By all rights, Myrren should have been dead by now.

  That thought surfaced distantly as she pressed her back against a cracked marble pillar, lungs burning, fingers trembling as they flew across the enchanted parchment clutched to her chest. She barely noticed the ache in her wrist.

  She had been forgotten by everyone in the battle. And that, paradoxically, was the only reason she was still alive.

  Her breathing came in shallow, controlled pulls as she forced herself to stay focused. Panic would be useless. Discipline was survival. If she could not be of use in battle against these creatures, she would do what she did best: study. She leaned out just enough to see the battlefield, eyes wide as she documented what no scholar in living memory had ever witnessed firsthand.

  Her quill scratched furiously as she tracked the demon brothers' completed transformations, forcing herself to slow down and observe.

  They were no longer even vaguely humanoid.

  Both creatures had dropped fully to all fours, their spines elongated and bowed into predatory arcs. Their bodies were massive—corded with dense muscle that moved beneath pale purple skin like living machinery. Each possessed a broad, tiger-like maw filled with overlapping rows of fangs, every tooth long, serrated, and dripping with a viscous substance that hissed faintly where it struck stone.

  Acid… or poison. Possibly both.

  Their front limbs, their paws- ended in talons thick as daggers, yet each retained opposable thumbs, allowing a dexterity that made her stomach twist. More terrifying is that they had not lost their reason. The intelligence and the hundreds of years of accumulated experience were still there. These transformations did not turn them into beasts. It turned their bodies into weapons beyond anything humans could handle by normal means.

  A long tail lashed behind each demon, lined with ridged bone spikes that caught the light as they moved, while jagged dorsal fins ran from the base of their skulls down to the midpoint of their backs. Curved horns jutted from their heads at sharp, unnatural angles, the bone darker there, almost charred.

  Like the twin brothers themselves, their transformations were not identical.

  The one facing Lucen was larger and bulkier, with a broader chest and heavier shoulders. Every movement carried crushing force, the ground fracturing beneath its weight.

  The one fighting Darius was leaner. Sleeker. Its limbs were longer, its movements faster, more precise.

  Myrren swallowed hard.

  "They resemble swamp drakes…" she murmured under her breath, even as her quill flew. "But there's a clear demonic influence. Those bone spikes, the horn structure—this isn't natural. This isn't right."

  A chill crawled up her spine as she continued writing.

  Their transformation had not merely increased their physicality—it had amplified everything. Speed. Strength. Durability. Even their magic had evolved. Both demons reared back periodically, drawing in breath before expelling orbs of black energy from their maws. The projectiles screamed through the air, detonating on impact and leaving behind pits of corroded stone that smoked and hissed.

  Lucen and Darius were barely holding on.

  Myrren's eyes darted between the two fights, her chest tightening.

  Lucen's lightning still flared—brilliant, violent—but it was no longer overwhelming. Each time he struck, the bulkier demon absorbed the impact, rolling with it, countering with tail whips that shattered pillars and forced Lucen to abandon position after position. The usual gleam of assured confidence was replaced with focus and worry.

  Darius fared no better.

  The sleeker twin moved like a shadow, its attacks coming in relentless patterns—tail, claws, breath, claws again. Darius was forced entirely onto the defensive. Devotion flashing red seemed to be the only indicator of the beast's attack, as Myrren could not trace the speed of the creature by any other means.

  Neither man counterattacked. They couldn't afford to. They were fighting not to win—but to stay alive. Myrren's hand shook as she turned her gaze elsewhere, dread pooling in her gut.

  Cassian. The Crown Prince.

  She leaned further out from behind the pillar, just enough to see—

  —and felt bile rise in her throat.

  Lilith was no longer even pretending to be human.

  Her humanoid shape remained, barely, but it was a mockery now. Dark, hardened carapace had begun to form beneath her skin, visible as it writhed and bulged, plates forcing their way outward in sickening waves. Her hair had transformed entirely, becoming segmented, insect-like appendages that twitched and flexed independently, tasting the air.

