The room wasn't a cell anymore.

It was something worse.

A faint hum pulsed through the walls, like wind trapped inside stone. Mia sat in the center, wrists chained to a blackened table carved with strange marks that shimmered faintly under the torchlight.

She had been intercepted before the assailants could question her-taken wordlessly by the Veilbound, those faceless sentinels who moved like shadows behind glass. No one saw them coming. No one ever did.

Four of them stood ...