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He didn’t hear her. He was already turning back to Orell, already drawing breath for whatever he meant to say next, already raising his hand to point at the dais —

He spat.

It landed short of the dais, a small, wet sound against stone. It was crude. It was desperate.

It was human.

The Umbralyn’s hand came out of his cloak. Maia recognised what he held: a shard, one of the same kind she’d wielded against the wraith. The light in it was already building.

“No!” she cried.

The flash was brief. The pressure that followed was not.

It hit the hall like a wave, compressing the air itself. Maia’s ears popped. Her vision whited at the edges.

When it cleared, Elgar was gone.

What remained on the stone floor was no longer a body. Fragments of cloth, a dark stain, the faint smell of something that had been alive a second ago and was now nothing at all.

For one terrible moment, nobody moved. The hall held its breath as though breathing might make it real.

Then his wife screamed.

The sound tore through the silence like something physical. She ran forward, dropped to her knees on the stone where he had stood, and her hands reached for what was left. There was almost nothing to hold, but she held it anyway.

A child began to cry three rows back. One of his sons, Maia realised, sitting beside a woman who must have been his grandmother. It was a thin, bewildered keening, and it was worse than the scream. It cut through every voice in the hall and left silence in its wake.

Someone retched. A chair scraped back, then another. Three people surged toward the doors at once and were stopped by Umbralyn. The crowd pulled back from that too, from the quiet confirmation that the exits had been decided before any of them walked in.

Orell waited.

He waited until the wife’s sobs had thinned to gasps. Until the child’s crying had been gathered into someone’s arms. Until the hall had run through its shock and arrived at the place he needed it to be: not angry, not defiant, but afraid.

Then he spoke again, and his voice had not changed at all.

“As you can see, the power of the Fracture will prevail, whether you choose to believe it or not. You may choose to come with us, or you may say your goodbyes.”

Julen’s father stood very still beside his son, hands folded, face carefully composed. “Meridon will not stand for this,” he said quietly. Then, lower, to Julen: “And neither will I.” He didn’t move, but something in his posture had changed.

Orell smiled. “Meridon rejected alignment a long time ago. They will face the Fracture for their ignorance.” He paused. “Eryssan is being given the opportunity for survival.”

Maia gritted her teeth. She had stood in front of this man in the healer’s wing and watched him struggle to say a cruel thing. Whatever had been fighting him then had stopped. She stepped forward, unafraid.

“You’re lying by omission,” she said. All eyes turned. Orell looked at her, trying to hide the fury in his eyes.

“I believe you are mistaken, Miss Colwyn,” he replied, pursing his lips afterwards.

“No,” Maia said. “You’re not preparing for the Fracture. You’re already feeding it.”

The crowd went quiet. Julen inhaled sharply beside her. “Maia.”

“That’s what this is,” Maia continued. “You’re not offering survival. You’re choosing compliance for everyone. So you can have the power you always wanted.”

A murmur rose again. Orell’s expression remained composed, but something behind it tightened even further.

“You are speaking beyond your understanding,” he said.“As usual, Miss Colwyn.”

“Then explain it,” Maia replied, refusing to back down. “Why are you doing this?” She paused. “And the Guardian you’ve removed from the Archive,” she said. “The one who has been slowing your alignment. Where is he?”