I moved without thinking.
The staff raised instinctively, my body throwing itself into the dagger's path—
"!"
—but my legs refused to cooperate.
Tendrils of cold, sticky darkness had snaked around my ankles, anchoring me to the ground like iron chains.
Shadow magic?
The realization flashed across my mind even as I suppressed my reaction, masking it beneath a dead calm.
No time to struggle.
The dagger, a glinting shard of silver death, spun through the air—barely a meter from Sara's shrouded form.
And the leader was already moving too.
From his other sleeve, another dagger slipped into his hand, a blur of polished metal angled right for me.
Focus.
I snarled under my breath and twisted the staff, releasing three rapid bursts of compressed air.
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
Should be enough.
Ting! Ting! TING!
The first shot nicked the flying dagger, the second deflected it mid-spin, and the third threw it slightly off course—
