She remembered it too vividly now… the sound, the heat, the blood---it all came rushing back at once.
The tenth prince's hand, slick with his own blood, pressed against the wall.
Yona barely spared him a glance at first... too busy weaving between strikes, too intent on keeping the mercenary from interfering.
But when her eyes flicked back, she froze. His lips moved soundlessly, shaping words that clawed at the air, rewriting the sigils in strokes no tutor had ever dared to teach.
This was no sanctioned craft.
It was something hidden, something not meant to breathe in daylight.
A forbidden art, etched into the very bones of the barrier.
And the prince… hadn't faltered.
Even as his body failed him, even as the Gula's weight pressed him into the dirt, he had given and given... bled dry... forcing the ward to bend, to obey.
