Soundless. Immense. Like reality itself acknowledging alignment.
The ground lights up.
Not the veins. Not the Ether pool.
Her.
Bree lights from inside—silver flooding her skin, spreading outward from where our hands touch. The glow pulses once, twice, thensurges.
The magic hits us first.
I inhale sharply—all of us do—like being plunged into ice water. It rushes through my palm, down my arm, into my chest. Through the bond already formed.
The hunger that’s lived in me since I woke—the ache, the emptiness, the constantneed—
It fills with something unexpected.
Withher.
Around me, the others gasp. React. Change.
Gray’s leg snaps back into place with a crack that makes my stomach turn—but he doesn’t scream. Just breathes. His whole body straightens.
Rhett’s burns fade. The angry red skin smoothing over, healing in seconds.
Theo’s eyes clear. The constant strain behind them—the pain of Sight that never stops—eases. He pulls his glasses off. No longer needed.
Jace’s ribs knit. I hear them shift, settle, realign.
Thane’s exhaustion vanishes. The gray pallor lifts from his skin. His silver eyes sharpen.
Stellan’s magic stops fraying at the edges. I don’t know how I know that, but I do—I can feel it, the way he stabilizes, calms.
Then Seth.
He arches off the ground.
Black smoke tears out of him—pouring from his mouth, his chest, the places where the Void corruption lived. Silver floods in behind it, filling the empty spaces, burning clean what was rotten.
His skin glows white-hot.
Then settles.
His first clear breath in months, maybe years escapes him with a gasp.
He slumps back—unconscious, butclean.
The magic pulls back.
Silence.
For one horrible moment, I think we failed.
Then—
Breeinhales.
Not soft. Not gentle.