  Her wings—once elegant—had lost their webbing entirely. What remained were elongated, skeletal frames, the sharpened bones stabbing into the ground like spears and lifting her body above the floor in a grotesque parody of grace.

  Myrren gagged. Lilith's skin moved. As if something beneath it was crawling. The carapace split.

  From beneath her flesh, shapes forced their way out—one after another—tearing free in sprays of dark ichor. Dozens of insectoid creatures spilled onto the floor, each roughly the size of a large hound. Their bodies encased in chitinous armor, mandibles clacking as they oriented themselves.

  Then they ran straight toward Cassian.

  Myrren's eyes widened even as her quill scratched frantically.

  "By the Thorn…" she whispered, horror threading her voice. "What are those? What is she?"

  Cassian raised his blade as he prepared to meet the swarm, but then the creatures multiplied.

  The air shimmered, and suddenly there were more. Twice as many. Then more still, pouring across the floor in a chittering tide.

  Myrren froze.

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  "Illusions?" she asked herself desperately, scanning for inconsistencies, for distortion, for anything that suggested falsehood.

  But before she could test the theory—

  The darkness rolled in. Not shadow. Not absence of light. Her body nearly seized as she felt the shadows roll through the ballroom. She could feel it.

  Something vast. Something hungry.

  Myrren stared as the shadows peeled outward, swallowing the space in slow, inevitable waves. The ballroom vanished as though it had never existed. Pillars, walls, ceiling, floor—all dissolved into an infinite black expanse that stretched in every direction. There was no horizon. No boundary. No sense of scale.

  And yet, impossibly, she could see everything.

  Every figure stood stark and clear against the void, illuminated by no visible source of light. The darkness did not obscure. It stripped the world bare, leaving nothing to hide behind.

  Her breath hitched as fear seeped into her bones, cold and invasive, and she instinctively turned toward the source of that terror.

  Selene was floating.

  Suspended in the void, the staff was held loosely in one hand. Before her loomed a shape that did not belong in any world Myrren understood.

  Even in the endless black, it was darker still.

  A mass of writhing tendrils and eyes, layered upon themselves in impossible depth. No single form defined it—its shape shifted constantly, as though reality could not decide how to contain it. Eyes opened and closed along its surface, vast and small.

  Myrren's thoughts fractured on contact.

  Her mind tried to assign meaning to what she was seeing, but all of her studies and all of the knowledge she had gained through her life failed her. Words slipped away the moment she reached for them. Understanding collapsed inward, folding under its own weight.

  The others had no time to stare, no time to slip into the madness that threatened to devour her.

  The twin demons did not relent. Their monstrous forms surged forward again, tails and claws and breath attacks tearing through the void as if the darkness itself were a battlefield. Lilith's insectoid horrors swarmed, their chittering filling the silence with a sickening rhythm.

  Just before Myrren's mind broke completely, Selene's voice cut through the void—sharp, demanding, edged with something dangerously close to awe.

  "What is this?"

  Azeal's answer resonated from everywhere at once, his tone rich with satisfaction.

  "My bloodline," he said. "Hosts the mark of Zhoruun… a Deas."

  The name struck Myrren like a physical blow.

  Her breathing spiked, lungs burning as terror flooded her veins. Her hands shook violently, quill slipping from her fingers as she staggered backward.

  "No," she whispered, then louder, voice breaking. "Impossible… that creature is— it's real? The Hunger Between Stars exists?"

  One of the eyes turned.

  Not toward Selene. Toward Myrren.

  Her body seized. Every muscle locked as something ancient and vast brushed against her awareness. She could feel it tasting her—measuring her—deciding whether she was worth devouring.

  She screamed.

  "WE HAVE TO RUN! WE HAVE TO LEAVE NOW!"

  Selene grimaced.

  For the first time, every gaze shifted. All four demons looked at Myrren. She blinked. In the instant her eyes reopened, they were upon her.

  Insectoid limbs scythed through the void, bone-spiked tails lashed toward her, a massive jaw opened wide enough to swallow her whole. Tendrils of living darkness surged forward, hunger radiating from them in suffocating waves.

