"This is incredible, Rune," Eliot's voice crackled through her helmet comm — the new system they'd rigged up from Estoran tech, letting her stay connected to Eliot, Ronan, anyone with a receiver. "This could help us finally understand why our Aethrian-Estoran combination wasn't holding—"

"Hope so too," Rune said flatly, her voice the particular tone it took when she was deep in her own head, unreachable.

A long silence. Then, with concern threading through: "Did Percy blow something up again?"

"I have to go," Rune said, cutting the line before he could press further. She shifted to Morse code, sending out the message she'd coded carefully: We might have a chance with Ignia.

Meanwhile, in Silax, Logan had just weathered another brutal session with the king — and another round of Duke Sam's lies — when the tech piece Vane had given him buzzed to life. One of the other eleven knights looked over — copper-haired, freckled, hazel-eyed, distinctive enough to stand out from the others.

"What is it, Sir Blackwood?" the knight asked.

Logan let out a breath of relief as the message decoded. A faint smile touched his lips. "Princess says they might have convinced Ignia to join the alliance. And the royal healing gold can help defeat the shadows." His crew of eleven cheered — quiet, controlled, but real.

Then he added, and the cheers died: "She also says the shadows can do more than attack now — they can hide inside a host. We can't just fight them. Not without Aethrian magic and Estoran tech and Ignia's gold all working together." The weight of that settled over them all.

Back in Ignia, as the final days of the week counted down, Aiden realized Rune, Vane, and Percy would need protection too. He offered to add gold plating to their armor — reinforcements, safeguards.

Vane accepted gratefully. Rune asked for only a single piece mixed into her own plating.

"Come on — if it helps protect you, I don't mind," Aiden insisted.

"Your Majesty," Rune said flatly, "Silaxen royalty has held Ignian gold for generations. And I won't be the one standing in front facing the shadow directly, so I won't need that much protection." Her eyes on him were cold, lifeless, respectful. Already halfway gone.

As they walked back toward the king's chamber, the shadow sensed them coming.

Percy threw up a protection spell over Vane and Rune both. Vane took the lead, fighting the shadow arms head-on, keeping them distracted while Percy and Rune made their way toward the king in his golden armor. They slipped between the shadow's lashing arms — barely, desperately — Rune picking up the rhythm she'd learned across the past week, though Percy would've been long dead if not for his magic holding him steady.

He reached the king first, pressing his piece of gold onto the armor. The king gasped — and the shadow shrieked, its attention snapping to Percy in response.

Rune threw her own piece like a perfect three-pointer. Percy caught it mid-dodge and pressed it home, and the king's roar mingled with the shadow's scream of agony.

"What's happening?!" Aiden panicked, running straight into danger to check on his father — but Percy's shield flared just in time, stopping the shadow from diving straight into the crown prince's open mind.

Rune didn't hesitate. She tore the last piece of her armor — the one meant to protect her — and placed it against Aiden to keep the shadow at bay. "Stay back!" she shouted.

"Rune, look out!" Vane yelled.

But the shadow was faster. It dove straight for her — and before anyone could move, it poured into her like smoke into a open door.

The king gasped, deep and real, color flooding back into his face as the weight finally lifted.

Aiden held his father, breathless with relief. "Father—"

But Rune stood motionless, her body going rigid as the shadow settled inside her like a second heartbeat.

We can't do this, Inser screamed inside, his voice fracturing. This was a mistake. We should never have left Silax.

No. Reverie's voice cut through, old and firm, even as the shadow tried to drown her. The Creator didn't make us to suffer — we were made to worship in living.

The shadow was swallowing them one by one.

Think! Avery snapped, and for a moment — just a moment — he reached back into the memories they carried. Queen Ember Rune's words. The old prayer-code from centuries past, before the kingdoms shattered.

"By the light before us and the ground beneath us," Avery began, and something in the chant caught — drew Hart back from the edge, pulled at Reverie's slipping fingers.

"When the mind falters, the circle holds.

When the spirit weakens, the brother speaks.

We yield no ground to the creeping dark;

We surrender no piece of who we are.

I am your shield, you are my strength,

Until the shadow breaks."

And for the first time — really, truly the first time — the four of them stood together. Not arguing. Not caged and fighting. Just standing.

Just holding the line.

Rune Vesper, still standing, got a hold of the shadow. "Cassidy! Now!" she shouted.

Cassidy entered with a golden jar that had a few more jewels. Rune Vesper threw the visible bits of the shadow out of her, as the reunion of her inner council slowed the shadow's process of taking over. The rest of it she literally threw up as it made its way into the golden jar. It was overwhelming for Cassidy to hold without screwing everything up, so Vane helped her, and both held the golden jar together.

After exhaling, Percy commented, "I don't know whether to feel relieved or disgusted by what I just witnessed."

"Be grateful it didn't get into you." Rune looked at Percy blankly. "It tastes like blood and pork—and I don't even eat pork!" she complained.

Aiden was stunned by how they could talk like it was a normal Tuesday after slaying a literal shadow. He then looked at his father, who was blinking, trying to process what was going on.

"Who... who are you people?" the King asked, then looked at Aiden. "And why do you look like you haven't slept in years??"

So for the next six hours, Aiden and Cassidy explained everything to him.

"I... see," the King said in disbelief. He then looked up at Cassidy. "Thank you for taking care of my son, young lady," he thanked her politely, which made Cassidy blush.

"I-it's my honor, Your Majesty," Cassidy said shyly.

