I was running across a bck field.

  The ground beneath my feet was soft and yielding, like rotted peat. Every step was a struggle. My feet sank into a sticky substance that pulled me down into an infinite depth. There was no sky. Instead, a thick, oppressive grayness hung overhead—void of stars, moon, or even clouds. Only an endless, dead nothing.

  I knew where I was going.

  Ahead, atop the only hill, stood the Tree. The very ash from my dreams. Mighty, with a sprawling crown that used to shine with golden light, banishing the dark. Beneath its branches sat a cradle.

  But now, there was no light.

  The ash tree had turned bck. Its bark was charred and cracked, as if struck by lightning. The leaves, once vibrant and rustling, had turned into gray ash that slowly drifted down, covering the ground like dead snow.

  "No..." I rasped, gasping from the run. "No!"

  I lunged toward the hill, ignoring the swamp cwing at my ankles, leaving icy burns on my skin. I fell, tearing my hands against the stones, then stood up and ran again.

  The cradle.

  It was still standing there. Elegant, woven from moonbeams and silver threads. But now the silver had tarnished, covered in rust and soot.

  I reached the tree and colpsed to my knees before the cradle.

  "Little one?" I called out. My voice trembled, shattering into pathetic shards. "Are you there?"

  Silence. A dead, absolute void where even the beat of my own heart felt like a deafening arm.

  I reached out. Touched the side of the cradle.

  And in that same instant, it crumbled.

  It simply disintegrated into dust. It settled as a heap of gray powder, mixing with the ash from the leaves.

  It was empty inside.

  No one.

  No golden light. No warm bundle of life. No future.

  Only a small, bck, melted stone y at the bottom of that pile of ash.

  I picked it up in my hand. It was hot. It burned my skin like a coal plucked straight from a fire. But I didn't open my fingers. I squeezed it tighter, feeling the pain pierce my palm, the smell of scorched flesh hitting my nose.

  "Why?" I screamed into the void. "What for?!"

  The gray sky shuddered. And it answered me with ughter. It wasn't human ughter. It was the crackle of a fme devouring dry grass. The ughter of Elisa Ogneva.

  "Weak..." the ash hissed.

  "Null..." the dead branches groaned.

  "You failed..." hit me in the head.

  The ground beneath my feet split open. A bck quagmire surged upward, swallowing me whole. I tried to breathe, but instead of air, my lungs filled with ash.

  I was drowning. I was dying. And I wanted it.

  Let the darkness take everything. Let there be no pain. Let...

  ***

  Sound and light weren't the first things to return.

  The smell was.

  Sharp. Chemical. Aggressive. It drilled into my consciousness like a corkscrew. The scent of sterility, bleach, alcohol, and something else—sickly sweet, nauseating, resembling the aroma of rotting lilies. That’s how a morgue smells when they try to mask the scent of decay with strong disinfectants.

  Then came the sensation of my body.

  It felt alien. Heavy, immovable, as if filled with lead. Every cell ached. It wasn't the sharp pain of a wound, but a dull, lingering throb, as if I’d been put through a meat grinder and then hastily reassembled with the wrong parts.

  But the epicenter of the pain was lower.

  In my stomach.

  Where a soft, cozy warmth used to live, a cold, aching void now pulsed. A bck hole that expanded with every heartbeat, pulling in the remains of my strength.

  I tried to open my eyes. My eyelids were stuck together, my shes feeling like stone. It took a titanic effort of will just to lift them.

  Light.

  It hit my retina like a sp in the face. The white, ruthless light of magical mps on the ceiling. It didn't warm; it dissected.

  "She's coming around. Cerebral cortex indicators are active."

  The voice sounded as if it were coming from underwater. Familiar. Anxious. Viktor Sergeevich.

  "Pressure ninety over sixty. Pulse is thready but rhythmic. The core has stabilized; the circuit is holding the load. But the reserve... the reserve is burned to the bottom. I haven't seen anything like this since the Cn Wars."

  "To hell with the reserve."

  The second voice made me flinch.

  It was quiet. Muffled. Stripped of the usual metallic overtones of power and confidence. There was ash in it. The exhaustion of a man who had held the sky on his shoulders and finally broke under its weight.

  Adrian.

  I focused my gaze. The image blurred and doubled, but gradually gained crity.

