Steel screamed toward Ardion again.
This time the strike came faster than before. Precise, aimed for the space just beneath his ribs. Too clean to be wild. Too controlled to be reckless.
Ardion shifted on instinct.
Light flared at his side.
The weapon answered before his hand fully closed around the summoning mark at his wrist. Metal condensed out of air and intent, weight settling into his palm as if it had always been there. Around him, the same reaction rippled outward. Deric’s blade formed in a flash of blue-white light. Kael’s short twin weapons locked into place with a sharp hum. Sylas’s staff snapped into solidity between one breath and the next.
There were no incantations or hesitation. Training made real.
The incoming blade glanced off Ardion’s guard, sparks skittering across stone as the attacker recoiled into shadow.
The unease sharpened.
It wasn’t fear yet, but something colder, drilled into him long before panic had ever been allowed to surface.
Ardion slowed his steps, scanning the garden path ahead. The lanterns still burned, but their light felt thinner now, stretched too far between shadows. The air pressed close, heavy in a way it hadn’t been moments ago.
This was wrong.
All of it.
The silence. The precision. The way the darkness moved without urgency.
They weren’t attacking to overwhelm.
They were cutting paths. Narrow ones.
Toward him.
“Stay close!” Deric barked.
Another lantern guttered out. Then another.
The garden fractured into bands of light and shadow, the familiar symmetry of the academy dissolving into something treacherous. Hedges rose like walls. Stone statues cast warped silhouettes that shifted with every flicker, no longer fixed to their bases.
Ardion adjusted his position instinctively, placing his back near the low balustrade. The wolf in him surged at the proximity of danger, pacing hard against restraint. His breath steadied, shoulders squaring as training surfaced through the tension.
His grip tightened around the hilt of his blade.
The world narrowed.
A shape moved at the edge of the light.
Then stepped forward.
For the first time, Ardion saw a Black Hound clearly.
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It wore armor, but the shape beneath it was wrong. Too angular. Too rigid. As if darkness itself had been pressed into a humanoid mold and forced to hold. Where a face should have been, there was only shadow, anchored in place by a faint, pulsing sigil at its throat.
It tilted its head.
And moved.
Deric intercepted, steel ringing sharply as blades met. Sparks scattered across stone. The impact drove both back half a step, but the Hound recovered instantly, shadow knitting itself together as if the strike had barely registered.
Another Hound advanced.
Kael stumbled, catching himself on one knee as something grazed his forearm. Blood darkened his sleeve.
Sylas swore, dragging him back. “They’re not testing us,” he said tightly. “They know exactly what they want.”
Ardion’s gaze flicked across the path.
Then he saw it.
One of the Black Hounds shuddered.
It hadn’t been driven back by a strike or pulled away in retreat.
It split apart.
The darkness collapsed inward, the sigil flaring once before shattering into nothing.
Silence rippled through the garden.
“That wasn’t us,” Ardion said.
Another Hound vanished.
Then another.
Each disappearance was precise. Clean.
The remaining shadows hesitated.
That hesitation sent a chill through him.
Something was hunting them.
The last Black Hound reacted violently.
It abandoned the others entirely, its form compressing, armor sharpening as it surged forward with sudden speed. It slipped past Deric’s guard, evaded Kael’s strike, bypassed Sylas entirely.
Straight for Ardion.
There was no angle left.
No space to shift into.
Ardion stepped forward anyway, stance locking in, breath controlled, ready to meet the impact head-on.
The shadow was almost upon him—
Silver cut through the dark.
The Black Hound split mid-air.
Not forced back.
Not dispersed.
Cut.
The silver blade carved cleanly through shadow and sigil alike. Light flared briefly, fractured silver threaded with gold, before collapsing as the darkness unraveled into smoke.
The force rippled outward.
Silence followed.
Heavy. Absolute.
The smoke thinned.
Aylinor stood there.
One foot forward. Weight balanced. The silver blade held low but ready, its surface catching what little lantern light remained. There was no urgency in her posture. No triumph.
Just certainty.
The last traces of shadow along the garden walls unraveled, dissolving as if whatever sustained them had been severed.
When it was over, the garden stood empty.
No one spoke.
Kael lowered his weapon slowly. Sylas stared, disbelief plain on his face. Deric didn’t move at all, eyes fixed on her hands, her stance, the blade.
Aylinor lifted her gaze.
Her eyes met Ardion’s.
For a fraction of a second, something glimmered beneath the faint sheen of her contact lenses. A thin line of silver edged with gold, sharp and fleeting.
Then it was gone.
She sheathed the blade smoothly, as if concluding a routine exercise rather than a near-fatal encounter.
“Aylinor,” Ardion said.
His voice was steady.
She turned partially, attention settling on him without softness or hostility.
“Get back to the academy,” she said.
“Now.”
Footsteps echoed in the distance. Shouts followed. Guards, finally responding.
Ardion held her gaze. “How did you—”
She didn’t let him finish.
“This isn’t the place. Your Highness” she said.
Then she stepped back, retreating into the shadows between hedges.
By the time the guards reached the garden, she was gone.
The path bore no trace of what had been there. No sigils. No residue. Only shattered lantern glass and unsettled air.
Ardion stood where he was, chest rising and falling slowly.
He hadn’t frozen.
He hadn’t failed.
And still—
The fight had ended the moment she chose to enter it.
That understanding lingered far longer than the darkness ever had.
