The denial comes from somewhere deep and absolute. Yes, I've been abandoned. Yes, I've been alone. But that's not the whole truth.
I've also been found.
Everything the Guardian is trying to steal, I pour back into Jonah through the bond. My love. My certainty. My absolute refusal to give up on us. He's not alone anymore. Neither am I. We chose each other, and that choice is stronger than any despair the Guardian can manufacture.
The golden light surges back, brighter than before.
Jonah roars and tears deeper into the anchor point, ripping through corrupted ley energy with renewed strength. His gratitude, his love, his determination floods back through our connection, warming me from the inside out.
The faces in the construct begin to fade. The trapped souls, released from whatever holds them, dissipate like morning fog.Without their suffering to feed on, the anchor point starts to crack.
The Guardian makes one last desperate attempt. Its forms coalesce into a single massive shape, all its manifestations combining into something that towers over us. It slams into our protective barrier with the weight of centuries.
The golden light holds.
Barely.
My legs give out. Collapsing onto the stone, every ounce of strength burned away by the effort of maintaining the shield. Through blurring vision, I watch Jonah deliver one final devastating blow to the anchor point's core.
It shatters.
The explosion of shadow energy knocks us both backward. I hit the ground hard, forced back into human form by sheer exhaustion. Naked and shaking on cold stone, I watch the anchor point disintegrate. The pillar crumbles, the corrupted ley energy rushing back toward reality like water finding its level.
The Guardian's scream is everywhere and nowhere, rage and disbelief and something that might be fear.
The realm itself begins to collapse. Stone formations crack and fall. The colorless void darkens, then lightens, then fractures into impossible colors. Without the anchor holding it stable, the shadow realm is tearing itself apart.
And the tear back to reality is sealing.
Jonah shifts back to human, grabbing my arm and hauling me to my feet. "We need to run. Now."
My legs barely support my weight, but he doesn't let me fall. We sprint through collapsing chaos, the realm dissolving around us. Chasms open beneath our feet. Shadow creatures throw themselves at us in suicide attacks, trying to delay us long enough that we'll be trapped when the tear seals completely.
Jonah knows the way. Six months gave him an intimate knowledge of this nightmare landscape. He navigates by instinct, pulling me through paths that close behind us immediately.
But I have something he doesn't. My ley line sensitivity acts like a compass even here, pulling me toward reality with magnetic certainty. When he hesitates at a fork in the crumbling path, I tug him left.
"Trust me," the words tear from my throat.
He does.
We run through space that's rapidly becoming absolute nothing. The realm is unmaking itself, returning to whatever void it came from. Shadow creatures dissolve around us, unable to maintain form without the anchor's corrupted energy to sustain them.
The Guardian makes one final attempt. The path ahead shimmers, and suddenly there's another me trapped under fallen stone, crying out for help. Every protective instinct Jonah has screams at him to go to her, to rescue her.
His hesitation pulls at me through the bond. His body angles toward the illusion.
"Jonah!" My scream cuts through the chaos. "I'm right here! Stay with me!"
Everything I have left pours into him through our connection. Not power, I'm too drained for that. Just certainty. Truth. The real connection between us versus the Guardian's lies.
He trusts the bond over his eyes.
We keep running.
The tear appears ahead of us, barely visible in the disintegrating landscape. It's closing fast, reality sealing itself now that the anchor no longer holds it open. Maybe three feet wide. Two. Shrinking with every second.
We're not going to make it.
