“What thing?”
“The one where you pretend this isn’t about to go terribly.”
"You don't even know what I was about to say," as I shoo them off.
"Kaelren," I say.
He's beside me, corruption marks blazing, scanning the perimeter for the next breach. He turns.
"I know what we need to do."
His silver eyes lock on mine. He reads my face the way he reads a battlefield, fast and thorough, and whatever he sees there makes him go still.
"Tell me," he says.
I tell him, and I watch the understanding arrive on his face. I watch him reach the same conclusion I did.
It's not strategy, nor is it something he would ever think of. It's the opposite of everything he is.
And that's exactly why it will work.
"You'll need to reach the core," he says. "Physically, to get hands on it."
"I know."
"The core is a version of me. It will recognize you. Not as a threat. As something else."
"I know."
"If Thalia holds the anchor and you reach the core, I'll be the one holding the line while you work. That means I can't protect you inside the Cathedral. You'll be alone with whatever's in there."
"I know, Kaelren."
He looks at me. The battle roars. The darkening purple sky pulses. The Cathedral takes another step, and somewhere a wall cracks, and Thalia runs to hold it.
"Then let's end this," he says.
Igive the order, and the crew moves.
Sarnyx takes point. She doesn't ask where, doesn't need a map. She takes one look at the Cathedral rising over the second-ring wall and starts running toward it, thorns extended. The defenders along the perimeter part for her because the alternative is being in her way. Rhyven's people fall in behind her, forming a corridor of bodies and living-wood weapons through the chaos.
Bryx flanks left with Kevin, and I hear him before I see the result. A sonic pulse cracks across the western approach,shattering a wave of Root constructs into fragments that scatter across the ground. Kevin dives through the debris, stinger flashing, picking off the root-nodes before they can reform. Bryx whoops. The sound carries over the roar of the battle like a man having the time of his life in the worst circumstances imaginable.
Vashael deploys her toxin reserves. Not the mist this time. Concentrated vials, thrown in arcs that shatter against the Cathedral's root-legs as they press against the second-ring wall. Where the liquid hits, the vine armor blisters and blackens, the regeneration stalling. It won't last. The Cathedral will adapt. But it gives us minutes, and minutes are all we need.
Nimor scouts ahead through shadow, phasing through the Cathedral's outer structure, finding the route. He returns in flickers, each appearance delivering coordinates, each disappearance taking him deeper into the living architecture of the thing we're about to enter.
"There's a gap in the vine armor on the northeastern face," he reports, solidifying beside me for three seconds. "Ground level. The root-legs create an opening when they step. It's narrow, and it closes fast, but it's there." He flickers out. Comes back. "Thirty feet inside, the structure opens into a central cavity. The core is at the center. I couldn't get close. Something in the cavity repels shadow-phasing. You'll need to walk the last stretch."
Thirty feet of open approach inside a living Cathedral that eats people.
Elle is beside me. Thalia is behind us, her marks pulsing at a steady, controlled rate, conserving energy for what she's about to do. She hasn't spoken since Elle told her the plan. She listened, nodded once, then started walking. No argument. No negotiation. The stoic efficiency that she wears like armor, holding firm even now.
My daughter is about to channel more power than any single body was built to hold, and she accepted it without question.
I want to tell her she doesn't have to do this. I want to tell her there's another way. I want to be the father from her memories, the one who argued with her mother about training squads because he wanted his daughter to have more time.
There is no more time.
