The monastery did not sleep.
Cold air slid through cracks in the high roof, making the candles shiver. Dust hung in slow sheets, turning the moonlight thin and gray. Kael's breathing was heavy but steady. Mira rolled once, muttered at a dream, and went still again. Elira lay awake on her bedroll and stared into the dark beams, the vow like a tight band around her chest.
At first it was only a feeling—the small itch of being watched. Then it sharpened. The shadows along the walls stretched the wrong way, too long for the candle flame. In those long stains of dark, pale circles opened and closed. Eyes—there, then gone when she tried to focus.
Lumeveil, she whispered inwardly, fingers finding the hilt by habit. Are they echoes again?
"Not the same," the spirit breathed in her mind, warm and calm. "Not born from ash. These watch from beyond."
The floor spoke—a clean, sharp creak, like a foot pressed down and held. Elira sat up in one smooth motion.
Mira's eyes snapped open. Twin rings of metal spun into her hands with a hiss of frost and a flare of ember. "Finally," Aure said, voice low and bright, "something to burn."
Kael rose to his knees, every movement quiet and trained. Armor flowed over him like a second skin, plates kissing into place. "Stand with me, Draga. Armor of the steadfast, fist of the storm!"
The hall answered.
Shapes pulled free of the stone. Gaunt bodies of smoke and sinew crawled from the cracks, dragging long arms that bent wrong at the joints. They had no faces—only smooth void—yet eyes bulged in their chests, their shoulders, even their throats. Dozens of wet, shining orbs stared at the three intruders. The temperature fell. The candle flame narrowed to a pin and went out.
"Shadows are not the enemy," the Keeper had said. But this felt like more than a test.
The nearest creature moved. The eyes in its chest dilated, then fired a beam of hard white light—straight at Elira.
She did not think. She called her sword.
"Light, rend the dark and descend upon my blade—Lumeveil!"
Cold brilliance leapt up her arm. The blade found her hand, long and slender, edge humming like a clear bell. She lifted—and spoke again, firm and clean.
"Sanctaria Light!"
A tight dome of white sprang from the tip and spread over the three of them. The beam struck and broke into harmless sparks, washing across the stone like rain.
Mira whistled under her breath. "Remind me to complain less when you're awake." She slashed a ring through the air. "Let the flood burn and the frost shatter—Aure!" Fire ran the left arc; ice sang on the right. A sheet of boiling water slammed the first wave of creatures. She snapped the rings together—steam burst, then froze. "Glacier Break!" Ice spears shot up and pinned three bodies at once.
Kael did not charge. He planted his feet and set his hands, eyes tracking lines and angles. "Vaults in a net," he rumbled. He stamped the floor and swept both arms low. Silver runes winked into a half-circle at boot level. "Pulse Vault—set." He tapped each mark with his knuckle. "Arm." Low lightning purred under the stones.
More watchers crawled out—ten, then fifteen. Their beams came in a weave, white threads crossing.
The dome shook. Elira felt the weight in her shoulders and wrists. "I can't hold this forever."
"Do not hold," Lumeveil said, the voice a steady hand at her back. "Judge."
Elira let her breath out. "Mira, screen left. Kael, break the center when I open."
"On it," Mira said, and swept her right ring. A wall of mist rose, pearled with cold.
"Ready," Kael said, fists lowering a shade.
Elira snapped the shield off and stepped forward into the bright storm. Beams slashed for her face and chest. She cut them aside with short, mean motions, not wasting reach. "Light Form." The word thinned the blade to clean silver. Her first cut took a creature at the waist; it peeled apart and turned to gray vapor without a sound.
Three more lunged for the hole she had made. She slid right, heel whispering on old stone. "Night Form." The silver dimmed to a deep, soft black. Speed woke in her limbs. She slipped past two beams by a finger's width and felt the world go quiet for a heartbeat. Eclipsaria—shadow-quick—she scored two thin lines across a cluster of eyes. Darkness ate the cuts; the thing sagged into itself and fell flat.
"Vapor Screen!" Mira bent the steam with a flick, hiding Elira as she moved. An echo struck blind into the fog; the cut that met it came from the wrong place. "Crimson Deluge!" Heat roared. Then she starved the flame and snapped the water cold. "Rime Suture!" Ice threads stitched a lane shut; two watchers tumbled, stuck.
The first mine blew.
