She did not destroy the stone.

The demon laughed. “You come to fight with a song?”

Long ago, the village of Thornwood Hollow lay beneath the shadow of Mount Vyr. From its peak, a demon of living scarlet — the Crimson Weeper — descended every seventh moon to claim a child’s heart-stone, a crystal formed of pure innocence, to fuel its immortality. The demon’s own stone, the Heart of Ember-Sin, pulsed within its chest like a bleeding sun. Sasha was no warrior. She was a binder of wounds, a brewer of herbs, a listener to the dying. But when the demon took her younger sister Elara, something inside Sasha broke — and then hardened into something sharper than any sword.