The training yard had seen better days.
Not the yard itself—the mats were still there, the dummies still cracked, the pendulum weights still swinging. But the energy had changed since Harrowfield. The team trained harder now, pushed longer, rested less. The blood moon was somewhere out there, ticking down, and none of them wanted to be caught unprepared.
Derek trained hardest of all.
That was new. He'd always been the reluctant one, the one who needed encouragement, the one who flinched before every drill. But something had shifted in him after the exorcism. Maybe it was the demon's taunts, the way it had used his deepest fears against him. Maybe it was the sight of Lucian collapsing, his runes bowing inward, the silence of his pulse.
Or maybe he was just tired of being scared.