  I was lying in the intensive care unit. The walls were lined with white panels that absorbed the magical background. Around the bed were IV stands, monitors with green and red graphs running across them. Dozens of transparent tubes stretched to my body. A glowing blue liquid was flowing into my left arm; a dark, almost bck substance into my right.

  I turned my head. My neck creaked like an ungreased hinge.

  He was sitting in an armchair to the right, at the head of the bed.

  Adrian Chernov. The Prince of Darkness. The monster of the Obsidian Pace.

  I was used to seeing him impeccable. Cold, collected, dressed to the nines, radiating power that made the windows rattle.

  Now, a ghost sat before me.

  His bck shirt was unbuttoned by three buttons, revealing colrbones covered in sweat. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and I saw that his forearms were wrapped in bandages. Dark spots seeped through the white fabric. Blood? Or Darkness spiraling out of control?

  His hair, usually slicked back, was tangled, sticking out in all directions as if he’d been tearing at it for hours. A three-day stubble covered his face, making his predatory features look even sharper, more gaunt.

  But worst of all were his eyes.

  The vast violet kes had turned into scorched craters. Deep bck shadows y beneath them, making it look as if the Abyss itself had begun to eat away at his flesh from the inside. He stared at me without blinking. There was nothing human in that gaze. Only pain. The concentrated, ancient pain of a being that has lived too long and lost too often.

  "Anya," his lips barely moved. My name sounded like a breath.

  I wanted to answer. To say something. To ask. But my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. My throat felt as if it were filled with crushed grit. Only a hoarse, pathetic rasp escaped my chest.

  Adrian reacted instantly. He grabbed a gss from the nightstand and held it to my lips, supporting my head with his other hand. His palm was hot. Scorchingly hot, like someone with a high fever.

  "Drink," he commanded. Softly. Without pressure. "Small sips."

  The cool water felt like the nectar of the gods. I swallowed greedily, feeling the moisture revive my parched tissues. One sip. A second. A third.

  Adrian took the gss away. Carefully, he lowered my head back onto the pillow.

  Memory didn't return smoothly, but in jolts. Hammer blows.

  The Shadow Market. The stench of rotten fish and spices. Narrow streets. I’m running. Demyan grabs me by the arm, chokes me with magic... His face, distorted with malice.

  Then a fsh.

  Adrian. He came. He tore Demyan to shreds. I felt relief. I thought—it’s over, we’re saved.

  And then...

  A red silhouette on the roof. Elisa Ogneva. Her dress, like a flicker of fme. Her smile.

  And the orb. A fireball, flying straight at me. Not at my head. Not at my heart.

  At my stomach.

  I remembered that moment vividly. The heat. The impact. And the sensation of something snapping inside. The thin, invisible thread that bound me to...

  My hand shot under the bnket. Sharply, convulsively. The IV needles bit into my veins, but I didn't care. My palm covered the lower part of my stomach.

  There were bandages. A thick yer of dense gauze and some kind of gel insert. The skin beneath them burned like fire.

  But that wasn't the main thing. The main thing was what *wasn't* there.

  Void.

  A dead, absolute, icy stillness. No response. Not a spark. Not that soft light I’d learned to feel over the past weeks.

  My inner world was bnk. Like a vilge scorched by napalm.

  "No..." I whispered.

  I shifted my gaze to Viktor. The healer stood by the monitors, gripping a tablet so hard his knuckles were white. He met my eyes and immediately looked away. He took off his gsses, began wiping them with his b coat, hiding his face.

  I looked at Adrian.

  He didn't look away. He looked straight at me. He didn't try to hide. He was taking the hit.

  "Tell me," my voice sounded like metal grinding on gss.

  "He's gone, Anya."

  Three words.

  Short. Blunt. Merciless.

  The world didn't turn upside down. The ceiling didn't colpse. Time just stopped. It froze at that point, turning into a viscous slush.

  "No," I shook my head. "You're lying. You're... you're the strongest mage. You could have saved him. You promised..."

  "The trauma was incompatible with fetal life," Viktor’s voice trembled, breaking into a falsetto. He spoke quickly, rattling off terms as if trying to shield himself from reality with them. "Fourth-degree magic burn with penetration into the uterus. Plus the physical impact of the kinetic wave. But the worst part was—it wasn't just fire. It was concentrated 'Samander’s Breath.' A Css A spell. It contains a toxin that destroys organic bonds at the cellur level. The tissues simply... disintegrated. We barely saved the uterus itself; we had to use patches of regenerating tissue and healing gel..."

