Malrend’s smile returns, faint and cold.
“You misunderstand,” he replies. “She was never yours alone.”
The sigils beneath me ignite fully.
And the chamber erupts into war. The floor detonates in light. The containment glyphs snap inward, trying to collapse me into their center like a dying star imploding. I feel the pressure spike against my bones, crushing, compressing, attempting to force my magic to fold in on itself.
But the bond answers first. Zeidan moves. He does not leap or shout. He simply vanishes from where he stands and reappears between me and the sigil array in a ripple of shadowso dense it fractures the air. His wings flare outward, massive and lethal, and the darkness pouring from them slices through the nearest containment lines. The runes splinter under the impact, screaming in metallic resonance.
Malrend lifts a hand. The chamber responds to him. Black fire erupts from the outer ring, not hot but devouring, void-flame that eats magic before it touches flesh. It collides with Zeidan’s shadow midair, the two forces grinding together like tectonic plates.
Behind him, Ron crashes through the opening fully transformed, Vrakken sigils blazing across his arms. He doesn’t hesitate. He drives straight toward Malrend with a blade formed from condensed dusksteel, roaring something wordless and furious.
The Purna forces surge in after him, root-callers slamming palms to stone, forcing living tendrils up through cracks in the chamber floor. Vines explode outward, coiling around Malrend’s defensive pillars.
Malrend does not retreat. He extends both hands.
The sigils along the walls flare white-hot, and suddenly the chamber tilts sideways as gravity shifts under his command. Purna warriors slam into stone as orientation fractures. One of the younger healers cries out as she’s hurled against a pillar, bone snapping audibly.
“Hold the perimeter!” Ron shouts, catching himself mid-fall and driving his blade into the floor to anchor.
I push against the collapsing sigil ring, forcing breath into my lungs despite the pressure trying to compress my ribs.
“Zeidan!” I call through the bond.
He hears me. He turns. And in that single heartbeat of distraction, Malrend strikes.
A spear of condensed void forms in his palm and launches, not at Zeidan. At me. Zeidan sees it too late.
What happens next is not controlled. It is not strategic. It is feral.
He roars. The sound is not entirely human. It shakes the chamber like something ancient has just woken beneath it. His wings snap forward in a violent arc, shadow condensing so thick it becomes almost physical matter. The void-spear hits him instead of me.
It punches through his left wing. The impact blasts him backward into the broken stone wall with enough force to crater it. The bond goes white-hot with pain. My heart stops.
“NO.”
The word tears out of me raw and unrestrained. Everything inside me fractures open.
The sigil ring still trying to contain me shatters outward under the surge of my power. The roots beneath the chamber respond instantly, recognizing heir-blood and bond-magic fused together. Stone splits. The entire structure groans as living Wildspont veins answer my call.
Malrend’s eyes sharpen, not surprised, but pleased.
“Yes,” he murmurs. “There it is.”
The Wildspont energy floods through me, amplified by the Vrakken bond. It is too much. It is beautiful and catastrophic and unfiltered. I feel every root beneath Nytheria, every wounded ley-line, every broken pulse of the dying coven.
And I understand exactly what I could do. If I let it collapse. If I direct it downward instead of outward. If I end it now. The chamber would fall. The blight would burn. Malrend would lose his leverage. And I would not survive the release.
The realization is calm. Terrifyingly calm.
Zeidan struggles to his feet across the chamber, blood dark against the stone where his wing hangs torn and smoking from void corruption.
Through the bond I feel his fear, not for himself. For me.
“Amelia,” he says, and his voice is rough, breaking at the edges. “Do not.”
Malrend senses the shift in my magic and spreads his hands wider, feeding the instability. “Yes,” he says softly. “Do it! End the Wildspont. Save yourself!”
