The token's connection led her through the city like a compass needle pointing toward doom. Su followed it through merchant districts, down into the lower city where the buildings leaned on each other like drunk friends, and finally into the old warehouse district near the river. The same district where she'd been hiding.

  "They were watching me," Su muttered. "They've been watching me."

  "Obviously," Fernando said. "You're not exactly subtle. You glow with stolen dragon magic and leave chaos in your wake."

  "I'm very subtle!"

  "You threw me off a roof three days ago."

  "That was—okay, fair point."

  The thread led to a specific warehouse—one that looked abandoned but wasn't. Through her Lens, Su could see the wrongness. The building had been warded, hidden behind layers of "nothing to see here" magic that would make humans unconsciously look away.

  But Su wasn't fully human anymore. The wards looked like suggestions she could just... ignore.

  She circled the building, staying in shadow, counting guards. Two at the main entrance, visible only because she was looking through the wards. Maybe more inside.

  "This is their base," she whispered. "Or one of them."

  "Great. You found it. Now what? Storm the castle? You're one bird."

  "One bird with void-corruption, a very nice pair of spectacles, and absolutely nothing left to lose."

  "That's not a tactical advantage."

  "It's something."

  She was trying to figure out an approach when the decision was made for her.

  A wagon rolled up to the warehouse. Covered. Cultists driving it. And from inside muffled, but unmistakable the sounds of distressed birds.

  Su's void-energy crackled involuntarily.

  "How many?" Fernando asked quietly.

  Su pulled on her Lens, looking through the wagon's cover. "Four. No—five. Three peacocks, one goose, one... I think that's a heron."

  "All Sky-Dancer bloodlines?"

  "I can't tell. But they're taking them inside."

  The cultists unloaded the caged birds with mechanical efficiency, carrying them through the warded entrance into the warehouse's depths.

  Su had a choice. She could retreat. Report this to... who? The city guard? They'd think she was insane. The Sky-Dancers? They didn't know she existed. Or she could go in. Alone. Dramatically outmatched. Probably die in some horrible ritual.

  "I'm going in," she said.

  "Of course you are."

  "You can stay here."

  "And miss the inevitable disaster? Absolutely not. I need to see how this ends."

  Su felt a surge of gratitude that she absolutely did not know how to express, so she just nodded and tucked Fernando's bucket under some debris where he'd be safe-ish.

  "If I don't come back—"

  "You're coming back. You're too stubborn to die permanently."

  "I've died twice already."

  "And you came back more annoying each time. The pattern holds."

  Su laughed quietly. Then she Shadow Stepped to the warehouse wall and began looking for a way in.

  The warehouse interior was wrong.

  Not architecturally, though the space was larger than it should be, pocket-dimension nonsense, but wrong in the way that made Su's void-corruption recoil and writhe under her feathers.

  A thin film of dark, oily liquid seeped from the stones, collecting in channels carved into the floor, all flowing toward the center of the space where—

  "Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Su whispered from her hiding spot in the rafters.

  In the center of the warehouse floor: a smaller version of the Weeping Stone. Not the massive canyon-sized monument from the first loop, but a chunk of it. About eight feet tall, pulsing with sickly golden light, weeping the same dark corruption that flowed from the walls.

  Around it: cultists. At least twenty. Chanting in that multi-voiced harmony that made Su's head hurt. And arrayed in cages around the stone: birds. Dozens of them. Peacocks, swans, herons, even a few ravens. All glowing with traces of old magic.

  Azure Majesty was there, his once-magnificent plumage dull and ragged. He wasn't preening or even displaying. He just sat, hollow-eyed, staring at nothing. The ritual hadn't happened yet. But it was about to.

  A figure entered through a side door—tall, commanding, wearing robes that weren't black but absence, like a hole cut in reality.

  The lead cultist. The Hierophant, if Su remembered the first loop's terminology correctly.