Kael's left hand twitched. "Ring detonate." Boom—boom—boom. Low, ground-level concussions rolled through the line of watchers, popping them off their feet, throwing their aim to the ceiling. He stepped in and out of the shock ripples like he had been born on a drum. "Second string—arm." New runes kindled. "Don't linger there," he warned, and Elira had already cleared.
For a moment the tide bent.
Then the floor groaned.
Wider cracks opened between the flagstones. Cold poured up like breath from a buried mouth. The smaller watchers froze and turned as one, their eyes brightening. Something below them was rising; they could feel its will arrive.
"We keep them off the center," Elira said. "Mira?"
"Marking." The left ring traced three faint circles on the ground. "Hydro Mirror—thin." Small mirrors of water sat just above the stone, quivering. They would show what was moving under the floor before it broke through. "There," she whispered, pointing with the right arc as ripples shivered in a perfect triangle.
"Covering," Kael said. He threw his weight into a short stomp. "Pulse Vault—brace." The mines near the triangle dimmed; the ones to either side brightened. If the thing tried to feint, it would meet a chain of blows.
The watchers came again, faster now, eyes flashing in ugly rhythm. Elira met them in a narrow lane. "Light Form." Bright edge. Two quick cuts—upper arm, then throat. "Night Form." Dim edge. Slide-step past a spear of light, then a short stab where a cluster of eyes blinked in fear. She felt the line between light and shadow inside her—hot, cold—steady enough to use, never to spill. Lumeveil stayed with her, present but gentle, like a guide who knew the map and let her feet learn it.
"Breeze Edge!" A thin crescent of pressurized air veered one beam a finger to the right; it burned a column instead of Mira's head. "Thanks," Mira said, calm and a little amused, and launched a clean snap of frost along the floor. "Rime Wedge!" The wedge slid under three watchers and lifted them just enough for Kael's mines to catch their knees.
"Ring detonate." Boom. The bodies flipped, then fell apart into smoke.
The mirrors trembled hard.
"Brace!" Elira called.
Stone split.
A hand shouldered up from below—if hand was even the word. It was plated in ash-gray armor and studded with eyes—rings of them—like a crown melted and poured into living bone. Each eye turned and found them, one after another, quick, hungry, certain. The arm followed, then the broad humped back of something that should have stayed a rumor.
The smaller watchers went still. They faced the thing like soldiers salute a banner.
The Keeper's voice drifted through the dust, thin as a thread pulled over stone. "You should not have woken it."
"We didn't," Mira said through her teeth, setting her rings. "It woke itself."
"Walls," Kael said. Two quick mines—one to their right, one to their left—set, arm. "If it rushes, I'll fold its flanks."
Elira raised her blade to guard. She did not back away. The eyes on the creature's crown widened and drew in breath without lungs; power gathered, white and wrong.
"Shield?" Mira asked.
"Not full. I'll split and return," Elira said. She took a quick breath, and the two words left her mouth like a promise to herself. "Light Form."
Silver flared.
"Night Form."
Shadow cooled.
She set her feet where two roads met and waited for the thing that wore a crown of eyes to choose which one it trusted. The air shook. The first beam came—a wide, cutting sheet.
Elira did not meet it head-on. She turned her blade and made the cut into a lane. "Wind Shearline!" The beam split on the edge and screamed past, carving two clean scars into old pillars instead of her friends.
"Now!" she shouted.
Mira drove cold into the lane. "Glacier Break!" Ice teeth punched up and forced the monster's head to tilt, breaking its aim. Aure's left ring spat a line of steam into the open mouth between plates—no harm, but plenty of distraction.
Kael hit the ground with both fists. "Pulse Vault—chain!" A line of mines along the side lanes went off in order, one-two-three-four, hammering its balance. The crown of eyes jerked. The next beam flared off-center and burned the far wall instead of the three of them.
For ten heartbeats, they held it there—each breath earned, each inch paid for.
"Save your cores," Lumeveil warned in Elira's mind. "This is not the last shape of the night."
"I know," Elira whispered, and her voice did not break.
The creature lowered its head. Many eyes narrowed. The cracks in the floor widened more, as if the room itself were a mouth the thing would climb out of. Behind Elira, Mira's rings drew a slow circle—hot and cold layered for whatever came next. Kael rolled his shoulders once and shook out his hands, mines ready in a quiet halo at his feet.
The ground split wider. The true nightmare rose.
Elira set her blade at the centerline—light on one edge, night on the other—and took one small step forward.