The explosion didn’t hit with just sound — it hit with pressure.

  I was flung sideways into a column, lungs instantly vacated of air. My ears rang like someone had smashed a crystal chandelier inside my skull. Stone dust rained down from above; something large collapsed somewhere to my left.

  For several seconds I lay there, tasting grit, trying to determine whether I was technically alive. I opened my eyes — dust everywhere. What just happened?

  The tenerants were gone. Not faded. Not dispersed. Erased. Where they’d stood, the stone was blackened and melted into a shallow crater. The air smelled scorched — sharp, dry, like lightning had punched through the room.

  “Everyone alive?” I croaked.

  “For now,” Finn replied from beneath an overturned chest.

  I tried to get up, but the world tilted. Then a strong dusty hand with a thin stripe of soot along the wrist appeared in front of me.

  “Not ideal to remain on the floor,” Drake said calmly. “It’s not the friendliest surface.”

  I stared at him, still half-deaf, and let him pull me up. So that was him.

  Elvira and Finn hadn’t exaggerated when they labelled him a walking apocalypse. Well. That’s wonderful. Comforting actually. Yes, my friends are gifted necromancers, but when a smoke-entity is trying to turn you into abstract art, a destructive elemental mage with a blue reserve is exactly the sort of acquaintance one appreciates.

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  Only. What is he doing here? We stumbled onto the catacombs by accident. Elvira was hunting them. But him?

  I pulled my hand away and narrowed my eyes.

  “You—”

  “Elemental destruction,” he replied lazily, dusting off his shoulder as if he’d just adjusted curtains rather than detonated a shadow entity.

  That is not the question. I was about to ask it properly when something cracked overhead. A chunk of stone came loose.

  I didn’t even have time to look up. Drake pulled me toward him in one sharp movement — not heroic, just efficient, like saving a falling glass from a table. The stone smashed down exactly where I’d been standing.

  Suddenly I was pressed against him. Far too close. My palm against his chest. His hand at my waist — steady, certain, unbothered. Dust drifted in slow motion around us.

  I looked up.

  And for a moment forgot what I had been about to say. His cheekbones were sharp, as if carved from the same stone as the Academy itself. Dark lashes cast shadows over his cheeks. In his eyes there was no mockery, no sarcasm — only focus.

  Too close. And strangely… calm. As though the world, which seconds ago had been attempting to murder us, had politely paused.

  My breath hitched — and this time it wasn’t the dust. He didn’t release me immediately. And I didn’t move either… I just didn’t want to step away first. It was wrong. Suspicious. Illogical. But in his arms it felt… safe. As if I wasn’t in a subterranean ruin full of monsters, but somewhere nothing bad could happen.

  “Are you going to keep staring at me?” he said quietly.

  I blinked and stepped back.

  “Just checking for burn damage,” I muttered.

  He huffed.

  I glanced around. The hall had changed. One column had cracked deeply. Parts of the stone floor were melted, as though a heated blade had swept across it. Dust still sifted from the ceiling.

  And somewhere in the back of my mind, a thought stirred: If he’s capable of that… What is he really doing here?