The Feast of Moons fades into uneasy silence when the horns sound, and a shadow older than the kingdom itself tears through the gates.

  Amid panic and steel, the royal family becomes the beast’s prey.

  The Feast of Moons had stretched long past reason. The drums that once leapt like bright hearts now beat a slow, uneven rhythm, as if the night itself were tiring.

  Torchflame leaned and trembled in the wind; lantern-light pooled on the stones like honey no one dared touch.

  Laughter thinned. Musicians tuned and re-tuned the same string.

  Somewhere, a dog would not stop whining. Beyond the walls, no second bell came.

  Kael stood at the edge of the dais with one arm tight around Liora.

  For a reason he couldn’t explain, his grip on Liora tightened.

  She was sugar-sticky and drowsy against him, hair smelling of rosemary and smoke, the bronze token from Rowi’s riddle winking on a ribbon at her throat. Beside them, Queen Elara’s hand found Kael’s shoulder—warm, steady—while her eyes stayed on the black seam of forest beyond the outer ditch.

  King Torren still held court, goblet raised, voice rolling gently as distant thunder. He could make a speech into a shield; Kael had seen it turn a crowd from fear to courage before.

  Tonight, the words did not travel as far as the wall.

  Beyond the watch-fires, something leaned forward.

  Listening.

  The first horn-blast sheared the night in two.

  The crowd’s joy inhaled—and forgot how to exhale.

  Not the bright, brassy flourish of a festival. A deeper note, shaped for danger—one blast from the western tower, then a second, closer to panic, then a third that made teeth ache.

  Music died mid-breath. Dancers froze, hands suspended, bells stilled.

  Men stared at one another over cups that never reached their mouths.

  The dogs, who had been restless all evening, scraped their claws raw against stone and tried to crawl into the earth.

  “Inside!” a sergeant bellowed. “Children inside!”

  Kael felt something in him go cold, as if the sound had reached straight into his bones.

  The horn sounded again.

  The ground began to tremble—faint at first, then enough to make bowls chime and wine shiver in their cups.

  Wine rings quivered in their cups. A tower banner cracked like a whip and then hung dead.

  Torren lifted his sword-hand. “Hold,” he said, calm and iron. “Hold fast.”

  The gate did not.

  Wood groaned. Iron screamed. Something hit the outer doors as if a hill had learned to run.

  Oak, riveted with bars thick as a man’s wrist, bowed as bread does before it breaks.

  The second strike broke it.

  Timbers flew like thrown spears. Iron buckled. The bar tore away with a sound like a tree uprooting.

  A gust of cold slammed the courtyard, puffing torches to guttering stubs. Smoke and night poured in together—and in that dark mouth, a shape unfolded.

  Kael’s breath misted white—this cold did not belong to the night.

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  It did not enter like a beast charges. It arrived like weather.

  A wall of shadow with edges that could not agree on their shape, claws that found purchase where smoke should slip, a body that seemed more like storm clouds remembering how to be flesh.

  The air around it went wrong; heat peeled off the torches in sheets and came back as cold. Sound seemed late to arrive, as if even echoes kept their distance. When its paws struck flagstone, the stone rang.

  He had never seen a creature like this. No one had.

  And the eyes. Two coals set in the night. Not flickering. Deciding.

  Kael felt Liora’s fingers bite his arm.

  Elara’s breath shortened.

  Men who had fought bandits and wolves and winter itself took one step back without meaning to.

  The Shadowbeast opened its mouth.

  The sound that came out was not an animal’s roar; it was a cavern collapsing, iron riven from the earth, the world trying to crack a tooth on its own nightmares.

  The torches faltered; banners leaned away.

  “Liora. Kael.” Torren’s voice cut cleanly through the terror. “With your mother.”

  His sword came free in a bright hiss.

  “Eryndor to me!”

  The palace guard hit like a wave.

  Spearmen locked shields; archers found their sight-lines; a knot of veterans in brigandines shouldered in at Torren’s side.

