Ilyas didn't rush.
That was his first advantage.
He watched Caelan for days the way hunters watched fog—patient, quiet, learning where it thinned. He noted the boy's habits: how he avoided certain corridors, how his magic dipped unnaturally low during lessons but spiked late at night. How wards flickered—not broke—when Caelan passed, like they were being asked politely to look away.
That wasn't weakness.
That was permission.
So Ilyas followed him.
The old reliquary sat beneath Ravenshade's west wing, sealed off after the rule-rewrite—too many artifacts that remembered darker ages. It was the last place Caelan should have been.
Yet there he was.
Ilyas watched from behind a cracked pillar as Caelan knelt before a blackened sigil carved into the stone floor. The air bent. Not violently—but reverently. Shadows folded inward, obeying a language Ilyas had only seen once before.
In old records.
In Lucien's.
"No…" Ilyas breathed.
Caelan's hands shook as he traced the sigil, blood beading at his fingertip—not offered willingly, but required. Dark magic surged, controlled, precise, devastatingly familiar.
"You shouldn't have followed me," Caelan said softly.
Ilyas froze.
Slowly, Caelan turned.
There was no pity in his eyes now. Only fear—and something far worse beneath it.
"I didn't want you to see this," Caelan whispered.
Ilyas raised his hand, magic flaring instinctively. "You're working for him."
Caelan flinched.
"That's not—" He stopped. His jaw clenched. "It's not that simple."
The shadows moved before Ilyas could finish the spell.
Not wild.
Not cruel.
Calculated.
They struck him across the chest, throwing him into the far wall. Stone cracked. Breath fled his lungs. Pain exploded white-hot—but Ilyas forced himself upright, blood on his lip, eyes blazing.
"You don't belong here," he rasped. "And I won't let you hurt her."
Something broke in Caelan's expression.
"I'm already hurting her," he said hoarsely. "I just haven't finished yet."
The second strike was heavier.
Ilyas felt the world tilt—magic tearing, consciousness slipping. He tried to stand. Tried to scream.
The floor rushed up to meet him.
Aerin felt it.
She was mid-laugh in the east hall when her magic snapped—light flaring, shadows recoiling violently. Her chest seized, breath sharp and wrong.
"Ilyas," she whispered.
Ryn turned just as alarms began to howl.
They found Ilyas unconscious in the reliquary—body still, magic shattered and silent like a candle blown out too fast. He was alive. Barely. The healers stabilized him, but his mind did not wake.
A coma.
No poison.
No curse residue.
Just darkness.
Kael's shadows roared.
Zara stood frozen beside her son's bed, face pale, eyes burning with something far more dangerous than grief.
"Who," she asked quietly, "did this?"
Ryn said nothing.
He didn't need to.
Aerin found Caelan alone later that night, sitting where the wards met the stars.
"Tell me the truth," she said, voice shaking. "Right now."
Caelan looked at her—and for the first time, he didn't lie.
Tears slid down his face as he whispered, "I never meant for him to get hurt."
Her heart cracked.
Because in that moment, she knew.
And somewhere far away, Lucien smiled through borrowed power and whispered into the dark:
"Good. The cost has begun."