  He walked to the stone, placed both hands on its weeping surface, and spoke. Not in the multi-voice harmony, but in a single, clear sane voice:

  "Brothers and sisters. The harvest is complete. Twenty-seven vessels of old blood. Sufficient for the first Unsealing." He gestured to the caged birds. "Tonight, we feed the Stone. Tonight, we begin to break the chains that bind our god."

  God? Su thought. The Weeping Stone has something INSIDE it?

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  The cultists began their chanting again, louder now. The stone's weeping intensified. The dark fluid started to move, creeping toward the cages like living oil.

  Su had maybe two minutes before the ritual started. She looked at the twenty-seven birds. At the cultists. And she thought: I can't save them all. Not in a straight fight. I need to break the ritual and make this whole operation collapse.

  Her eyes landed on the channels carved into the floor. The flowing corruption. Through her Lens, she could see the pattern—the channels formed a magical circuit, feeding power from the walls into the stone, amplifying whatever the ritual did.

  Su pulled out her Lens's last charge, focused on the circuit's weakest point—a junction near the eastern wall where three channels met—and used Precise Disassembly to map its structure.

  Then she dove. She Shadow Stepped directly to the junction and kicked the carved stone with void-enhanced talons.

  The effect was immediate and catastrophic. The channel cracked. The flowing corruption backed up, flooding out of the carved paths, spreading across the floor in a rapidly expanding pool.

  The chanting stopped. Cultists scrambled back from the rising dark water.

  The Hierophant's head snapped toward Su. "SEIZE IT!"

  But the damage was done. The circuit was broken. The stone's glow flickered, stuttered, and the weeping stopped.

  For a moment, there was perfect silence.

  Then the stone screamed. A wail of frustration and hunger that made every bird in the warehouse shriek in terror and every cultist stagger.

  Su felt it like a spike through her skull, but she'd heard worse. This was just really loud rage. She pushed through it, Shadow Stepping to the nearest cage, using Precise Disassembly on the lock. It clicked open.

  A peacock burst free, disoriented but mobile.

  "FLY!" Su screamed in the Bird-tongue. "GET OUT! NORTH WALL, BROKEN WINDOW!"

  The peacock didn't need to be told twice. It bolted.

  Su moved to the next cage. And the next. Cultists were recovering now, moving to intercept her, but the flooding corruption made the floor treacherous. They slipped, stumbled, and Su was fast.

  She freed six birds. Ten. Fifteen.

  A cultist finally got close enough to grab her. She bit his hand hard enough to draw blood and Shadow Stepped away, appearing at Azure Majesty's cage.

  The proud peacock looked up at her with dull eyes. "...You?"

  "Yeah, me. Come on, you pompous bastard, we're leaving."

  She freed his lock. He staggered out, legs shaking.

  "Why?" he asked, confused. "Do you know me? Or fall for me?"

  "I don't," Su confirmed. "You don't even deserve me. Now FLY."

  Something in her tone must have penetrated his shock because he spread his wings and took off toward the broken window where other birds were escaping.

  Twenty birds freed. Twenty-one.

  The Hierophant was screaming orders now, trying to restore the ritual, but the stone was destabilizing. Its golden glow was flickering between light and shadow, between rage and desperation.

  Su freed the last cage—a small heron and turned to run. And came face-to-face with the Hierophant.

  Up close, without the hood, his face was wrong. Skin too smooth. Eyes too bright. Like he was wearing a human face over something else.

  "Little thief," he said, his voice measured despite the chaos. "Did you think breaking one circuit would stop us?"

  He moved faster than Su expected. His hand shot out, grabbing her by the neck, lifting her off the ground.

  "The Stone recognizes you," he murmured, studying her with those too-bright eyes. "Touched by the Wyrm. Carrying stolen death. You would have made a perfect sacrifice. Better than twenty lesser birds."

  Her void-corruption flared defensively but it was just making his smile wider.

  "Yes," he whispered. "Struggle. Your power will feed the Stone so beautifully—"

  Something hit him in the face.

  Not Fernando this time. A rock. Thrown from the broken window.

