[First Era – Year 6 of the Divinity War; Valgane, outside a village near Orsis]

  

[Hopron, secret laboratory]

  Moraithe crouched behind a boulder, watching the village in the distance, the early morning mist creeping across the fields. His heart drummed with a rhythm of anxious anticipation. This mission had been a long time coming. It was the kind of task he’d been dreading. But everything had been prepared meticulously, every detail accounted for. He just had to wait.

  His breath came slow, controlled, as his senses reached out to the bond that tied him to his other body, back to the laboratory where he and Saffrael were stationed. He felt the phantom pressure of her hand on his, galaxies away, comforting him.

  He glanced across at the cache of arrows he’d hidden in a hollow beneath an ancient tree to the south of the village, the spot known only to Norgoth. With any luck, he had found them. If Ranth had done his job correctly, the villagers would have been alerted to the coming danger, their homes packed up, belongings stored in their own revenescents. Nothing could be done for their homes though. But he had plenty of gratitude to pay them back.

  He nocked three arrows at once. Each carried the faint scent of Saffrael’s winterblossoms. It would not matter that they would steal momentum from one another, no, the entanglements would do all the work. From the other side of the village, Norgoth gave the signal, a shrill cry.

  They loosed, as the quiet of the morning was shattered, and so fell the first volley of arrows. With practiced motions, he drew more arrows, three at a time from his quiver, nocked, aimed, loosed, and repeated, blanketing the entire village until the deed was done.

  Moraithe didn’t even need to look. He knew what would happen next. The arrows, each one entangled with a thread leading into Saffrael’s revenescent, would find their targets—would lift the villagers away from this world and into a place where they would be safe. There was no turning back now.

  The air cracked with energy as fiery explosions erupted in the village, illuminating the morning sky in bursts of orange and red. The ground trembled, and the echo of destruction reverberated across the landscape. As the town was reduced to a sea of craters and glass, a sense of grim satisfaction washed over Moraithe.

  Elithir had taught him how to feel an aura, to sense how much self-assurance someone had. By slow incremental progress, he had worked his way to this point. And now he felt himself enter the rank of knight as he passed nine thousand.

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  The mission had unfolded exactly as planned. But he had to be sure.

  He leaned back against the bolder and shut his eyes, a faint sense of disorientation prickling the edges of his consciousness, and then he was there—flipping back to his other body, the one stationed with Saffrael.

  “It’s done,” Moraithe’s voice was tight with the weight of what had just transpired. “The village—it's gone.”

  Saffrael’s voice came through clear but with an undercurrent of unease. “The mission was a success. Every villager was transferred into my revenescent. They’re all accounted for. But—there’s something else.”

  Moraithe’s breath hitched. “What?”

  Her tone shifted as if weighing her words, “I did some digging. One of the researchers … Barthum. He’s gone. He’s the only one missing.”

  A cold shiver ran down Moraithe’s spine. Barthum? The same Barthum who had worked to create the entropy crystals? The same one who had seemed so trustworthy? The one they’d assumed was most loyal?

  He clenched his fists, his mind racing. A betrayer. All this time, they'd been so careful, so fastidious. He alone had escaped their suspicion.

  Saffrael's voice broke into his thoughts again. “I don’t know how he did it, but he’s the one who’s been feeding information to the enemy. All this time, he’s been the mole.”

  Moraithe stood, the weight of the failure settling heavily in his chest. “We should have seen it. We should have known. He knows how to make the entropy crystals. Now our greatest secret—it’s been compromised.”

  Saffrael’s tone was steady, but there was a hint of uncertainty underneath. “We still have the others. The villagers are safe in the revenescent. The mission’s not lost, but … Barthum’s betrayal changes everything.”

  A long pause stretched between them. Moraithe ran a hand through his hair, his thoughts racing. “We need to find Barthum. We need to find him before he does any more damage. We can’t fail in this. Not after everything we’ve sacrificed.”

  But as he spoke, a creeping dread washed over him that maybe this was one promise he couldn’t keep.