The moment came three hours before dawn.

Gabriel felt it more than saw it. A gap in the patrol pattern, a brief window where the northern perimeter would be vulnerable. The guard change was happening on the eastern side, drawing attention and resources in that direction. The northeastern blind spot would be unwatched for thirty seconds, maybe forty if they were lucky.

He turned to wake Tess and froze.

Someone was standing at the edge of their camp.

A woman. Slender, with dark clothing that seemed to drink in the moonlight, absorbing it rather than reflecting it. Her face was obscured by shadow. Not natural shadow, but something that clung to her features like a veil, shifting and moving even when she stood still.

Gabriel's hand moved to his sword, his body tensing for combat.

"Don't." Her voice was soft, almost amused, like she was sharing a private joke. "If I wanted you dead, little lamb, you'd have been dead long before you climbed that mountain."

The words hung in the air between them. Gabriel's danger sense wasn't screaming. It was silent, which was somehow worse. Either she posed no threat, or she was so far beyond him that his instincts couldn't even process the danger.

Tess woke instantly at the sound, her hand going to her own blade. But Gabriel raised his free hand, stopping her. His enhanced vision could see the woman more clearly now. Not her face, which remained somehow indistinct even when he looked directly at it, but her posture, her stance. The way she held herself with complete confidence, like someone who had never needed to fear anything in her life.

She wasn't here to fight.

"Who are you?" Gabriel kept his voice low, aware that they were still within earshot of Ariya's camp.

The woman tilted her head, the gesture somehow familiar though Gabriel couldn't place from where. "I've had many names. None of them matter." She stepped closer, and the moonlight seemed to bend around her, never quite illuminating her features. "What matters is what I've been doing for the past year."

"Watching me."

"Protecting you." She moved with fluid grace, circling their small camp like a predator assessing prey. Except Gabriel got the distinct impression she didn't see them as prey. More like investments. "Making sure you survived long enough to complete what was begun."

Gabriel's eyes narrowed. "The trial."

"Among other things." The woman stopped, turning to face him fully. For a moment, Gabriel thought he caught a glimpse of her features. Pale skin, dark hair, eyes that reflected light like an animal's. But then the shadows shifted and the image was gone. "Do you know how many times Ariya's people found your trail? How many times her spies got close enough to see your red eyes and report back?"

She paused, letting the question hang.

"Fourteen times." The woman's voice carried a note of satisfaction. "I killed twelve of them. Confused the other two enough that their reports were dismissed as madness or hallucination."

Tess's grip on her sword hadn't loosened. "Why?"

The woman's attention shifted to her for the first time, and Tess felt the weight of that gaze like a physical pressure. "Because the Eighth Divine deserves his vengeance. And because the Seven Archangels deserve to fall." She looked back at Gabriel. "You completed the trial. I felt it. That beautiful burst of power from the Spine. Like the world itself remembering something it had forgotten."

Gabriel's jaw clenched. "What do you want?"

"To help you get your people back." The woman gestured toward the camp below with one pale hand. "Ariya has arranged everything to draw you in. The visible prisoners. The obvious trap. The professional defenses that are good enough to seem formidable but not so overwhelming that you'd abandon hope." She took another step closer. "She wants you to charge straight through her defenses so she can capture you intact. Take you alive. Complete whatever work she started four years ago."

The words settled in Gabriel's chest like ice. "She needs me for something."

"Yes. Something that requires you to be fully awakened and alive." The woman's voice took on a sharper edge. "Which means she won't kill you if you walk into that camp. But she will take you. And you won't escape a second time."

Gabriel stared at the camp below, his mind racing through possibilities and contingencies. Everything the woman said aligned with what he'd observed. The careful positioning, the excessive defenses around a relatively small group of prisoners, the fact that his companions appeared unharmed despite being held by someone who had tortured Gabriel for six months.

Ariya wasn't just setting a trap. She was setting a specific trap designed to capture him without killing him. The prisoners were bait. The defenses were a funnel. The whole structure was built to give him hope while guiding him exactly where she wanted.

"How do I get them out?"