  "Shut up, Viktor," Adrian said quietly.

  The healer cut himself off, snapping his mouth shut with an audible click of his teeth.

  Adrian stood up. He moved slowly, like a hundred-year-old man. He came over to me. He took my hand in his palms.

  "Anya. Look at me."

  I couldn't. A red veil stood before my eyes. I saw that moment again and again. The orb flying. The orb hitting. The fire devouring my child.

  She targeted the baby on purpose!

  The thought pierced my brain like a red-hot needle. Elisa knew. She wasn't aiming at me to kill. She was aiming exactly there. She wanted to perform an abortion. A cruel, bloody, demonstrative abortion. To destroy the Voronov heir. And the mother too, if the charge's power was enough. To inflict maximum pain on Adrian for standing in my defense.

  I was just a container that needed to be cleaned out.

  A wave rose from my chest. Hot, suffocating. It filled my lungs, my throat, my mouth.

  I opened my mouth and screamed.

  It wasn't a scream. It was a howl. A beastly, primal howl of a female whose young had been ripped away. There were no words in it. Only pure, distilled agony.

  I lunged from the bed. The tubes tightened. The equipment beeps intensified, recording the pulse spike to critical levels.

  "Let me go!" I shrieked, trying to tear the needles from my veins. Blood spttered onto the white sheets. "No! No! Give him back! Do something! You're mages! You're gods, damn it all!"

  Viktor rushed toward me with a syringe.

  "Sedative! Five cubes! Fast!"

  "Don't you dare!" Adrian roared. The Darkness around him surged, throwing the healer against the wall like a ragdoll. "Put the syringe away! Let her scream! She needs this!"

  Adrian caught my hands. I thrashed in his grip, cwed at his forearms, bit him, hammered my head against his chest. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to tear him, myself, this whole world apart.

  "This is your fault!" I howled, choking on tears and saliva. "You brought me into this world! You dragged me into your games! I hate you! Damn you! Damn you all!"

  "Yes," he whispered, pressing me to him in an iron grip, not letting me harm myself. "Yes. It's my fault. I'm cursed. Hit me. Hate me. Just live, do you hear? Live!"

  His shirt was soaked with my tears. I could feel how hard his heart was beating. A strike against his ribcage. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  He was absorbing my hysteria. Like a true empath of Darkness, he drank my pain, took it for himself, because I wouldn't have survived it alone. I felt the bck threads of his aura wrapping around me, calming, freezing, swaddling me in a thick cocoon of numbness.

  I screamed until I lost my voice. Until the world went dark. Until my body turned into a limp rag.

  My strength was gone.

  I went limp in his arms, sobbing convulsively like a child after a long bout of crying.

  Adrian carefully, as if I were a crystal vase, id me back on the pillows. He straightened the bnket. He brushed the strands of hair from my face, which was sticky with sweat and tears.

  "Sleep," he commanded. And he put a drop of suggestion into the word.

  My eyelids grew heavy. Darkness approached from all sides. I fell into it with gratitude.

  ***

  The next three days dropped out of reality.

  I would come to, then fall back into a narcotic sleep. Marta brought broths, tried to spoon-feed me. I turned to the wall. Viktor changed the IVs, checked the stitches, muttered something under his breath, shaking his head.

  I felt hollow.

  Gutted.

  A desert had been burned inside me. And in that desert, only the wind blew, rolling the ashes of failed hopes.

  Adrian didn't leave.

  He truly had moved his headquarters into my ward. A table was set up by the window, piled with maps, reports, holographic diagrams. People came there. Quiet ones in bck suits. They reported in whispers; Adrian gave short, harsh orders.

  I heard snatches of phrases:

  "...The blockade is tightened. Not a mouse will slip through..."

  "...Find the rat who leaked the route..."

  "...The Ognev Cn denies involvement. They say it was a provocation by renegades..."

  "...Liar. Prepare the 'Eclipse' protocol."

  But the moment I so much as moved, changed my breathing rhythm, Adrian would immediately fall silent, interrupt the conversation, and be at my bedside.

  He looked even more gaunt. The shadows under his eyes looked like bruises. He smelled of strong coffee, tobacco, and a storm.

