Chapter 5

The sound of Silas’s transformation was like a car compactor crushing bone and steel. His screams were replaced by the shriek of grinding metal as his limbs elongated, turning into jagged, rusted girders. The violet suit he had worn was shredded into ribbons of silk, fluttering like funeral confetti around a body that was now ten feet of hulking, industrial nightmare.

“Rule number five, Elara,” Vane’s voice cut through the chaos, steady and cold as a winter grave. He didn't look at the monster Silas had become. He looked only at her, his hand tightening on the hilt of his bone-handled cane. “When the world starts to bleed, you stay behind my shadow. If you move, you die.”

Elara didn't need to be told twice. She scrambled behind him, her fingers digging into the expensive fabric of his navy coat. The gold chainmail of her dress rattled against her skin, a frantic, metallic heartbeat. Above them, Mia was still trapped in the iron cage, her eyes wide with a terror that had finally broken through her trance.

“Vane! The guards!” Elara pointed toward the pavilion entrance.

The two tusked brutes had burst through the curtains, their massive axes glowing with a sickly green ichor. Behind them, a dozen more shadows moved—the Iron Market’s private militia, creatures of soot and spite who lived for the chance to spill a Duke’s blood.

“Stay,” Vane commanded.

He stepped forward, and for the first time, Elara saw him move with the speed of a lightning strike. He didn't shift into a beast. He didn't grow horns. He remained the perfect, polished man in a suit, but the air around him began to warp. He swung his cane in a wide arc, and a wave of pressurized black energy slammed into the first wave of guards.

It didn't just knock them back; it disassembled them. Their armor shattered, and their forms dissolved into grey ash before they even hit the ground.

But Silas—the thing that used to be Silas wasn't so easily stopped. He let out a roar that tasted like rust in the air and swung a massive, jagged arm at Vane. Vane caught the blow with his bare hand. The sound of metal meeting demonic flesh was like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil.

Vane’s shoes cracked the stone floor beneath him, but he didn't move an inch. A thin trickle of dark, almost black blood ran down his palm, and the sight of it sent a jolt of adrenaline through Elara. He was bleeding. He was real.

“You’re out of your depth, Collector,” Vane hissed, his eyes now fully engulfed in that terrifying orange fire. “You thought a neutral zone would protect you? I am the zone.”

With a roar of effort, Vane twisted Silas’s metal arm. The screech of tearing iron was deafening. He ripped the limb clean off and hammered it back into Silas’s chest, pinning the creature to the back wall of the pavilion.

“Elara! The cage!” Vane shouted, his voice vibrating in her very marrow.

Elara looked up. The cage was swinging wildly from the ceiling. She saw a lever near the back of the room, encased in a box of jagged glass. She didn't wait for permission. She ran.

The floor was slick with the grey ash of the guards. She dove for the lever, ignoring the shards of glass that sliced into her palms as she smashed the box. She pulled the handle down.

The iron cage dropped, crashing onto the stone floor. The impact bent the bars just enough. Elara threw herself at the door, her fingers raw and bleeding as she pried the rusted metal open.

“Mia! Come on!”

Mia stumbled out, sobbing, her small hands clutching Elara’s gold dress. “Elara, I’m scared. What is that thing? Who is that man?”

“Don't look at him,” Elara warned, pulling her sister toward the exit. “Just run.”

But the exit was blocked. The Iron Market had realized a Duke was under siege, and the prospect of scavenging Vane’s remains was bringing out every scavenger in the crater. Hundreds of glowing eyes watched them from the darkness outside the pavilion.

Vane stood between the sisters and the horde. He turned his head, his face splattered with Silas’s oily black blood. He looked like a god of war reimagined by a tailor.

“The archway is a mile away,” Vane said, his breathing not even labored. “They will swarm you before you take ten steps. This market is a hive, and you are the only honey left.”

“Then fight them!” Elara screamed over the rising roar of the mob.

“I can fight a thousand,” Vane said, stepping back toward them as Silas’s pinned body began to glow with a volatile, red light. The monster was going to self-destruct. “I cannot fight a thousand while protecting two humans. I have to choose, Elara.”

He looked at Mia, then at Elara. The cold, calculating grey in his eyes returned.

“The contract,” Elara whispered. “You said she was safe if I signed.”

“She is safe from me,” Vane countered. “Not from them.”

********

The pavilion walls began to groan. Silas let out one final, high-pitched whistle of escaping steam. The explosion was coming.

“Give me your hand,” Vane commanded Elara.

She reached out, and he didn't grab her palm. He grabbed the brand on her neck. The heat was blinding, a white-hot spike of agony that forced her to her knees.

“Vane, stop! You’re hurting her!” Mia cried, trying to pull his hand away.

“Silence, child,” Vane growled. He looked into Elara’s eyes, his face inches from hers. “I am going to open a temporary gate. It will take you and the girl back to the manor. But a gate of this size, in a neutral zone, requires a tether. Someone has to stay behind to hold the anchor against the Market’s pressure.”

“You?” Elara gasped through the pain.

“No,” Vane said, a cruel, beautiful smile touching his lips. “I am the Duke. I am the bridge. You are the anchor, Elara. The Sacrifice.”

He pressed his thumb into the glowing mark on her skin. The world began to dissolve into a swirl of black ink and gold sparks. Elara felt herself being pulled apart, her consciousness stretching across the void.

She saw Mia being sucked into a vortex of shadows, safe and heading toward the manor. But Elara was stuck. She was the bridge. She felt the weight of the entire Iron Market pressing down on her soul, a billion tons of demonic greed trying to crush her.

Vane leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of her ear as the pavilion finally exploded in a roar of rusted shrapnel and red fire.

“If you want to see your sister again,” he whispered, his voice the only thing she could hear in the vacuum of the void, “you have to hold the gate open. Do not let go of the darkness, Elara. Become it.”

************

The explosion settled, but Elara didn't wake up in the manor.

She opened her eyes to find herself standing in the middle of a white, infinite void. Her gold dress was gone, replaced by a gown of pure, dripping ink. Across from her sat a version of herself a version with eyes of frozen grey and the same cruel, beautiful smile as Vane.

The "Other" Elara held out a piece of parchment. It wasn't the contract she had signed. It was a new one, written in a language that made her brain bleed just to look at it.

“He didn't tell you the whole truth, did he?”

the Other Elara asked, her voice a perfect mimic of Vane’s baritone. “The Sacrifice Clause wasn't to save Mia. It was to wake me up.”

In the distance, she heard Vane’s voice, sounding small and far away, screaming her name for the first time with something that sounded like genuine, unfiltered panic.

“Elara! Don't sign it! Elara!”

But her hand was already moving toward the paper.