"Your grounding spot," Brannick said. "The rods will anchor you. Stabilize the fusion. Amplify it when you're ready."
I stepped into the circle. Like a good weapon. Like the girl who'd stopped asking questions somewhere around mile thirty.
The rods sang. Not a sound I heard—a sound I swallowed. It bypassed my ears and went straight into my chest cavity. My teeth ached with it.
The basalt under my boots was warm here. Not baked-earth warm like the perimeter. Alive warm. A tremor coming up through the stone in slow, heavy beats that didn't match my heart rate. My soles tingled. Then my ankles. Then my shins, the vibration climbing my skeleton joint by joint like something mapping me from the ground up.
Both Marks wrenched toward the Rupture. Not the restless pulling from the ridge—this was a yank. A hook set deep and reeled hard. And for three terrible seconds they pulled in the same direction, toward the gash in the sky, and I understood in my body what my mind had been circling for weeks.
The last time my Marks had rioted this loud, he'd been standing across from me in a sparring ring, pretending he wasn't the enemy. I'd believed him. I wouldn't make that mistake again with the Veil.
The Rupture knew me. And I knew it.
The soul shall stitch what gods have torn.
Or tear. Depending on which version of fate was telling the truth.
I closed my eyes. Drew a breath. Felt the desperate hope of the rebels pressing against my back.
Don't die. Don't explode. Don't accidentally unmake reality. Don't think about the fact that exactly zero people here have a backup plan if you fail.
Simple goals.
I rolled my shoulders. Steadied my breath. Let the void-iron hum settle into my bones.
Then Serenya screamed.
My eyes snapped open.
The horizon had changed.
A dark line—thin, precise—cut across the darkening sky. Too uniform for the peaks. Too fast for shadows.
It thickened. Spread. Resolved into the unmistakable gleam of Enforcer armor.
The King's vanguard.
And at its center—a figure on a pale destrier.
The King. He hadn't just sent his armies.
He'd come to finish it.
The jagged spires that had felt like shelter now looked like teeth. The ground that had surged with the Veil's energy now vibrated with something else—the rhythmic thunder of hooves, growing louder, growing closer.
And then—the howls.
Guttural. Hungry. A chorus that ripped through the air and settled into my marrow.
Nullatheon Hounds.
They burst over the ridge—dark, spectral shapes streaking across the landscape, eyes burning with that hollow, spectral fire. They moved like nightmares given form, lean and fast andferocious.
They hunted by soul-scent. And my Marks—my fractured, dual-marked soul—was a beacon in the dark.
The rebels lurched into motion. Shields locked into place. Weapons drawn. But I could see it in their faces—the way their movements had gone jerky, their breathing shallow.
We weren't ready.