  On the fourth night, a storm broke out.

  A real one, not magical. An autumnal thunderstorm, rare and fierce. Rain shed against the panoramic window, lightning tore the sky over the Obsidian Manor, thunder shook the walls.

  I y there watching the fshes.

  Adrian stood by the window, his back to me. His silhouette seemed a bck monolith against the elements.

  "Why aren't you sleeping?" my voice was like the rustling of dry leaves.

  He didn't flinch. He turned slowly.

  "I can't sleep," he answered simply.

  "Conscience bothering you?" I didn't want to be biting, but the words burst out on their own, ced with venom.

  He came closer. Sat in the chair.

  "I have no conscience, Anya. You know that. There is only responsibility. And... an understanding of a mistake."

  "A mistake?" I smirked. The chuckle came out scary, rasping. "You call the death of my possible son a 'mistake'? Like a bug in code? Like a miss on the stock exchange?"

  "No. The mistake was thinking I could protect you by pying by the rules. The mistake was underestimating Elisa’s madness. The mistake was... getting attached. THE MISTAKE WAS VIOLATING MY ORDER NOT TO GO ANYWHERE!!!"

  The st word hung in the air.

  "Getting attached?" I repeated. "To whom? To a battery? To an energy source? Don't make me ugh, Adrian. You don't pity the child. You pity the lost potential. The power."

  I was hitting where it hurt. On purpose. I wanted him to feel pain too. For his fwless mask to crack.

  He leaned forward. His eyes fshed in the dark.

  "You're a fool, Belskaya. Or just blind."

  He grabbed my hand, which was resting on top of the bnket. With a jerk, he pressed it to his chest on the left. Under the thin fabric of the shirt, right under my fingers, a heart was beating. Hard. Erratic. With skipped beats.

  "Feel it?" he growled. "It hasn't beaten like this for a hundred years. It hardly beat at all. I was dead inside, Anya. An icy statue on a throne. And then you appeared. With your ridiculous light. With your naivety. And... this child."

  He swallowed. He clenched his teeth so hard his cheekbones whitened.

  "When I saw you at the market... in blood... when I realized what Demyan and his mistress had done... I thought my heart would burst. Physically. I experienced fear. Real, animal fear of loss. Not of a resource. But of you."

  He let go of my hand but didn't pull away.

  "I failed you. I—a high mage, a strategist, a killer—couldn't calcute the move of a hysteric. I let this happen. And I will never forgive myself for it."

  "Elisa..." I uttered the enemy's name.

  At the sound of that name, the room seemed to plunge into frost. A pattern of frost instantly grew on the windows; the water in the carafe was covered with a crust of ice. The temperature dropped by about ten degrees.

  "Elisa Ogneva has signed her own death warrant," Adrian’s voice became absolutely ft, devoid of emotion. And because of that, even scarier. "She vioted the Convention on the Inviobility of Pregnant Women. She vioted the ws of cn warfare. She crossed the line."

  "What will you do?"

  "I will destroy them. All of them. Not just kill them. Death is too easy. I will erase the Ognev Cn from history. I will ruin their business, their reputation, their alliances. I will make them eat dirt and pray for death as a gift. It will be a long war. Bloody. Total."

  I listened to him, and something inside me began to change.

  The void in my stomach hadn't gone anywhere. But it stopped being a passive hole. It began to fill. Not with light. Not with warmth.

  With cold.

  A calcuted, icy, razor-sharp hatred.

  I remembered Elisa. Remembered that moment before the hit. She was smiling. She was enjoying her power. She decided she could rule our fates, could kill the innocent for her ambitions.

  She killed my child. My little piece.

  And she’s still breathing. Somewhere out there in her manor, she’s drinking wine, ughing, discussing the "successful operation."

  The thought was unbearable. It was wrong. It vioted the bance of the universe more than any magic.

  I tried to sit up. Pain pierced my body, the stitches tightened, but I gritted my teeth and ignored it.

  "Adrian."

  He looked up at me.

  "I want her dead."

  It didn't sound like a cry from the soul. But like a statement of fact. Like a sentence.

  Adrian squinted, peering into my face.

  "I already said. I’ll take care of it."

  "No," I slowly shook my head. "You don't understand. Not you. Me."

