Sylus's hand dipped into his pocket.
That was all the warning I got.
A small motion. Controlled. Deliberate.
His fingers curled around something inside the fabric—thin, metallic, unmistakable.
The detonator.
My breath seized.
Move.
I didn't wait for the flash.
I launched myself toward the nearest pillar—the only thing in this ballroom that had a chance of withstanding a concussive blast.
One stride.
Two.
Three—
The world turned white.
No sound—just a sickening pressure that punched through my skull and hollowed out my lungs.
Then the roar hit.
Glass shattered overhead, raining like knives. Heat licked across my back. The floor bucked. The shockwave slammed me into the pillar so hard my vision broke apart into shards of light.
For a moment, there was only ringing. Thick. Blinding. Drowning.
I dragged in a breath—ragged, burning.
Dust choked the air. My eyes watered. Shapes smeared, then slowly realigned.
The ballroom was gone.
Smoke. Broken marble. Hanging wires sparking overhead. Half-dead chandeliers swinging like pendulums. Groans rose from the rubble. Someone screamed in the distance.
I pushed myself upright, ribs shrieking. Pain bloomed sharp beneath my arm—hot, deep. My hand slid against my side and something prickled my palm.
Glass.
A lot of it.
Warmth spread across my fingers—slick, unmistakable—and I finally took stock of myself.
My arms were coated in dust and streaked with shallow cuts; blood had dried in thin lines down my forearms. The slit of my skirt had torn higher along my thigh, fabric ripped from the blast. Blood dripped steadily from my side in a warm line. Something wet slid down my cheek.
I touched my eyebrow.
More blood.
And when I swallowed, the metallic tang told me my lip was split too.
Great.
I looked like I'd crawled out of a collapsed building—which, to be fair, I had.
Then I looked across the ruined hall—
There.
Across what used to be the dance floor, half-shadowed by smoke and snapped beams, Sylus stood perfectly steady. Elara was held firmly in his arms, basically unscathed except for ash in her hair and a torn hem.
He'd shielded her from the blast exactly as the game had shown.
That—
That made me laugh.
A short, breathless sound punched out of me before I could stop it. Pain stabbed through my ribs. I hissed, hand pressing harder to my side.
Absurd.
Ridiculous.
Perfectly scripted.
Elara's gaze locked onto me through the smoke—eyes wide, frantic.
I managed the smallest nod.
Relief cracked across her features like fissures in glass.
But the moment ended fast.
The air crackled.
A ripple of energy pulsed through the destroyed hall—wrong, heavy, charged with something unnatural. The hairs on my arms rose.
My gaze snapped toward the far end of the ruin.
A figure flickered into existence—vague, luminous, rippling like heat over asphalt.
A Wanderer.
Then another.
Then another, glitching into reality in violent bursts of light.
I swore under my breath.
No time to think.
I reached for the weapon hidden in the seam of my suit—a slender firearm strapped high on my thigh, secured beneath the slit of the skirt. Smooth draw. Familiar weight.
A sharp click as I chambered a round.
The nearest Wanderer lunged.
I fired.
Light burst through its core. The creature spasmed, its form stuttering like corrupted data before it disintegrated in a crackling explosion.
I pivoted, breath tearing through my chest, blood dripping down my side.
Another materialized.
I raised the gun—
—and Solon Hotel's ruins turned into a battlefield.
We fought through the Wanderers in a brutal rhythm—Sylus rounding them up like livestock for slaughter, and Elara and I tearing through them with precision.
Sylus's mist snapped outward in long, dark lashes—hooking Wanderers mid-glitch and dragging them into a tight arc in front of us. They lunged, flickered, shrieked—
—and we ended them.
Elara fired beside me, her grip steady, her shots clean and controlled. Every round hit its mark. Every burst of static lit her face in sharp white flashes.
I mirrored her movement, covering the openings she couldn't see. Gunfire cracked from my side in brutal cadence—quick, efficient, unhesitating. Each recoil stabbed through my ribs like a fresh blade.
Glass crunched under every pivot. Dust burned in my lungs. The smaller shards lodged beneath my skin scraped and shifted with every motion, hot and grinding.
Didn't matter.
Another Wanderer flickered into existence near Sylus—distorted limbs jerking out of sync. His mist snared it by the torso and whipped it toward us like a training dummy.
Elara and I shot at the same moment.
Two rounds.
One impact.
The creature collapsed in a burst of crackling light, raining sparks across my arm.
We moved together like a broken constellation—three points caught in the same deadly orbit:
Sylus gathering the monsters.
Elara and I finishing them.
Fast.
Precise.
Relentless.
Until the last Wanderer shrieked, stuttered, and dissolved.
Silence.
Or the closest thing to it.
Dust hung like suspended smoke. Chandeliers swayed overhead, cracked and dim.
Elara didn't lower her gun.
I followed her line of sight.
A man knelt in the debris, coughing wetly. A henchman—bloody, trembling, hands raised in surrender.
Elara strode toward him with lethal purpose.
She pressed the muzzle to the back of his skull.
"Did Sherman make you do this?" she hissed. "Where is the Aether Core?"
The man wheezed. "Y-you haven't won yet… We have a backup plan! That thing is terrifying—when it shows up, not even Sylus—"
He didn't finish.
The air behind him darkened.
Black-red mist erupted—silent, predatory.
CRACK.
The man flew upward like a ragdoll and slammed into a broken pillar. His body fell limp.
Sylus exhaled softly, almost bored. He wiped blood from his cheek with an immaculate pocket square. The mist curled back into his hand like a trained beast.
"Violence should be used strategically," he murmured.
Elara's jaw clenched. "I'd believe you if your hands were clean."
"They're as clean as they need to be."
I stepped toward them, forcing myself upright. I'd plucked the largest shards out, but smaller ones still shifted beneath my skin—tiny razors grinding with each breath.
Sylus's gaze slid to me.
A slow drag up from my bleeding ribs…
to the glass embedded in my arm…
to my face.
He didn't look surprised.
Or impressed.
Or remotely concerned.
Just… annoyed.
Like my bleeding was personally inconvenient.
I stared back, jaw tight, pulse spiking.
My chin lifted before I could stop it—pure instinct, pure defiance.
Really?
He blows up a ballroom, drags me here in a dress and ballet flats with zero intel, leaves me out of comms, and I'm the nuisance?
Heat prickled hot under my skin.
For half a second, I seriously considered marching up to him and shoving my hands against his stupidly sculpted, self-satisfied chest.
Hard enough to force him to explain what exactly he was annoyed about.
Maybe—maybe—if I used all my strength and caught him off guard, he'd stagger a little.
Elara's reaction to the blood snapped me out of it.
"Diana—your side—"
I shook my head once.
"I'm fine."
A lie. But who cared?
Before she could push, before I could throw Sylus's glare back at him, the ground trembled.
A deep, resonant hum reverberated through the wreckage—wrong, unnatural, heavy enough to rattle metal beams.
Something massive was coming.
I didn't flinch.
I knew exactly what it was.
Elara spun toward the sound. "What's making that noise? Are there more Wanderers?"
Sylus looked at her—then at me.
His eyes narrowed, noting my lack of reaction.
"Aren't you curious?"
I stared at him.
Bleeding. Dust-covered. Done.
I didn't answer.
He clicked his tongue and turned.
"Where are you going?" Elara demanded.
He didn't look back.
"Follow me if you want to find the Aether Core."
The hum deepened—turning into a low, shaking roar beneath our feet.
Elara and I exchanged one sharp look—
Then followed him into the rising dark.