—Granny Ida—

  Ida stood near the rear of the formation, flanked by the elders, watching the bridge move closer to their shores. The spiders were still distant—perhaps an hour from making landfall—but their presence pressed against the air like a gathering storm. Even from here, she could feel it. The wrongness. The inevitability.

  Vin stood to her right, hands clasped tightly in front of him, lips moving in quiet prayer. Wexel lingered nearby with his arms crossed, jaw set, pretending confidence while his eyes flicked constantly toward the treeline. Others hovered close as well, elders who had seen hard days before, but nothing like this.

  Out ahead, near the first wall, she could see them.

  Maku. Pippy. Rei.

  They stood at the edge of the fortifications, silhouettes against the fading light, framed by sharpened logs and freshly turned earth. Ida felt the familiar twinge of frustration settle in her chest. Moments like this always stirred it. She wished that her gifts were sharper, more direct. She could mend, protect, react. She could keep people alive once they fell. But she could not stop the blow from landing.

  Still, she reminded herself, her role mattered. Survival was rarely decided by the blade alone, but by what came after. She’d seen the numbers, knew the truth: more lives were lost in the hours after a battle than in the clash itself.

  The longing for something more—something louder, more heroic—she recognized for what it was: ego, whispering lies. She was old enough to know better. Every struggle had its parts, and every part its weight. She would carry hers without complaint, and she would do it well.

  Still, an old fear stirred, one born of a life where her efforts had been quietly taken for granted. She wondered, briefly, if this world would prove any kinder.

  She dismissed it with a breath. Such questions could wait.

  As the spiders crept closer, a subtle shift rippled through the front line. Ida saw Maku lean toward Pippy and Rei, say something she couldn’t hear. Then, without ceremony, he stepped forward and lifted into the air atop a disc of shimmering mana.

  She watched him rise, brow furrowing.

  He could leave, she thought. He could simply turn and fly away. The realization sat heavy in her mind. Was it a matter of mana? Distance? Or something else entirely?

  Maku wasn’t Barrett. He didn’t bind himself to people with loud words or reckless promises. And yet…here he was.

  As he climbed higher, the air around him began to change.

  Mana gathered.

  First a handful of spears winked into existence around him, hovering with eerie stillness. Then more. And more. Dozens. Scores. Soon the sky around him glittered with light, a constellation forming in slow, deliberate motion. Each spear pulsed faintly, humming with restrained violence, reflecting the dying sunlight in sharp lines of gold and blue.

  Ida thought she heard him speak, something about darkness, but the words were lost as the moment crested.

  Then they fired.

  The spears streaked forward all at once, tearing through the air like falling stars. The forest erupted in sound—high-pitched shrieks, chitin cracking, bodies bursting apart under the sudden, overwhelming force. The spiders’ advance staggered, then buckled.

  A heartbeat later, cheers broke out behind her, raw and desperate and full of relief.

  Ida watched Maku descend slowly, the mana constructs dissolving one by one. When his boots touched the earth again, he swayed slightly, shoulders sagging with exhaustion.

  Vin let out a breath he’d clearly been holding. “Your man,” he murmured, awe coloring his voice, “is quite powerful indeed.”

  “Lord Maku is not one to be trifled with,” Wexel added solemnly, arms still crossed as if that alone might keep the fear at bay.

  Ida nodded, her expression calm, even as unease stirred beneath it.

  It had been a good move. A necessary one.

  But as she looked back toward the forest, toward the shadows still shifting and crawling beyond the reach of light. She knew the truth.

  The battle had only just begun.

  —Pippy—

  “Not bad,” Rei said, glancing sideways at Maku. “You got, what—another hundred of those in you?”

  Maku didn’t answer. He bent forward slightly, hands braced on his knees, sweat dripping from his hair as he dragged air back into his lungs.

  Pippy drew in a slow breath, fingers curling at her sides.

  Feel the fear. Feel the fear.

  Ahead of them, the spiders poured through the wreckage of their fallen kin, clambering over cracked shells and scorched limbs with renewed hunger. The ground itself seemed to writhe as they came—too many legs, too many bodies, an endless tide closing the distance.

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  Now they were close enough.

  Close enough for everyone.

  “Everyone—aim!” Maku shouted, straightening. “Fire!”

  The villagers hesitated, glancing at one another, uncertainty rippling through the line.

  “Uh, Sir Maku,” Pippy started, voice tight, “fire only became a command because of guns. In medieval times they actually—”

  “JUST RELEASE YOUR SPELLS!” Rei snapped.

  That did it.

  Magic erupted across the field—beams of light, shards of ice, crackling bolts of mana. Some spells struck true, bursting spider bodies apart. Others went wide, splashing uselessly into dirt and trees. A few hit their targets and did almost nothing at all.

  Still, the spiders came.

  They slammed into the first wall with screeches and chittering clicks, climbing over one another in a frenzy of limbs and mandibles.

  “Pull back!” Rei shouted.

  Maku grinned despite the exhaustion. “Let’s do this.” He winked at Pippy and vaulted over the wall, spear flaring to life as he landed.

  The plan was simple, brutal in its simplicity. The three of them would hold the line long enough for the villagers to retreat to the second wall.

  And then they would light the trench.

