The forest is too quiet.

Not the natural quiet of night—no wind, no insects, no distant calls—but a suffocating stillness, as if the world itself has been muted. Even your breathing sounds wrong in your ears—too loud, too sharp.

Magic presses in from all sides.

Not yours.

Something cold. Ancient. Violent in its intent.

The collar at your throat pulses in response, a dull, rhythmic throb that seeps into your bones. Each beat drags at your power, keeping it buried, locked beneath something чужer and unyielding.

You stumble as they force you forward.

Branches scrape your skin, roots catch your boots, but the grip on your arm only tightens. There’s no rush in them. No urgency.

Only certainty.

The clearing opens beneath the moon.

Stones—old, worn, etched with deep-cut sigils—form a perfect circle around its center. You feel them before you fully see them. Your body reacts instantly, muscles tightening, breath hitching as the runes hum in recognition of the collar.

A system.

A cage built to hold something like you.

They shove you down into the center.

Your knees slam into the dirt, pain flaring, but it’s nothing compared to what follows.

“Keep her still.”

A blade glints. The scent of iron fills the air as blood is drawn—not yours. Not yet. It drips onto the stones, and the sigils ignite.

The world tilts.

Magic doesn’t surge—it pulls.

A violent, invasive tug that latches onto something deep inside you. It scrapes along your power, searching for a way in, prying at every crack the collar hasn’t sealed shut.

The chanting begins.

Low. Uneven. Old.

Each word twists tighter around you, sinking into your skin, your lungs, your pulse. The air thickens with it, pressing down until breathing becomes an effort.

The collar reacts.

Heat spikes violently around your throat, searing, biting, as it struggles to contain what the ritual is forcing open. The metal feels too tight—too small—like it’s closing in, choking, burning.

Your vision blurs.

The pull intensifies.

It finds a seam.

A crack.

And then it rips.

Pain explodes through you—raw, tearing, like something is being dragged out of your body by force. Not clean. Not quick.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Your hands claw into the dirt, nails breaking, breath shattering into broken gasps as your power strains against both the collar and the ritual—caught between two forces tearing in opposite directions.

They aren’t killing you.

They’re emptying you.

Using you until there’s nothing left.

The circle brightens.

The chanting rises.

The pain sharpens into something blinding—

And then—

The pull stutters.

The air shifts.

Not loudly. Not violently.

But with a presence that does not belong to the ritual.

The magic hesitates.

The sigils flicker.

The chanting falters.

One voice breaks.

Then another.

The shadows at the edge of the clearing deepen—unnaturally still, unnaturally vast.

The one holding you tightens their grip—panicked now.

“Finish it!”

Power slams back into you as the ritual forces itself forward, ripping harder this time. Your body arches, a broken sound tearing from your throat as the collar burns white-hot, cracks spiderwebbing across its surface—but not breaking.

The magic won’t let go.

The circle won’t release you.

Too late.

The ritual falters—but doesn’t die.

One of them turns—

And drops.

Another stumbles—

The rest don’t get the chance to react.

It happens too quickly.

Shadows strike first—silent and lethal—as Azriel emerges from them, blade already moving, every step merciless but even as bodies fall, his shadows lash toward the circle and recoil, hissing against the wards still clinging to you.

A heartbeat later, Cassian crashes down into the clearing, all brute force and devastation, tearing through the remaining captors—but when he reaches for you, he stops short, swearing under his breath as the magic snaps at him, keeping you trapped at the center.

The circle flares again.

Hungry.

Unfinished.

Your vision blacks at the edges as another violent pull tears through you.

The darkness parts, and Rhysand steps through it.