Serena’s eyes flashed pink. She wiggled out of Fin’s arms, who was absolutely unprepared for Possessed Serena.

One second he was holding her and the next second she was gone, her body twisting free with a strength and fluidity that Regular Serena did not possess, the ancestors lending her muscles that didn’t technically exist and whose lending was producing a Serena-shaped projectile aimed directly at the serpent.

She stepped in front of the group.

“Serena, stop—” Fin tried to grab her—

Too late. Too late was becoming the official motto of this mission. Too late should have been printed on their thermal weave suits. Too late should have been embroidered on Serena’s quiver.

Too late was the two-word summary of every interaction between Serena Frostborne and the concept of personal safety.

The serpent struck, but its head hit something invisible. Ancient runes beneath the cracked stone suddenly blazed to life, golden, bright, pulsing. The runes had been dormant.

Dead for millennia, carved into the trail by hands that had anticipated this exact moment, this exact bloodline standing in this exact spot, and the anticipation was ten thousand years old and the old was activating with the fresh, violent energy of something that had been sleeping and was now very much awake.

A shockwave rippled outward, knocking molten fire back into the pit.

The serpent recoiled with a shriek that rattled the mountain itself. The shriek was pain. Genuine, ancient, tectonic pain.

Seven people watched the lava serpent nightmare that had been chasing them up a volcano, get bitch-slapped by floor runes activated by a possessed girl. The continent had been trying to kill them all day, and the continent’s own goddamn defense system had just switched sides.

The creature that had been unkillable, unfreezable, and un-cuttable had just been hurt by runes that predated its existence, and the hurt was producing a retreat so fast the lava river splashed when it dove back in.

“Did she just activate something?” Gav asked.

Serena stared at the glowing runes beneath her feet. Her pink eyes were scanning the symbols with the rapid, focused intensity of a woman whose ancestors were reading through her eyes and whose reading was producing comprehension at a speed that made Hyran’s literacy look glacial.

“It would appear so,” Hyran replied. He had stopped being surprised by Serena activating ancient defense systems approximately fifty activations ago. She had given him a professional numbness that no amount of academic curiosity could penetrate. A defense mechanism and the only fucking thing keeping Hyran from sitting down in a volcano.

“Excellent,” Maelor wheezed. “Can it recognize that we’re being roasted alive?”

Aeron looked at Maelor. “Your robes are melting.”

“I KNOW my robes melted. I can FEEL my robes melting. The melting is HAPPENING on my BODY, Aeron. I do not need a goddamn narrator.”

“Nightspire silk.”

“Was Nightspire silk. Past tense. The silk is dead. The silk died doing its duty. I want a funeral for the silk. A small one. Tasteful. Unlike this fucking continent.”

More serpents surged, hissing. The recoil from the runes had bought them seconds that were expiring. The serpents were regrouping.

Of course they were. Because nothing on this continent stayed scared, stayed dead, or stayed the fuck away for longer than thirty seconds. Thirty seconds was the continent’s refund policy on safety, and the refund had just been processed.

Serena lifted her hand.

Her voice slipped into old Fae.

“Vharis thren. Ael’korai ven drath.”

The words cut through the volcano’s heat like ice through steam. Every serpent froze. Every rune on the trail detonated simultaneously.

The runes exploded with brilliance.

The stone wall beside them split, cracking down the middle. A cavern yawned open, waves of cool air rushing out.

Cool air. Actual cool air. Air that did not taste like sulfur, ash, or the specific flavor of a man’s lungs cooking inside his own chest. The air was so beautiful that Maelor wanted to marry it. The air was the best goddamn thing this continent had offered them since the fruit, and the fruit had exploded, so the bar was underground.

The cool was a physical force. The cool hit their scorched skin and superheated armor like a wall of salvation, the temperature dropping forty degrees in the space of two steps, and the dropping was so sudden it made Maelor’s eyes water and Hyran’s knees buckle.

“Let’s MOVE!” Dexmon commanded.

They dove inside just as a serpent slammed against the closing stone, lava spraying across the mountainside. The spray hit the sealing wall and sizzled, the stone absorbing the molten rock and hardening over it, the ancient engineering doing what ancient engineering did: closing the door on things that wanted to eat the people it was designed to protect.

The cavern sealed shut with a thunderous BOOM, the runes dimming to their original faint glow.

Silence.

Blessed, freezing, shadowed silence.

The silence was so complete it rang in their ears. After hours of screaming, hissing, shrieking, growling, the silence was a physical relief that hit every person in the cavern like a drug.

It was holy. Sacred. If Gavriel could have bottled the silence, he would have sold it back in Drakenfell for a goddamn fortune, because after the day they’d had, silence was the most valuable commodity on any continent and this continent had been hoarding it.

Fin pulled Serena back against his chest, both breathing hard. His arms wrapped around her from behind, his chin resting on top of her head, his breathing ragged against her hair.

The holding was tight and the tight was necessary and the necessary was mutual, her hands finding his forearms and gripping them with the specific pressure of a woman who had just been possessed, unpossessed, nearly incinerated, and was currently using her Alpha’s body as proof that she was alive.

Nobody spoke for ten full seconds. Ten seconds of seven people standing in a cool, dark cavern, breathing air that didn’t taste like sulfur, on ground that wasn’t trying to eat them, surrounded by walls that weren’t birthing nightmares.

Ten seconds of peace.

The peace was going to be temporary. Everything on this continent was temporary. But the temporary was enough. The temporary was everything.