Thorne raced back the way he'd come, boots striking broken flagstones in a steady, measured rhythm.

The entire vault was coming apart.

Every few steps, the stone underfoot vibrated as something massive collided with the walls. Dust drifted from cracks in the ceiling, coating everything in a thin, choking film.

He passed one of the ruptured cells and heard the shrieks of dying men, battle mages, by the look of their scorched uniforms, echoing from somewhere deeper in the gloom.

Screams and roars twisted together into a single, mindless cacophony.

And layered beneath it all, the steady, bitter sizzle of aether discharges.

He slipped past a collapsed archway and rounded a corner.

And stopped dead.

The corridor he'd left behind was now a thoroughfare of monsters.

Some he recognized, the insectoid horror that was unleashed by accident, now lying motionless in a heap of shattered limbs, pale ichor pooling around its slack jaws. Nearby, another creature sprawled, half its body burned away. He didn't recognize that one at all.

But there were more, things he hadn't freed. Hulking shapes that prowled the shadows, claws scraping, jaws working wetly around the remains of their captors.

The breaches must have triggered other cells.

He didn't dwell on it.

He spotted Zarash crouched behind a leaning stack of iron supply crates, his scaled arms wrapped tight around his knees. His tail twitched in short, spasmodic jerks.

Thorne moved to him in three long strides and clamped a hand around his forearm.

"Up," he said curtly.

Zarash flinched, golden eyes wide.

"Come on," Thorne pressed, hauling him upright.

The elderborn's voice was thin, dazed. "How... how do you expect us to get out of this labyrinth? Even if we find a door, the Circle will have sealed it..."

Thorne didn't slow. He kept his grip firm and started forward, picking his way past a torn bundle of robes that might once have been a researcher.

"I have a skill," he called over his shoulder.

"A what?"

"Escape Artist."

Zarash made a disbelieving noise that might have been a laugh, but it was swallowed by the roar that thundered through the hall, so loud it set the air vibrating in Thorne's lungs.

The skill pulsed in his mind, a silent tug that pulled at the center of his chest.

Not left. Not forward.

He turned sharply, heading into a narrower passage half-hidden by the rubble.

Behind him, Zarash cursed and stumbled after him.

They moved in short sprints, pausing only when something too large to fight thundered past.

At one point, a brute the size of a carriage barreled out of a side corridor, a lifeless mage dangling from its jaws. It didn't even look at them. It just kept moving, its ragged breathing echoing like a bellows.

They flattened themselves against the wall, pressed into a shallow alcove until the thing disappeared around the corner.

Zarash's breath came in quick, shallow bursts.

"This place," he rasped when he could find his voice again. "What is this place? A prison? A vault? It's..."

"A laboratory," Thorne said flatly.

They passed through a doorway that had been torn half off its hinges, the metal twisted like taffy.

Beyond it, a chamber opened out, strange, vaulted, lined with more cells. But these weren't holding monsters.

They were lined with floating objects.

A rusted crown suspended in a sphere of blue light.

A dagger with a blade of green glass, dripping something that smoked when it hit the floor.

A necklace strung with black stones that shifted and rearranged themselves every time he looked away.

Zarash made a thin, disbelieving sound.

"Artifacts," he murmured. "Gods below… how many?"

Thorne didn't answer.

The skill tugged again, harder.

He froze.

And then, with no warning, he bolted to the right, dragging Zarash with him.

The elderborn yelped, nearly losing his footing as Thorne hauled him around the corner.

They'd barely made it out of sight when a wave of footsteps thundered into the long corridor behind them.

Dozens of armored mages flooded into the chamber, weapons raised. The hiss and crackle of charged aether blades filled the air.

Thorne pressed a hand over Zarash's mouth, holding him still.

They didn't move.

Not when one of the mages glanced briefly toward the ruined doorway.

Not when another paused to study the wreckage of a containment sigil, fingers brushing the melted ward lines with grim curiosity.

The mages moved on, fanning deeper into the vault.

Thorne counted three breaths after the last bootstep faded.

Then he let go of Zarash and stood.

"Come."

This time, the elderborn didn't argue.

They moved quickly, slipping through halls that smelled of blood and alchemical brine.

Ritual circles sprawled across the floors in some rooms, etched with glyphs he didn't recognize, half-filled with dark, glassy residue.

At the edges of one chamber, low iron racks stood piled with old bones, each one etched with runes.

Another turn.

Another corridor.

The tug in his chest pulled sharper.

Almost there.