  Myrren shut her eyes, bracing for oblivion.

  Nothing came.

  When she dared to look again, a barrier of Vaylora shimmered around her, dense and radiant, holding the darkness at bay. Tendrils slammed against it and recoiled. Claws screeched uselessly across its surface.

  Lucen and Darius stood between her and the twin demons—Lucen wreathed in flickering lightning, Darius planted like an immovable wall, Devotion blazing red as he turned aside a snapping maw.

  Cassian was already moving, Serenity flashing as he severed an insectoid limb mid-strike, its chitinous body collapsing into nothing before it could touch her.

  Myrren collapsed to her knees, clutching her head as the sounds of battle roared around her. The world blurred, but she forced herself to look up.

  Selene was still fighting.

  She moved like a dancer suspended in the void, staff beneath her feet as she rode its arc, weaving through lashes of darkness and surges of corrupt energy. Every spell she cast—no matter how complex, no matter how devastating—vanished into Zhoruun's mass as though it had never existed. Fire. Light. Force. Concepts Myrren had no name for. All of it was eaten.

  Selene chanted as she moved, voice steady despite the strain of what appeared to be her desperate struggle to survive.

  "By the grace of suns, light will flow,

  Severing darkness in their tow.

  To walk the path of life we dream,

  Tearing death at the seams."

  A vast spell circle ignited beneath her, layered glyphs spinning into place, radiant and precise. Power poured from her in suffocating waves. Power beyond Grand Magic. Magic that should have torn a human body apart, dragon blood or not.

  Myrren's attention snapped back to the battlefield as Darius was struck full-on by a tail swing. A bone spike punched through his neck, blood spraying as he was hurled across the void like a broken doll.

  She cried out, but her voice was drowned out by exploding lightning.

  Lucen surged forward in a blinding flash, only for the light to be smothered instantly. His body was caught in the massive jaws of the beast, crushed and flung aside, crashing near Darius in a lifeless heap.

  Gratefully, they still breathed. Barely.

  Cassian retreated, placing himself squarely between the three demons and the fallen men.

  "You two," he shouted over the chaos, fury cracking through his composure, "are burdens in every aspect of my life!" The swarm surged. Cassian readied himself.

  Selene's chanting stopped.

  She swayed midair, blood trickling from her nose, eyes blazing with contained fury.

  "Stardust," she whispered.

  The void ignited.

  Light exploded outward, filling the infinite black with thousands—tens of thousands—of glowing orbs. Tiny suns, suspended like a newborn galaxy, casting brilliant contrast against the consuming dark.

  Those tiny suns began to fall.

  Stardust rained down upon the battlefield, each particle burning with annihilating brilliance. Tendrils recoiled. Insectoid bodies disintegrated mid-leap. The twin demons roared as their forms were seared, Lilith shrieking as the light ate into her carapace.

  Even Zhoruun recoiled, its surface rippling as the star-born light burned where darkness had never known pain.

  For a moment—just one—the all-consuming darkness was filled with the immense light of stars.

  Light surged through the void, tearing through shadow and tendril alike. Myrren's shoulders relaxed, her mind steadied. It was over. Her eyes twitched as she felt something wrong; her head quickly snapped up to see tendrils erupt from the void, coiling around Selene's recovering form. The light fractured as chittering mandibles echoed through the space. From the thinning starlight, more insectoid shapes poured forth—countless, relentless. Announcing their assault was the roar of the twin beasts.

  Stardust had not ended the battle. It had only postponed the inevitable.

  Myrren turned, dread hollowing her chest. Lucen and Darius lay broken and bleeding, their bodies barely stirring. Cassian stood over them, lightning flaring as he fought back the ever-growing swarm, each strike buying only moments.

  Selene was suspended in the grip of darkness; she struggled to free herself to no avail. Tendrils tightened around her as the injured demons began to recover, their wounds knitting, their forms steadying. One by one, all four of them turned their attention toward Myrren.

  There was no urgency in their gaze. Only glee.

  And in that endless dark, Myrren understood the truth with terrifying clarity—

  Humans can not win against Demons.