The darkness did not rush.

It unfolded.

Like a flower of pure absence blooming in the ruined throne room, it stretched limbs of liquid shadow across the cracked marble, across the scattered mirror shards, across the blood still wet from the previous battle. The thing that wore Grayson’s mouth smiled with too many teeth, and every torch in the hall guttered as though the air itself had been stolen.

Zelda felt the tether to the pup jerk hard against her ribs. Somewhere behind sealed silver doors the child was screaming—not the thin cry of a newborn, but a sound of recognition and terror. The darkness turned its head toward that...