  Captain Sereth appeared from nowhere, eyes hawk-sharp, blade already wet with the oil he preferred. He planted himself between the royal dais and the oncoming dark.

  “Keep the children low,” he said without looking back. “If it moves, I meet it. If I fall, you run.”

  Kael swallowed hard; he had never heard Sereth speak like that.

  Steel.

  Discipline.

  Stubbornness.

  Elara’s hand tightened on Kael’s shoulder. “Down,” she whispered, dropping to a crouch with Liora folded to her chest. “As I do, you do.”

  The beast struck first. It did not pounce; it uncoiled a limb of night and swept.

  Men flew.

  Shields snapped like roasted chestnuts under a heel. The line held on reflex and training, dented and screaming.

  Sereth stepped into the breach with the economy of a man who knew exactly which motions time would allow.

  His blade flashed once, twice—bright steel met shadow. Sparks spat like shooting stars and died on stone.

  For a heartbeat, the beast’s shoulder seemed to take the wounds; the cut edges steamed.

  They closed again, the night knitting itself—and then the beast moved.

  Three soldiers died before they finished exhaling. One made a prayer with half a hand.

  Kael’s stomach lurched; the world suddenly felt too sharp, too real.

  Torren hit its left flank in a hammering arc, brightsteel singing.

  Steel bit—Kael saw the bite, saw smoke tear—and hope leapt into his throat like a fish breaking water.

  Hope fell back, gasping.

  Smoke swarmed the wound. The beast shuddered as if shedding someone else’s hands.

  Then it wheeled, faster than its size allowed, and slammed a paw the size of a door through a man Kael knew by name and laugh.

  “Together!” Torren bellowed. “Now!”

  Spears jabbed. Shields closed. The line became a hedgehog of iron and will.

  The beast opened its jaws and exhaled darkness.

  Not shadow. Not night.

  A pressure that crushed sound flat and shoved men back without touching them.

  The first rank hit the wall with the noise of dropped beehives. Bones broke.

  “Liora whimpered, and Kael instinctively shielded her.

  The second rank went to one knee and held, teeth bared, eyes wild.

  Is this how the world ends?

  Kael thought, clutching Liora.

  Under a sky with no stars left for us?

  Sereth did not give ground. He found the thing’s elbow—if that is what the limb had—and cut once, twice in quick, hungry lines.

  “To me!” he barked at a half-dozen boys who had learned to call him captain before they learned to shave. “Points high!”

  They hit together.

  For a breath, the world bent the right way: steel, discipline, stubbornness.

  The beast’s head turned. Its eyes found the dais.

  It saw Elara. It saw the children.

  In the deep shadow under the east arch, Lord Gorath stood very still with his son.

  Varrick held a sword he had never blooded except on straw.

  His jaw was clenched so hard that the skin whitened over the bone.

  The boy’s arrogance, so quick to rise in contests, had left him. In its place: calculation flickering — and then getting scorched by fear.

  “We move?” he whispered.

  Gorath watched the courtyard as a chessboard from a balcony while pretending to admire the view.

  His mouth smiled out of habit; his knuckles did not.

  Let the king fall, let the court break—Eryndor will need a new hand to steer the wreckage.

  “The measure of a night writes itself on men,” he said softly, eyes on Torren’s back. “The moon keeps the tally.”

  But the beast had its own plans.

  The beast’s head turned slowly.

  Its eyes found the dais.

  It saw Elara. It saw Liora.

  And then—it saw Kael.

  Kael froze. It wasn’t looking at the queen. It was looking at him.

  The night held its breath.

  No roar. No charge. Just dark intent—patient and certain, as if Kael had been its purpose all along.

  A prince had no sword. No armor. Only his body is between the monster and his sister.

  For the first time in his life, Kael felt the shape of a truth that would follow him forever:

  He was not meant to win. He was meant to endure.

  And now—the beast came for him.

  The beast took its first step toward the dais.

  → Continue to Episode 2B