I take another step backward, crossing the line where the severance circle’s old perimeter used to burn.
Nothing falters.
Sable folds her arms, but I can feel the tremor of emotion beneath the gesture. “Don’t look so surprised. Some of us were very persuasive.”
“You hurled yourself through a ritual barrier and then used my own power as a drainage canal for dead corruption.”
“Persuasive.”
Corin lifts a finger. “Violently persuasive.”
I continue walking.
The yard gate leans crooked at the far end of the fence, one hinge half torn from last night’s upheaval. Frost clings to its latch. Beyond it, the path drops toward the trees, where shadow still pools blue beneath the roots. Before the merging,that distance would have dragged claws through my chest. Even stepping across a chamber could make the bond tighten if fear was fresh enough.
I push the gate open.
It creaks like an old man complaining about stairs.
Then I step beyond it.
The bond holds.
No shriek. No recoil. No desperate flare of power. Sable remains bright inside my awareness, not as a chain stretched thin, but as another flame burning in a hearth connected to mine by design rather than injury.
I close my eyes.
For one moment, the world is only cold air, damp wood, and the steady dual pulse of the bond.
Sable calls, “Rhazek?”
I open my eyes and turn. She stands in the yard with sunlight slipping over her hair and dried blood at her palm, stubbornly upright despite what the ritual cost her. Corin watches from beside the sealed circle, silent now, his iron rod held loosely in one hand.
“It holds,” I say.
Her shoulders drop, and the relief that passes through her nearly brings me to my knees from across the yard.
Corin clears his throat. “Try power.”
Sable’s head snaps toward him. “Excuse me?”
He does not look away from me. “If the structure is truly dual-channel, an infernal surge should no longer flood her side unless she admits it. We need to know.”
“We need to know without him blasting himself into theatrics.”
“I am always in favor of less theatrics,” Corin says, which is a lie so elegant it deserves applause.
Sable looks at me. “Controlled.”
“I understand the word.”
“You have a complicated relationship with the practice.”
“Also true.”
I lift one hand and call my infernal power upward.
Slowly.