  The conversation cut off. Only thunder rumbled outside the window.

  Adrian smirked. Bitterly, incredulously.

  "You? Anya, look at yourself. You can barely sit. You're a healer. Your gift is creation. You can't kill. Your nature resists violence."

  "To hell with nature," I said quietly. "The Anya who was a healer is no more. She burned in that market along with the child. Only the shell remains. And the desire for revenge."

  "Revenge is a poison," he objected. "It will poison you. It will burn you from the inside faster than any fire."

  "Let it burn. I don't care. If I burn, I’ll take her to hell with me."

  I reached out and grabbed his shirt colr. I pulled him toward me. Our faces were millimeters apart.

  "Teach me," I demanded. "Turn me into a weapon. You know how. You've created monsters. Create another one."

  "I don't want to create a monster out of you," his voice wavered. "I want you to live. Leave. I’ll give you money, new documents, protection. Live anywhere. Forget this nightmare."

  "I will never forget!" I hissed. "Every night I will see this fire! I’m going nowhere. If you don't help me, I’ll go to others. I’ll sell my soul to demons, I’ll find forbidden rituals, I’ll do whatever it takes, but I’ll get Elisa. You choose: you're with me, or I’m alone."

  Adrian looked into my eyes. He was looking for doubt, fear, weakness. But he found only the reflection of his own darkness.

  I unclenched my left hand, which I’d kept balled into a fist all this time.

  In my palm y a small bck stone. A melted piece of obsidian. All that remained of my dream. Of the cradle. I found it in my cloak pocket when I woke up. I don't know how it materialized from the vision—maybe it was a fragment from the pavement that my subconscious had endowed with meaning.

  "See?" I asked.

  I squeezed the stone. Sharp edges bit into the skin.

  Blood appeared. Dark, thick venous blood.

  And at that moment, what even Adrian didn't expect happened.

  My hand began to glow.

  But it wasn't that gentle, milky-white light I’d used to heal Vova’s scratches.

  It was a bck radiance. Dirty. Heavy. The color of dried blood and the setting sun before a storm. It pulsed, bursting from under my fingers, and where the rays touched the sheet, the fabric began to smolder and bcken.

  Adrian recoiled as if from a hit. For the first time, real horror fshed in his eyes.

  "Gres of the Abyss..." he breathed. "Holy mother... This is impossible."

  "What is it?" I asked, looking fascinated at my hand. The pain wasn't gone. It had become different. Cold, cutting, twisting my veins into knots. It was an intoxicating but agonizing feeling. A power that demanded payment in flesh.

  "It’s the Spark of Destruction," Adrian whispered. He grabbed my wrist, scanning the aura. His fingers were trembling. "Your gift... it’s mutated. Grief, the samander poison, my darkness that I was pumping into you... all of it broke the seal. Your 'light' has inverted. It turned inside out."

  He looked up at me, stunned.

  "You're no longer a healer, Anya. Healers restore bonds. But this energy... it severs them. It disintegrates matter. This is pure chaos."

  The light on my hand glowed brighter. It demanded an outlet. It wanted to burn.

  The gss carafe on the nightstand suddenly covered with cracks. The water boiled. A second ter, the carafe burst, shattering into small shards that immediately turned into dust even before reaching the floor.

  The room smelled of discharge and burning.

  "I’ve become a bomb?" I asked, and my lips stretched into a smile. A terrifying, dead smile.

  "You've become something much worse," Adrian replied softly. "You've become an annihitor. If you lose control, you’ll tear this pace down brick by brick along with us."

  "So teach me control."

  I looked right into his soul.

  "Teach me to be your monster, Adrian. And we’ll burn this world to the ground."

  He was silent for an eternity. Outside, the storm raged, lighting us up with fshes of lightning. He looked at me, and I saw a struggle within him. The desire to protect fought with the desire to use. Pity—with admiration.

  Finally, he nodded slowly.

  "Very well. But remember: there will be no way back. Darkness doesn't let go of those it has touched. You will lose the remains of your humanity. You will become part of my world. Forever."

  "I have no other world anymore," I replied. "I've burned the bridges. Only ash remains."

  Adrian leaned over and kissed my forehead. It felt like a devil's blessing.

  "Welcome to hell, Anya. We start tomorrow."

  And my eyes, reflecting in the mirror panel opposite, fred with bck fire.