The King then looked at Rune, Vane, and Percy, and smiled. "And thank you for saving my life." He wanted to bow to them in respect, even from his bed, but he couldn't and coughed a little.

"The shadow has been inside you for a bit too long, feeding on your life force. It will take a while for you to be back in the public eye," Percy explained, reaching for his Princess Misthaven Faye brooch, rubbing it to make sure it was still on him.

"I understand... umm..." the King said, trying not to offend the Aethrian mage or the Estoran and Silaxen knights, knowing his people had offended them for long enough.

After a long silence, the King felt a little hand reach out to him. It was Flint.

"Maybe this would help you," Flint said innocently as he handed over a small bottle of the poison Rune had given him to hold him over until they found a proper medicine. To Flint, it was the only medicine that had helped him get better. "Dotty said an angel knight came to our home and saved me with it."

The King noticed the bottle had Silaxen symbols he had only ever seen in books.

"Flint!" Cassidy scolded, but softly, just as Dotty Lux burst into the room. Running after her was Leo, trying to catch her.

"Dotty! This is the King's chamber, we can't just come in!" Leo said, but Dotty waddled in—somehow she was faster. Percy used his magic to grab all three kids; Dotty giggled, thinking it was some kind of game.

"I-I'm sorry, Your Majesties," Cassidy bowed to the King and Aiden in embarrassment.

"I guess they are already getting used to the idea of living in the Ignian royal palace," Aiden shrugged, "giving the palace some life with all the running around."

Rune Vesper stood in the background, admiring how well the King of Ignia had taken the information over those six hours. She offered a small, wistful smile, thinking about what it would have been like if her own father, the King of Silax, were as loving, understanding, and humble as the King of Ignia. Even though the Ignians value gold—a symbol of wealth and greed in many ways—the King didn't let it get to his head.

Rune Vesper sighed. "Alright, no time to rest. If you don't mind, I am informing Eliot and Logan that Ignia will help us reunite with Estora and the Aethria Isles. So now we have three more kingdoms and Silax to talk through, and we can experiment on how to put the three pieces together. Gold can irritate them, but it won't fully shatter them or vanish them to save the world," Rune informed them.

As she walked away, the King asked in concern, "Is... the Princess of Silax always like this?" It shocked him to see someone work herself to the bone even harder than his son Aiden, while still finding time to be a knight.

"You'll get used to it, Your Majesty," Vane assured him.

For the next month, they tried combining the three pieces again—Aethrian magic, Estoran tech, and Ignian gold—but it kept causing mini-explosions that irritated everyone in the palace.

One midnight, Rune Vesper was feeling deeply frustrated as everything she tried failed to stick.

"Hey," a deep voice said—one she knew very well by now. It was Vane. "Still up working on that? At this rate, you'll miss your midnight training and frustrate Percy into using his magic to make explosions over and over," he joked.

"I have to get this right, or the Seven Crowns will be swallowed, and there is no time to waste," Rune responded. "And we are leaving Ignia by next week!"

"I didn't know we had a deadline for saving the world," Vane joked, though even he knew it wasn't funny.

"People's lives are our deadline!" she snapped at Vane quietly. "The longer we take to figure out how to put these pieces together, the more people face their fates by the second!" she murmured in stress, reaching for her weird little plushie—the one she always grabbed for comfort when overwhelmed.

"Whoa, slow down. I didn't mean it that way," Vane corrected, holding Rune by the shoulder as if she might fly away like a popped balloon. "Stress won't help us make progress any faster. And hey, maybe there are other pieces in the remaining three crowns and Silax, too." He looked at Rune, trying to reassure his teammate. "I might not know exactly what Logan reported to you in that Morse code, but worrying won't get us anywhere faster."

Rune didn't respond, but she wished she could believe him. If only she could stop worrying about her people. Logan had reported that their forces were stretched thin because most of them were busy trying to hunt her down, leaving almost no knights to protect the citizens of Silax from shadow attacks.

It was also taking much longer to train the royal men properly. Crown Prince Hunter only had technical skills suited for running Silax's financial system; Prince Marshall had no clue about military hardware; Duke Mason, Sam's older brother, specialized in the medical field rather than knight duty; and Duke Sam was more of a diplomat than a fighter. It was a massive struggle for each of them to step out of their comfort zones to lead, organize, or learn things they had never been interested in. Not that Rune had ever been approved of for teaching herself military tactics, yet her father still expected her to waste resources running from them.

The next thing Rune knew, she was packing with Vane and Percy to leave.

"Here," Cassidy said, catching Rune's attention. Cassidy was now wearing fancy royal advisor attire, though she was still trying to find her footing with her personal style. "I didn't get to thank you for giving me your simple Silaxen royal clothes."

Rune smiled and gently pushed the Silaxen garments toward her. "No need. I still have my Estoran clothes, and that dress was never my size to begin with. It fits you perfectly because you're a little taller than me, so I just had to undo my own stitches," Rune said. "Besides, let it be a promise for your sacrifice of gold to upgrade our armor," she added, glancing at the King and Prince Aiden before they made their way toward the next kingdom.

That was, until Dotty, Leo, and Flint hugged them, begging them to stay. Even the kids had gotten a wardrobe glow-up, trading old, itchy, worn-down clothes for the fanciest attire a commoner could dream of—and then some—now that Cassidy was working as a royal advisor in the palace.

"This isn't goodbye, kids," Percy said, using a float of magic to pull Flint off his leg. "We'll have more time to see each other once we reunite the other four crowns and put an end to the shadows."