The air in Lebara City tasted of ash and copper. Each breath burned going down, as though the smoke itself carried tiny shards of the buildings that were already burning. I vaulted over a toppled market stall, boots crunching through broken pottery and spilled grain, eyes scanning every shadow that moved wrong.

The first monster I saw properly wasn't charging. It was *feeding*.

It crouched over what had once been a man—broad shoulders, leather apron still tied at the waist, the kind of apron a blacksmith wears. The creature's head was buried in the center of his chest, long segmented limbs folded like a praying mantis, but the joints bent backward. Wet tearing sounds punctuated the distant screams. Black ichor dripped from its mandibles and pooled beneath the body.

I didn't shout a warning. There was no one left alive close enough to hear it.

Instead I drew the short blade at my hip—the one Sarah had etched with running silver script two winters ago—and closed the distance in three strides. The monster sensed me late. Its head snapped up, compound eyes flashing like wet obsidian, and it hissed—a sound like steam escaping a cracked kettle.

I drove the blade through the soft place where its neck plates met, twisted, felt the wet pop of cartilage giving way. Hot ichor sprayed across my forearm; it smelled like burnt hair and vinegar. The creature spasmed once, legs buckling in odd directions, then collapsed across the corpse it had been eating.

One.

I wiped the blade on its carapace and kept moving.

The deeper I pushed into the city, the worse it became. The monsters did not hunt like wolves or even like soldiers. They moved in slow, deliberate patterns, almost methodical, as though following memorized routes. Some tore down doors and dragged people into the street. Others simply stood in intersections staring upward, mouths open, as though listening for a command only they could hear. A few had already begun building something—piles of broken stone and timber arranged in shallow spirals, glistening with the same black fluid that leaked from their wounds.

I counted eleven more kills before I reached the central plaza.

By then my arms ached and my left sleeve was soaked dark from wrist to elbow. Sweat stung the shallow cut above my eyebrow. The plaza itself was a slaughterhouse tableau: overturned carts, scattered market awnings, bodies strewn like discarded dolls. In the very center stood the old marble fountain—its basin cracked, water long since run red.

And sitting calmly on the fountain's rim, legs crossed, was a woman I had never seen before.

She wore pale traveling leathers the color of winter bone. Her hair was cropped close, silver at the temples despite looking no older than thirty. A slender staff of pale wood rested across her knees; the tip glowed a dull, sullen orange, like the last coal in a dying fire.

She did not look up as I approached. She was watching one of the monsters—larger than the others, its back ridged with bony plates—methodically dismembering a horse that had been tethered near the baker's stall. The horse had stopped screaming some time ago.

"You're late," she said without turning. Her voice was low, almost pleasant. "She told me you would come running. Said you were predictable that way."

I stopped ten paces away, blade still in hand, chest heaving.

"Who the hell are you?"

She finally looked at me. Her eyes were the color of old ice—almost colorless. "Call me Veyra. I'm the one your Empress hired to make sure this little demonstration goes smoothly." She gestured lazily at the monster and the ruined plaza. "You're looking at phase one. Quite pretty, isn't it?"

I took another step forward. "If you're here to talk, talk fast. I'm not in a conversational mood."

Veyra smiled—small, sharp, academic. "Oh, I'm not here to fight you. Not yet. I'm here to deliver a message." She reached inside her coat and withdrew a second envelope. This one was black, sealed with the same crimson wax sigil I had seen on the first letter.

She tossed it underhand. It spun once in the air and landed at my feet without so much as bouncing.

"Read it when you're ready to stop pretending you can outrun what's coming," she said. "Or don't. Either way, the second wave arrives at dusk. Bigger. Hungrier. And considerably less patient."

The monster by the fountain finished with the horse. It raised its dripping head, mandibles clicking, and began walking—not toward me, but toward the eastern gate. More shapes were already moving in that direction, a slow dark tide.

Veyra stood, brushing nonexistent dust from her thighs. "She wants you alive, by the way. For now. Something about… leverage." Her smile returned, thinner. "I imagine it has to do with those three girls you left on the ship. Charming. Very loyal. Very breakable."

My grip on the hilt turned my knuckles white.

She raised one hand, palm out—not in surrender, but in casual warning. "Don't. You'll only embarrass yourself. And I hate cleaning blood off good leather."

The orange glow at the tip of her staff pulsed once, twice. The nearest monster paused mid-step, head swiveling toward her as though pulled by invisible strings.

"Run along now," Veyra said softly. "Warn your little fleet. Rally whatever pitiful defenses Lebara has left. It won't matter. But it will be entertaining to watch you try."

She turned her back on me—deliberately, insultingly—and walked toward the eastern colonnade. The monster fell in behind her like an obedient hound. Others followed.

I stared at the black envelope lying in the dust.

I wanted to burn it. I wanted to tear it into pieces so small the wind couldn't even carry the scraps.

Instead I bent, fingers numb, and picked it up.

The wax was still warm.

I didn't open it. Not yet.

Because somewhere behind the rage and the exhaustion and the sick metallic taste of fear on my tongue, a colder part of me understood something very clearly:

The Empress hadn't sent these creatures to destroy Lebara.

She had sent them to delay me.

To keep me here.

To make sure I was still standing in this plaza when the *real* attack—the one she had been planning all along—finally fell on the capital.

I turned west, toward the harbor where Sarah, Sophia, and Mona would soon arrive.

Then I started running again.

Faster than before.

Because time wasn't running out anymore.

It was already gone.

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