They passed under a massive archway, its lintel carved with lines of text in an ancient dialect he didn't recognized.

The chamber beyond opened out into a vast, high-ceilinged hall.

Rows of doors lined the walls, each one housing researchers, battle mages and personnel . A sleeping quarter.

The air was still here, almost oppressively so, as if the chaos beyond the threshold hadn't reached this place yet.

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Thorne stopped just past the entrance.

He scanned the long shadows between the rows of doors, his heartbeat steady.

Behind him, Zarash exhaled shakily.

"This…" He shook his head, scales along his jaw rippling. "This is mad."

Thorne didn't disagree.

But he was already considering their next move.

Because the skill in his chest hadn't stopped tugging.

Thorne knew exactly where the entrance was.

Beyond this chamber, he thought. Beyond those doors.

That was the way out.

He also knew the problem.

Beyond the locked doors, he could already hear the voices, dozens of them, layered in confusion and rising panic. Men and women waking from uneasy sleep, roused by some unknown alarm or simply the tremors shuddering through the vault.

If they ran, if they moved quickly enough, they could cross the room and be through the far threshold before anyone realized.

But he had no illusions.

Whatever lay past those doors, it would be watched.

Guarded.

He let out a slow sigh, the sound soft in the darkness.

Behind him, Zarash shifted, claws rasping faintly over the floor.

"What?" Zarash demanded, voice low, urgent. "What is it?"

Thorne didn't turn to face him.

"The exit," he said quietly. "It's beyond this chamber. I passed through here when I entered."

Zarash's tail flicked against his shin.

"And?"

"And after everything we've done tonight," Thorne said, "after all the chaos… it will be guarded."

There was a silence.

When he finally looked back, Zarash was staring at him with wide, hopeless eyes.

"Then what do we do?"

Thorne's gaze never wavered.

"We fight."

Zarash blinked, the word hanging between them like something obscene.

"…You are serious," he said at last, voice thin.

Thorne nodded once.

Zarash's scaled brow furrowed. "Are you crazy? How are going to win? We don't even know how many of them there are! You..."

He gestured helplessly, claws flexing.

"You're out of your mind."

"Not win," Thorne corrected softly. "Kill."

The word felt cold in his mouth. Heavy.

"We have to kill them," he went on, voice steady. "All of them. They'll see our faces. There is no other way."

Zarash stared at him like he'd sprouted horns.

"Gods," he whispered. "You really are mad."

Thorne looked back at the doors, feeling the slow, rising certainty settling into his bones.

"Zarash," he said quietly.

The other elderborn didn't answer.

"There's a reason," Thorne went on, "these people fear us. A reason they build vaults like this. That they bury our kind behind wards and iron and runes."

He turned, meeting Zarash's golden eyes with a calm, terrible finality.

"Let's show them that reason."

Zarash shook his head, a short, sharp motion that looked almost like denial.

"You really are crazy," he whispered again.

Thorne smiled faintly.

"Maybe," he allowed.

Then he started walking.

The first step was the hardest, like breaking the surface of ice.

Zarash caught his hand.

Thorne paused, feeling the rough-scaled grip, the small, involuntary tremor that ran through the other man's fingers.

"You know," Zarash said, voice hushed, "not every elderborn can do what you do."

Thorne's smile sharpened, something cold flickering behind his eyes.

"Then it's a good thing," he murmured, "you're with me."

He drew a long, measured breath.

"Now."

His voice dropped to a low command.

"RUN."

They crossed the vast sleeping quarters with measured strides, their footfalls muffled against the cracked stone.

No one noticed them.

The sleepers were only just waking, muttering to one another in bleary confusion, fumbling for boots and robes, trying to make sense of the distant screams.

Thorne didn't slow.

They reached the doors without challenge, pushed them open, and stepped into the hall beyond.

He knew this place.

Long and straight, lit by flickering lanterns that hung in iron brackets. The passage he'd used to enter this labyrinth hours ago.

He slowed his pace.

Because he could hear them.

Low voices, murmuring in tense undertones. The scrape of boots across the stones. The faint, nervous click of fingers against wands and staves.

More than a dozen. Close to twenty.

Zarash edged closer behind him, claws flexing against the floor.

Thorne kept walking, steady and unhurried, though his heart thundered in his chest.

They rounded the final bend.

And there they were.

Twenty battle mages stood in a rough line across the corridor, armored in layered spellweave and chain. Some held iron-shod staves. Others had grimoires cradled in one arm, fingers already glowing with prepared sigils.

Their eyes widened in the same instant.