  The Hierophant's grip loosened just enough. Su twisted, raked her void-enhanced claws across his arm, and Shadow Stepped the moment he dropped her.

  She reappeared on a rafter near the window. Below, the cultists were regrouping. The stone was still screaming. The corruption was spreading.

  This place was going to collapse.

  Su dove through the broken window into the night, her wings straining, her lungs burning.

  Behind her, the warehouse shuddered. The stone's scream reached a crescendo. And then—

  CRACK

  An explosion of shadow and golden light. Su tumbled through the air, hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up running on pure instinct and adrenaline.

  She didn't stop until she reached Fernando's hiding spot. The fern was, somehow, fine. The bucket was intact.

  "Did you just—" Fernando started.

  "Yep."

  "Did they—"

  "Yep."

  "Are they—"

  "Don't know, don't care, we're leaving."

  Behind them, the warehouse was collapsing in on itself, shadow and light warring as the corrupted stone devoured what was left of the building.

  Sirens began to wail. The city guard, finally responding to the magical explosion.

  Su grabbed Fernando's bucket and ran into the predawn darkness, leaving chaos and twenty-seven freed birds in her wake.

  Su collapsed in an alley three districts away, her whole body shaking with exhaustion and excess adrenaline.

  +400 XP

  LEVEL UP

  LEVEL 15

  The level-up felt unimportant. She'd done it. She'd broken the ritual. Freed the birds. Almost died, but that was par for the course.

  "That was the single most reckless thing you've done," Fernando said into the silence.

  "I freed them," Su said quietly. "Twenty-seven birds. I chose to save them."

  "Yes. You did."

  "I'm not a villain."

  "No."

  "I never was."

  "No."

  Su laughed. It came out broken and slightly unhinged. "I spent weeks trying to be evil. And the moment I stopped pretending, the moment I just... acted like me... I saved lives."

  "You're an idiot," Fernando said, but his tone was gentle. "But you're an idiot with priorities. Misguided priorities. Suicidal priorities. But priorities."

  Su looked up at the sky. Dawn was coming, painting the clouds in pink and gold. Somewhere in the city, twenty-seven birds were returning to their lives. Azure Majesty would probably preen his trauma away in a week. The cultists would rebuild. The Chancellor would keep hunting her.

  But tonight—this morning—she'd won something.

  "I need a nap," Su muttered. "A very long nap."

  "The cathedral isn't safe."

  "I know."

  "You need a new hideout."

  "I know."

  "You have no plan."

  "I know."

  Fernando rustled. "There's a greenhouse. On the east side. Abandoned. Lots of sunlight for me. Good sightlines for you. It's defensible."

  Su looked at the fern. "You've been scouting?"

  "I'm a plant. I have time to think. And despite your best efforts to get us both killed, I'd prefer to survive this nonsense."

  "You care about me."

  "I tolerate your existence because I'm narratively bound to you."

  "You care."

  "Shut up and carry me to the greenhouse."

  Su grinned—the first genuine smile she'd managed in days. "Okay, partner. Lead the way."

  As they moved through the waking city, staying to shadows, Su heard the whispers starting:

  "Did you hear? Something attacked the old warehouse—"

  "They say birds flew out, dozens of them—"

  "The Shadow-guardian struck again—"

  "They're calling it the Liberation of the Caged—"

  Su groaned. "I can't escape the hero thing, can I?"

  "Nope," Fernando said cheerfully. "You saved birds from a death cult. That's pretty explicitly heroic."

  "I didn't even mean to—I just wanted to break their stupid ritual—"

  "And in doing so, accidentally saved lives. Again. It's your curse."

  "I'm cursed enough already!"

  "Double cursed. Cursed with competence and accidental heroism."

  Su grumbled but kept moving, carrying her sarcastic plant-companion toward their new hideout.

  The legend of Shadowbeak grew. And Su, exhausted and done with everything, just wanted to sleep.

  But the game wasn't over.