The setting sun bled across the academy courtyard, staining Zian's hands crimson as she stormed away. Her shadow stretched unnaturally behind her, its edges fraying into tendrils that lashed at the cobblestones like living things.
*"You feel it, don't you?"* Kaen's voice slithered through the dusk, though he hadn't moved from his perch on the classroom windowsill. *"The cracks in that pretty human mask of yours."*
Zian whirled—and froze.
Her shadow had detached from her feet. It rose like smoke from a funeral pyre, coalescing into a towering figure clad in armor of liquid night. The spectral warrior's breastplate bore a shattered insignia: a sun eclipsed by wings. Her insignia.
A memory detonated behind her eyes—
*—The God's throne room. Golden ichor splashing across her face as she parried three angels at once. The scent of burning feathers. Nyxara's laughter as the killing blow landed—*
The shadow soldier knelt, its gauntleted fist striking the ground hard enough to crack stone. *"General,"* it rasped, voice resonating with the weight of centuries. *"The Legion of the Sundered Dawn awaits your return."*
Zian's knees buckled. The cobblestones beneath her blackened as void energy seeped from her pores, ghostly soldiers materializing rank upon rank across the courtyard—each bearing the same shattered heraldry, their spectral weapons humming.
Kaen finally approached, crouching to tilt her chin up with ice-cold fingers. *"Eleven angels still draw breath, Zareth,"* he murmured, the ancient name a blade twisting in her gut. *"Your war isn't over. It's just been… sleeping."*
Above them, the academy's stained-glass windows trembled.
Above them, the academy's stained-glass windows trembled.