Chapter 96. The First to Cross

The voice that should not have been able to reach them slid through the hollow like a blade finding the seam in armor, each word carrying soot and certainty.

“Thank you for opening the door,” the Severed Flame’s leader said, nearer than distance should allow. “Now watch whom it chooses to step through.”

Aria felt the incomplete curve over her sternum flare, not with heat but with definition, as if the mark were bracing against a weight it remembered from another life. The threads of absence around her shoulders tightened, curious and predatory in the same heartbeat. Lior swore under his breath. Cassandra’s hand lifted until the tip of her blade hovered at Aria’s collarbone, not threatening, promising: if the hollow tried to slam shut on one neck, it would meet steel first.

“He’s found a rite to carry his voice inside,” Lior said, eyes narrowed as the ambient shimmer mapped a rippling contour that had not been there a moment earlier—the outline of a threshold formin