The woman smiled. Gabriel could hear it in her voice even though he couldn't see her face. "Illusions. I can confuse Ariya's senses, make her look in the wrong directions, hear the wrong sounds, feel threats that don't exist. It won't last long. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen if I push. But if you move fast, it'll be enough."

She moved closer still, and Gabriel could feel the power radiating from her now. Not like Ariya's overwhelming pressure, but something more subtle. Ancient. Like standing near something that had existed since before the world had proper shape.

"I'll make the guards see movement where there is none," she continued. "Make them hear sounds from empty tents. Create the impression of multiple intruders approaching from different directions. Ariya will feel it too. The distortions, the wrongness. It'll take her time to sort through what's real and what isn't. That's your window."

Tess spoke up, her voice tight with suspicion. "And the price?"

The woman's attention shifted back to her, and this time Tess saw something in the shadows where her face should be. A flash of teeth, white and sharp. "Smart girl." The woman looked at Gabriel again. "Complete what Drusgard started. The Seven Archangels murdered an entire race because they feared what the Dracamerians might become. Thousands of men, women, children. Slaughtered like animals and left to rot in fields of ash while the Creator watched and did nothing."

Her voice went cold, colder than the predawn air, colder than anything Gabriel had ever heard.

"They need to pay for that. Every single one of them needs to feel what it's like to be hunted, to be helpless, to watch everything they built burn to ash." She paused. "And you're the only one who can make them."

Gabriel met her unseen gaze, his red eyes reflecting the faint moonlight. "I don't even know how to fight an Archangel."

"You will." The woman turned to leave, her form already fading into the shadows between the trees. "The illusions will begin when you're in position at the northeastern approach. You'll know when. The guards will start looking confused, distracted. That's your window. Don't waste it."

"Wait—" Gabriel started forward.

But she was already gone, vanishing into the darkness as if she'd never been there at all. No footprints. No disturbed leaves. Nothing to suggest she'd been real except the lingering sense of her presence and the words still echoing in the air.

Tess exhaled slowly, her breath misting in the cold. "What the fuck was that?"

Gabriel stared at the empty space where the woman had stood, his mind cataloguing details. The way she moved. The quality of her power. The knowledge she possessed about the trial, about Drusgard, about the Dracamerians.

"Help. I think."

"You trust her?"

"No." Gabriel checked his weapons, his movements mechanical and precise. First the right sword. Sliding it an inch out of its sheath to ensure it moved freely, then returning it. Then the left. His armor next. Checking the straps, ensuring nothing would rattle or shift during movement. "But she's right about one thing. If we go in without help, we won't make it out."

He turned to Tess, his red eyes catching the light. "The illusions will give us an opening. When they start, we move fast. Straight to the prisoner tent using the route I showed you. Cut them loose, arm them from the supply tent, and run for the northern perimeter. No fighting unless we have to. Understood?"

Tess nodded, her expression grim. She checked her own weapons. Sword, two knives, the crossbow she'd taken from a dead bandit weeks ago. "And if Ariya notices anyway?"

Gabriel's eyes pulsed with red light, the glow intensifying for a moment before fading. "Then we find out if I can actually hurt her."

He didn't say what they both knew: if it came to a direct confrontation with Ariya, their chances of survival were almost zero. She was stronger, more experienced, surrounded by fifty loyal soldiers and whatever other resources she'd gathered in four years.

Their only advantage was speed and surprise. Get in. Get out. Disappear before she realised what had happened.

So they'd move fast. Move quiet. Use the blind spots and the timing gaps and hope the mysterious woman's illusions bought them enough confusion to extract his people.

Gabriel led them down the hill through the darkness, every sense extended to its limit. He could hear the guards talking in low voices half a mile away. Could smell the smoke from their fires. Could feel the vibrations in the ground as patrols moved along their routes.

And underneath it all, that constant pulse of danger from Ariya's presence. A second heartbeat that never quite synced with his own.

The camp grew closer with each step.

The northeastern approach opened before them. That blind spot where three tents created a pool of shadow.

Gabriel positioned them at the tree line and waited.

Waited for the mysterious woman to make good on her promise.

Waited for the illusions to begin.

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