enough to let something else through. “Talon?”

  “I said the others,” Linard replied, a faint hardness edging into his voice. “I am not allowed to say more.”

  “But he is alive,” Legs said, the words almost a question and almost a prayer.

  Linard did not answer.

  Which was an answer.

  “Move,” one of the soldiers said, more out of duty than malice.

  “Gently,” Linard snapped, the command sharper than anything he had said so far.

  They marched through the streets that had already forgotten how to be streets and now resembled the inside of a skull left open. Charred houses leaned at strange angles, as though the heat had warped even the bones of the city. Cracks in the stone seemed to bleed dried, dark stains that might once have been blood. Ash drifted around them in slow spirals, falling without urgency, like a gray snowfall that had no season.

  Gemma murmured something as they walked, her voice so faint that at first Aros thought he had imagined it.

  “Anxio,” she whispered.

  Aros felt every muscle in his body tense. “Gemma…?”

  But her eyes had already closed again. Whatever place she had been pulled toward, it lay far beyond his reach.

  At the entrance to the keep, guards stepped aside as soon as they saw Linard. No questions were asked, no explanations given. The stone archway seemed to swallow them the moment they crossed under it. Linard led them down a spiraling staircase carved straight into the rock, the walls close and dark, the torches painting the descent in an uneven glow. With each step the air grew colder, denser, seasoned with the smells of damp, old sweat, and a fear that had soaked so deep into the foundations that it could no longer be entirely washed away.

  He stopped at a heavy barred gate set into the wall at the end of a narrow hall. Behind the bars shapes moved slowly, heads turning toward the noise of approaching boots. In the flickering light those shapes resolved into faces. Faces they knew.

  Some bruised.

  Some bound.

  Some barely awake.

  The captured Knights.

  Linard lowered his voice as if the darkness itself might overhear him. “I am sorry,” he said. “This is the only way I can keep you alive.”

  Aros looked at him, and for a moment his expression held both betrayal and a reluctant, painful understanding.

  The gate opened with a long, scraping sound that seemed to drag along Aros’s nerves. He stepped inside first, Gemma’s weight secure in his arms. Digiera, Legs, and Seren Dal followed after him, their steps dulled by resignation and anger.

  Linard closed the gate.

  The thud of the lock sliding into place reverberated through the stone like a verdict spoken aloud.

  He lingered a heartbeat longer than necessary. “Aros,” he said in a near whisper, “Hirias does not know you are here yet. Do not do anything foolish before he decides what to do.”

  Aros did not respond. There was nothing left to say that would not break something further.

  Linard’s footsteps receded up the stairs, and his shadow vanished with him, swallowed by walls that had heard too many such departures. The darkness flowed back into the hallway as if nothing had changed.

  Gemma’s fevered breath warmed the side of Aros’s neck.

  From the far corner of the cell, rough and disbelieving, a familiar voice spoke his name.

  “Aros. Is that you?”

  The Knights of Light were no longer scattered.

  They were imprisoned.

  But at least, for now, they were imprisoned together.