Ancestor Draven held his blood-halberd suspended three inches above the cracked frost wall.
Necrotic blood dripped from the serrated crescent of his blade, hissing violently against the freezing vapor. Behind him, Ancestor Pyre and Ancestor Vesper stood panting, their faces hollow and their robes soaked in the dark gore of their own ruptured meridians.
High above the floating fortress, the orbital Star-Array groaned as its celestial reticle hit ninety-nine point nine percent.
The sky above Crater Island turned a blinding, blood-red crimson.
“Look at you,” Draven sneered, his voice rattling like loose gravel in an iron drum. “The pride of the mortal sects. Three Saint Vessel Late women bleeding on a shattered porch to protect a boy who sleeps in a cotton hammock.”
Mina Vance did not answer.
Her hands remained pressed against the trembling ice wall, blue veins standing out against her pale wrists. Blood trickled down her neck, staining the embroidered collar of her robes, but her frost domain did not waver by a fraction of an inch.
She could feel the cold bedrock vibrating through her boots. She remembered the day Kaelen had placed his hot teapot on Ancestor Vesper’s execution warrant, laughing off twelve years of imperial terror with a simple pat on her head.
