“I was speaking to the ancient disaster in boots.”
“I am steady,” I say.
“No, you are contained. Different thing.”
The insult almost helps.
I continue the incantation. The next line draws the bond downward through the spiral, then inward through our joined intent. The ritual gathers heat, but it behaves. For a few breaths, everything aligns with clean, astonishing ease.
Then the remnants wake.
Dark red flares in my core.
Maltherion’s corruption does not rise like smoke this time. It claws upward like something buried alive, finding every sore place left by the severance attempt. Pain punches through my sternum. The immortal strands recoil around it. My essence line in the circle flashes black at the edges.
Sable’s eyes sharpen. “Rhazek.”
“I have it.”
The ground trembles.
Corin slams both hands down over two iron anchors, jaw clenched. “Do not have it harder. Having it harder is how we lose walls.”
The corruption flares again, dark red and wet-looking beneath my inner sight. A shard hidden in the depth of me reacts to the equalization, enraged by the ritual’s symmetry. It wants hierarchy. It wants dominance. It knows how to poison command and fear, how to twist sacrifice into a doorway. Equal choice offers it no throne, so it thrashes against the absence.
My instinct is immediate.
I seize control.
The circle jerks.
Sable gasps as the current pulls toward me too sharply. Her bloodline gutters, then surges, offended. The iron anchors scream against the ground. Corin swears in a language I have not heard since the southern necromancer wars.
“Rhazek!” Sable snaps.
“I am containing it.”
“You’re strangling it.”
“If I release?—”
“If you don’t release, you’ll turn the whole ritual into another version of last night.”
The words hit like a blade slipped between ribs.
Another version of last night.
My fire strains against the circle, desperate to dominate the corruption before it can reach her. The impulse feels righteous. Familiar. Poisonously comfortable. I know how to conquer. I know how to crush hostile power beneath my will until it stops moving. Every old part of me insists that control is safety and surrender is an invitation to loss.
Then I look at Sable.
She stands inside the circle with blood drying on her palm and dawn on her face, furious, frightened, and utterly unwilling to be made a spectator to her own fate. The bond between us pulls tight where I grip it too hard. I feel her strain. I feel the ritual fighting me because I am trying to become the axis instead of one half of the balance.
I understand.
Gods, I hate understanding.
Corin’s voice cuts across the circle. “Demon, whatever magnificent stupidity is passing through your head, do the opposite.”
