THE SUNLESS HEIR

CHAPTER TWO : THE ABYSSAL AMBUSH

The air in the Broken Anvil shattered as Elian flipped the heavy oak table with a flick of his wrist. It wasn't muscle that sent the wood hurtling toward the Inquisitor, but a concussive blast of sheer, radiant heat. Kaelen barely sidestepped, raising his steel gauntlet as a shield. Where the golden light grazed his armor, the metal hissed, instantly glowing a dull, angry cherry-red.

Panic erupted. Mercenaries and scavengers scrambled for the exits, trampling over one another to escape the blinding flare that now engulfed the back of the room. Elian stood at the epicenter, his chest heaving, fists entirely encased in volatile, liquid fire. It was breathtakingly beautiful, Kaelen noted with cold detachment—a terrifying, mythical relic of a forgotten age. And it was violently unstable.

Kaelen lunged, his own magic answering the call. Tendrils of thick, suffocating darkness bled from his cloak, climbing the wooden beams of the tavern and surging toward the Sun-Weaver. The shadows acted as dampeners, swallowing the scorching heat and plunging the room into chaotic twilight. Elian cursed, throwing a concentrated spear of light that pierced Kaelen’s defensive wall of shadow, grazing his cheek. The pain was searing, leaving a blistering trail of agony, but the Inquisitor did not falter. He closed the distance in three lethal strides, his heavy boot sweeping Elian’s legs out from under him.

Before Elian could hit the floorboards, Kaelen’s iron grip snapped around his collar, pinning him against the nearest load-bearing pillar. The shadows immediately coiled around Elian’s wrists like vipers, suffocating the flames until only a faint, pulsing glow remained. "Your light is untrained, Weaver," Kaelen whispered, his face mere inches from Elian’s, the ambient heat between their bodies stifling. "You burn too fast."

Elian choked out a raspy, breathless laugh, his golden eyes fierce and defiant even in defeat. But before he could deliver a biting retort, the tavern’s reinforced front doors exploded inward in a shower of splinters.

It wasn't light that tore through the timber, but something putrid, unnatural, and freezing. Jagged spikes of black ice erupted from the floorboards, instantly crystallizing the spilled ale. Through the settling dust stepped three figures cloaked in tattered, blood-soaked crimson—the Abyssal Cult. They weren't here for a Crown bounty; their hollow, dead eyes fixated instantly on Elian with ravenous hunger. They were here to consume the sun.

Kaelen cursed bitterly, his shadow-bindings instantly retracting from Elian's wrists to form a protective ward. He hauled the bewildered Weaver to his feet by the scruff of his tunic. "Move!" Kaelen barked, shoving Elian toward the backdoor as a lethal volley of black ice tore through the pillar they had just abandoned.