  Maku surged forward, spear carving glowing arcs through the air. Weeks of preparation—of drills, arguments, failures, and stubborn repetition—paid off in that moment. They moved together now without thinking.

  Pippy’s eyes ignited as she expanded her [Temporal Domain].

  The world slowed.

  Inside the domain, her thoughts raced, branching and calculating, weaving probabilities together like threads. She pushed mana into Maku, accelerating his movements beyond what his body should have allowed. Spiders froze mid-lunge, time gripping them just long enough for his spear to punch through. Others slowed to a crawl, their attacks arriving a heartbeat too late. She’d trained relentlessly with Maku, refining her spell work until every cast cost the bare minimum of mana.

  Rei stood behind them, calm and lethal, firing golden rounds that punched clean holes through chitin. When the spiders pressed too close, she unleashed rolling waves of fire that forced them back in shrieking agony.

  “Back!” Rei called. “Now!”

  Pippy released the domain, blinking as time snapped back into place. The ground around them was littered with twitching spider corpses, and enough space to breathe.

  They fell back together, crossing the ditch and scrambling up the second wall as villagers reached down to haul them up.

  Behind them, the spiders surged again.

  Rei didn’t hesitate.

  She hurled fire into the ditch.

  The tinder ignited instantly, flames roaring upward in a blazing crescent that wrapped around the first wall. Heat washed over them as the fire took hold, stopping the spiders short in a writhing, screaming mass.

  Maku laughed, breathless and wild. “Hell yeah! Let ’em burn!”

  Even Rei allowed herself a tight smile.

  Then the firelight shifted.

  A shadow rose behind the flames, vast and towering, blotting out the glow as it moved forward.

  The shriek that followed rattled the walls.

  A spider the size of a house emerged from behind the inferno, its body black and ridged, red-bladed markings glowing faintly beneath its armor. Each step shook the ground.

  Pippy’s smile vanished. She turned toward Maku, searching his face for the calm certainty of a plan unfolding as intended.

  His jaw clenched.

  “…shit.”

  —Grimm—

  The bird fluttered in tight, anxious circles above its bond.

  Something was wrong.

  The big man burned with heat, skin slick with sweat, breath uneven as if he were drowning in air. His body twitched beneath the thin covers, muscles tightening and releasing in restless spasms. The smell of fever hung heavy and sharp.

  Grimm landed on his chest, talons gripping cloth, and chirped—soft at first, then louder. There was no response.

  He hopped closer to his bond’s face and chirped again, wings fluttering in agitation. Still nothing. The man’s brow was knotted, jaw clenched, trapped somewhere far away.

  Fear bloomed in the bird’s tiny chest.

  Grimm closed his eyes and pressed himself down, feathers flaring slightly as he poured what little power he had into the bond—warmth, warning, wake up. He did not know how else to help. He only knew that whatever held the man now was tightening its grip.

  —Brad—

  Brad lay on his back, staring at a ceiling he didn’t recognize yet somehow felt familiar.

  An arm slid across his chest and pulled him close.

  He turned his head. Beside him lay a woman—small, pale, her long black hair spilling across the pillow in dark waves, threaded with thin red streaks like veins through stone. She fit against him perfectly, warm and soft and certain.

  “We could just stay like this forever,” she murmured, lips brushing his skin.

  Something about her tugged at him. A sense of recognition just out of reach. But the warmth was real. The comfort was real.

  If this was a dream, he wasn’t going to question it.

  “What should we do today?” he asked.

  She giggled, the sound light and intimate. “Why should we do anything at all?”

  That…made sense.

  Brad relaxed, sinking deeper into the bed, into her. The world felt distant. Manageable. Quiet.

  KNOCK KNOCK.

  Brad jolted upright.

  She tightened her grip, pulling him back. “It’s nothing,” she whispered. “Lay back down.”

  KNOCK KNOCK.

  “That’s someone at the door,” Brad said, heart beginning to race.

  “It’s no one,” she replied, too quickly.

  KNOCK KNOCK.

  “Brad! Get your lazy ass up!”

  Brad froze.

  “Who…who is that?” he asked.

  The woman’s face darkened, lips pressing into a thin line.

  “It’s Barrett FREAKIN Donovan!” the voice shouted. “Let me in! This place belongs to me!”

  “Who?” Brad asked, confused, dizzy.

  “Open the door or I’m breaking it down, ya pencil neck dweeb!”

  Her fingers dug into his arm. “Don’t let him in,” she snapped. “If he comes inside, we can never be together.”

  Something cold slid down Brad’s spine.

  He scrambled out of bed, panic blooming, eyes darting wildly for something—anything—to block the door.

  “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff—”

  The door shuddered.

  Wood cracked. Splinters burst outward.

  “DON’T LET HIM IN!” she screamed.

  Brad threw himself against the door, bracing it with his back, muscles screaming as the frame buckled. Sweat poured down his face. The force on the other side was unreal.

  “Daddy’s home, Brad!” the voice roared, laughing.

  The woman slid down beside him, hands framing his face.

  “Look at me,” she said softly. “After we get rid of him, we can do whatever we want.”

  Whatever we want?

  Brad’s breath hitched.

  The pressure on the door surged again.

  His thoughts spiraled. None of this made sense.

  Impossible.

  This was impossible.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  And somewhere, very far away, a bird screamed.