"Make it move left," Liam said.
Asher sent a controlled pulse of blue heat along the crack beside the Hollowback rather than at its body. The flame slid low across the stone, heating the line without exploding it. The creature recoiled, plates grinding softly, and shifted away from the warmth. As it moved, two more sections of the road shivered in response.
"Three at least," Celia said from above. "No, four. One near the carriage remains. One under the marker path."
"The marker path matters," Liam said.
"I noticed."
He formed a narrow spike of shadow in his hand and threw it into the ground near the carriage remains. It pierced a patch of dust beside a sunken wheel. The ground answered with a sudden collapse as a Hollowback lunged upward, jaws snapping through empty air where a foot might have been if someone had tried to pass that way. Asher drove another heat pulse toward it, not enough to kill, enough to force it back under the broken carriage and away from the road's center.
