The forest was gone. They were entering a narrow canyon. Cliffs rose up on both sides, blocking out the moon.
The darkness was absolute, broken only by the torches of the knights riding alongside the carriage.
But what terrified Seraphina wasn't the darkness.
It was the ghosts.
They were gone.
The headless soldiers, the weeping women, the shapeless blobs, they had all vanished. The perimeter was empty.
Even the ghosts were afraid of this place.
"Why are the floaty people gone?" Seraphina whispered, her voice trembling.
Kaelus looked down at her. "Floaty people?"
"The... the shadows," she corrected herself quickly. "It feels empty."
"It is an ambush point," Kaelus said calmly. He reached out and picked up the paper plane she had made earlier. He unfolded it, revealing the map of the region printed on the back.
He pointed to the narrowest part of the canyon.
"Here," he said. "This is where they will strike."
He looked at Seraphina. His eyes were no longer annoyed. They were sharp, assessing, and oddly protective.
"Come here," he ordered.
Seraphina hesitated, then crawled over to the bench. He lifted her up, not roughly this time, but firmly. He placed her on the seat next to him, away from the window.
He took his heavy, midnight-blue coat off his shoulders. It was lined with fur and smelled of ozone and iron.
He draped it over her. It was huge, swallowing her entire small body like a tent.
"Stay under the coat," he commanded.
"Is it a game?" Seraphina asked, her voice muffled by the heavy wool.
"Yes," Kaelus lied smoothly. "It is a game called 'Don't Make a Sound.' If you win, you get cake."
"What kind of cake?"
"Strawberry."
"Okay."
Seraphina huddled under the coat. It was warm. It smelled like him, scary but safe.
She clutched her paper boat in one hand.
Outside, the wind howled through the canyon. It sounded like a scream.
The carriage slowed down.
"Sir Lucas," Kaelus's voice rang out, cutting through the wind. He didn't yell, but his voice carried perfectly.
"Yes, Your Grace!" The knight's voice came from outside, tight with tension.
"Prepare the Vanguard," Kaelus said, his hand resting on the hilt of the sword at his waist. "And tell the men... if a single arrow touches this carriage, I will turn this canyon into a graveyard."
Under the coat, Seraphina's eyes widened.
She realized then that the "safe zone" wasn't just about ghosts.
The Duke was the safest place in the world, because he was the most dangerous thing in it.
She squeezed her paper boat.
'Go get 'em, Papa Duke,' she thought. 'Make sure we get that strawberry cake.'
The carriage wheels ground against the gravel. The darkness pressed in. And somewhere high above on the cliffs, a rock tumbled loose, signaling the start of the attack.
But Seraphina didn't cry. She sat in the dark, wrapped in the scent of the Dark Lord, and waited for the show to begin.
***
The ambush in the Devil's Throat was not a battle. It was an execution.
When the first arrow struck the reinforced plating of the carriage, sounding like a dull bell tolling in the dark canyon, Duke Kaelus von Nacht did not draw his sword immediately.
He sighed. It was the heavy, disappointed sigh of a man who had hoped, however briefly, that his enemies might possess a shred of competence or self-preservation.
They did not.
"Hold the line," he commanded, his voice projecting effortlessly through the wooden walls of the carriage to the knights outside.
He stepped out.
The moment his boot touched the gravel, the temperature in the canyon plummeted. The wind, which had been howling through the narrow pass, seemed to strangle itself into silence.
Dozens of figures in dark leather descended from the cliffs on ropes, their blades gleaming under the moonlight.
They were professionals, assassins hired by Count Rodhe or perhaps a foreign power, desperate to decapitate the Northern command structure. They moved with fluid, lethal grace.
But they were fighting a force of nature.
Kaelus moved like a shadow detached from the night. He didn't run; he flowed. His sword, a blade of dark, ripple-folded steel named Requiem, sang a high, keen note as it cut through the air.
Slash.
A man fell, his torso separated from his legs, before he even realized he had been struck.
Thrust. Another assassin collapsed, his heart pierced with surgical precision.
There was no wasted movement, no shouting, just the wet, rhythmic thud of bodies hitting the ground.
The knights of the Black Bastion formed a perimeter around the carriage, their shields locked, but they barely had to fight. The Duke was everywhere at once, a blur of midnight blue and silver death.
"Target the carriage!" the assassin leader screamed, his voice cracking with panic. He realized too late that they hadn't ambushed a convoy; they had walked into a meat grinder. "Burn it! Destroy the documents!"
They didn't know about the child. They thought the heavy ironwood box contained the strategic maps of the Northern defense and the evidence of the Count's treason.
Three assassins broke away from the slaughter, sprinting toward the carriage with incendiary flasks in their hands.
Their eyes were wild with desperation. If they couldn't kill the Duke, they would burn his legacy.
Kaelus turned. He was thirty meters away, his blade dripping dark fluid.
"Vermine," he whispered.
He didn't rush. He simply extended his left hand. The air around the assassins warped. A pressure, heavy as the ocean floor, slammed into them. It was pure, concentrated mana, the crushing intent of an Archduke.
The assassins froze, their knees buckling, blood pouring from their noses as their internal organs were squeezed by the invisible force.
"You dare," Kaelus said, walking toward them slowly, "disturb her nap?"
It was an absurd question for a battlefield, but the terror in his eyes was absolute.
With a flick of his wrist, the pressure intensified. The assassins collapsed, their hearts stopping instantly from the shock.