Maiev Shadowsong read the death report at the top of her fortress stairs and knew her order was too small. One Legion fugitive had already broken loose in the valley below. A demon, freed from the vaults she had sworn to keep. She had built this owl-crowned bastion to hold a full company of Watchers. Right now she had eleven, and half were still learning to hold a glaive. A scout had brought the report an hour ago. A woodcutter torn apart near the river. Claw marks on the trees. The fugitive was hunting, and it would kill again by dark. Maiev did the math on the stone landing. Eleven Watchers could not sweep the whole valley in time. If she split them, the demon would slaughter each pair alone. If she kept them together, they would search one hillside while it fed on another. Every plan she ran ended with more dead farmers. She went down to the beast pens instead. Her moonsaber rose when she entered. He was dark grey, built like a battering ram, his shoulders plated in fitted steel. He had tracked fugitives with her across three ranges. He pressed his broad head against her palm and waited. Maiev did not need eleven Watchers if she had one nose that never lost a scent. "We go alone," she told him. "The others stay and guard the walls." She rode out with the woodcutter's torn cloak knotted to her saddle. The moonsaber took the scent from it and pulled hard toward the river. His pace ate the ground. Maiev leaned low and let him choose the path. He followed the trail past the mangled trees, through a marsh, up a bare ridge. The sun dropped. Then his ears flattened and he stopped, growling low. The demon crouched over a fresh kill in the hollow below. A second woodcutter. Maiev had come too late to save him, but soon enough to end the hunt. She slid from the saddle. The demon heard the moonsaber's snarl and turned. Maiev threw her glaive before it could charge. The blade opened its chest. The moonsaber hit it an instant later and bore it down. Maiev landed on its back and drove her second blade through its skull. It stopped moving. She knelt in the wet grass, breathing hard. One fugitive dead. One farmer dead too, because she had reached him too slow. Maiev cleaned her blades and stared at the cooling body. She had won because of a beast, not an order. That truth settled cold in her chest. Back at the bastion, a second scout waited at the gate. Three more fugitives had broken from the northern vaults while she chased this one south. They had scattered in three directions. One saber could follow one trail. She would need many more Watchers, and she would need them now.

The scout's last words still rang in Maiev's ears as she rode north. One fugitive had reached a crossing where travelers gathered. It would kill them all before she arrived. Her moonsaber ran hard, but the trail was long, and she counted the distance in bodies she could not stop. She crested the ridge above the crossing at dusk. Wagons stood clustered near a shallow ford. A dozen travelers huddled between them. And the demon was already there, hunched at the water's edge, its long arms twitching. But it was not attacking. Someone stood between the demon and the wagons. A small night elf, no taller than a child, planted herself in the mud. She wore black leather and moved like a blade already thrown. Twin glaives spun in her hands. Maiev knew that stance. She had trained it into others. And she knew that face. She had chained it to a wall in the vaults and left it in the dark. Aisslyn. The fugitive lunged. Aisslyn dropped under its swing and opened its flank. She was fast, but small, and the demon shrugged off the cut. It hit her with a backhand that threw her into a wagon wheel. She rose slower. Maiev did not think. She threw her glaive from the saddle. The blade sank into the demon's shoulder and spun it toward her. Her moonsaber closed the gap and bore it down. Maiev landed on its back and drove her second blade through its skull. It went still under her. The travelers did not cheer. They gathered their children and fled across the ford, leaving the two elves alone with the corpse and the dark. Aisslyn stood, one hand pressed to her ribs. Her glaives were still raised. Not at the demon. At Maiev. "You," Maiev said. "Me." Aisslyn spat blood. "I saved them. Don't chain me for it." "You held it off. Alone." Maiev stepped off the body. "Why?" "They were going to die." Aisslyn's eyes flicked to the fleeing wagons, then back. "Same as I would've, in your dark." Maiev looked at her. A fugitive from her own vaults. A demon hunter who fought demons. The very thing her order needed and the very thing it was built to cage. She had come to kill a fugitive. She had found one killing fugitives instead. "Come with me," Maiev said. "I have eleven Watchers and a hundred fugitives loose. I need blades that know how to fight them." Aisslyn laughed, short and sharp. "You put me in a cell." "I'm offering you a purpose." "Not the same thing." But her glaives lowered an inch. The demon was dead. The travelers were safe. And the woman Maiev had once hunted now stood as her one chance to build the order fast enough. Maiev held out her hand across the corpse. Aisslyn did not take it. She did not run either.