Zarash froze. His taloned feet scraped the ground with a hiss that was deafening in the hush.

The mages turned as one, weapons rising.

The closest among them narrowed his gaze, fixing on Zarash.

"Dustbone," he spat, his voice thick with disgust.

The tip of his wand exploded in a burst of crackling light.

A spell, complex, layered, far beyond anything Thorne could name, shrieked across the space in a streak of coiling runes.

And collided with something invisible.

Thorne lifted his palm, feeling the impact shiver up his arm.

The wall of aether he'd summoned flared brighter.

More motes answered his call, pulled from the air, the floor, the walls, an inexhaustible tide that gathered around him, forming a barrier the mages had no hope of breaking.

A hush fell, stunned.

Then chaos.

Spells erupted in a cascading volley. Bolts of fire, crackling arcs of lightning, whips of iridescent force. They struck the barrier and vanished into nothing, absorbed without a ripple.

The corridor blazed in a rainbow of colors, lighting the horror on the mages' faces.

Thorne turned his head slightly, regarding Zarash with calm detachment.

"What do you say?" he asked, his voice carrying over the din. "Why don't you use your… ability?"

Zarash stared at him, petrified.

It took a heartbeat for Thorne's request to register.

Then, slowly, Zarash blinked.

His throat worked as he swallowed. He drew a long, shaky breath.

And exhaled.

A cloud of motes spilled from his mouth, green-brown and sickly, swirling in a slow dance.

Corruption.

Thorne's cold smile returned.

He reached with his will, seized the corrupted motes, and wrenched.

They shot forward, streaming through the aether barrier like water through a sieve.

On the other side, the mages recoiled instinctively without knowing that they were under assault, clutching their grimoires closer as the tainted cloud swirled around them.

Thorne urged the motes faster, forcing them to slip into every crevice, every fracture in the ambient currents. All the while, he fed the wall, layer after layer of invisible force, stopping every blast, every bolt, every spell.

The mages began to shout in confusion.

"... it's not working..."

"...why are they just standing there..."

"... break through... break through..."

But Thorne could see.

He saw the corruption spreading, a miasmic cloud that slid over their skin and seeped into their cores.

He put pressure on it, forcing the motes deeper, faster.

The first mage to die didn't even cry out.

One moment he was chanting, palm raised.

The next he collapsed, boneless, eyes wide and empty.

The woman beside him screamed, catching his shoulders.

"He's dead!" she shrieked. "He... he just fell..."

Panic rippled through the line.

Another mage dropped.

Then a third.

The man who had named Zarash lifted his wand, voice shaking.

"It's him!" he shouted. "It's the Dustbone, he's killing us!"

A younger mage turned to him, wild-eyed.

"How? We can't..."

"That one," the leader snarled, stabbing his wand at Thorne. "That one is blocking our spells!"

A fresh barrage slammed into the barrier, flames, lightning, blades of sharpened air.

Thorne felt one of the impacts rattle his bones, but he didn't flinch.

He pressed harder.

He could feel one mage in particular, an older woman whose spells hit like hammers. She was stronger than the rest, every impact threatening to crack his defense.

So he fed more corrupted motes around her.

Layer after layer.

He watched as her hands began to tremble, the sigils she shaped unraveling mid-gesture.

Finally, she sank to one knee, gasping.

Thorne tilted his head.

He raised one hand in a slow, mocking farewell.

The woman clenched her jaw and loosed one last spell, a lance of searing gold that struck the wall with a thunderous boom.

He felt the force in his teeth.

Then she pitched forward, lifeless.

More fell.

One by one.

A man near the edge of the formation turned and ran, bolting for the doors.

Thorne had anticipated that.

The mage hit an invisible wall with a hollow thud and slumped to the floor, sobbing.

"He has us trapped!" he wailed. "Gods... he has us..."

Thorne ignored him.

The motes were everywhere now, thick enough that even Zarash could see them swirling in lazy spirals.

The last few mages tried to raise a final volley.

Their voices cracked.

Then silence.

They toppled where they stood, eyes glassy.

One by one they fell, cornered like rats. The people that killed his kind. The people that had cut open his mother. Revenge had never tasted sweeter.

A sudden quiet filled the hall.

Zarash sank to a crouch, staring at the bodies in mute horror.

"You… you killed them," he said finally, his voice hollow. "You killed them all."

Thorne shrugged, studying the corpses.

"Technically you were the one to kill them," he said blandly. "But, they had it coming."

He turned away, already moving.

"Come on," he called over his shoulder. "Before we have to kill more."

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