The orb flickers.
Once.
Twice.
Then it flares.
Not a gentle glow.
Not a pulse.
It erupts.
Light bursts outward in a violent surge, crimson threading through pale luminescence like veins igniting under glass, and the force of it pushes outward in a shockwave that rattles chains and makes the torches along the walls gutter.
Atticus swears.
Axel grabs my wrist instinctively.
Lucian laughs softly, though it costs him.
“Again,” he murmurs.
The orb’s surface fractures.
A thin crack splinters across it, branching like lightning trapped in crystal, and the red within deepens to something darker, something older.
The dungeon trembles.
Not violently.
But enough.
My palm burns.
Not from the cut.
From the proximity.
And before Axel can pull me away, something impossible happens.
T
