And gods—Nyrielle is still standing.
Wounded. Burning. Weakened beneath the dragonfire Teddy forced on her. But still standing, staggering, stumbling. She shouldn’t have survived. But Lhira’s power weaves through her veins—the goddess of love and healing. Her skin stitches back together, flesh grows and smooths where flame kissed it.
Seren’s gaze jerks toward the center of the battlefield where Elyssara and Maireth continue colliding in catastrophic bursts of light and shadow powerful enough to fracture the heavens themselves. Dragons still wheel through smoke overhead. Soldiers still die screaming beneath collapsing stone.
The city is still burning. The war is still happening. No. Worse.They are losing.
The realization tears through Seren with such violence it almost feels physical. Teddy gave them everything. His body. His future. His final breath. And still it is not enough to stop it.
A terrible clarity settles over her then: mortals cannot win this war alone.
Her fingers curl tighter around Teddy’s body for one final heartbeat, blood warm and slick against her palms as grief threatens to split her open from the inside out. But beneath the grief, something else begins rising. Something ancient. Desperate. Immense.
Because Teddy cannot have died for this to fail.
He cannot have chosen her only for the world to end anyway.
Seren presses a shaking kiss against his forehead before forcing herself to let him go.
It feels like tearing her own soul apart.Perhaps it is.
Then she rises.
Around her, the battlefield continues collapsing into chaos. Tarrakai roars somewhere overhead, the sound ragged with Ronyn’s grief. Nyrielle staggers beneath the lingering damage of the dragonfire while Maireth continues trying to tear Elyssara apart across the ruined city.Where the fuck is Marin?
Daphinia appears through the smoke several yards away, blood streaked across her armor as she drives a blade through the throat of a northern soldier.
Seren grabs her hard enough to nearly wrench her off balance.
“Take me to the chamber beneath the palace,” Seren says.
Daphinia stares at her in confusion.
“The room where the spell to trap the gods took place.”
Understanding floods Daphinia’s face instantly, followed immediately by horror.
“No.”
Daphinia’s face drains of color. “Last time the gods walked freely among mortals, the realm nearly tore itself apart. Nyrielle turned the domains against each other. Forests became sentient. Oceans raged. Predators twisted into monsters. The balance of the world collapsed.”
Another explosion tears through the battlefield behind them.
Daphinia grabs Seren harder now, desperation flooding her voice.
“If we bring them back, we risk unleashing that again.”
But Seren made her choice the moment Teddy died.
“Look around, Daphinia. Do you see balance now? Do you see peace?”
Daphinia stills.
Another explosion rocks the battlefield behind them, but Seren barely hears it. Teddy’s blood is still wet across her hands. His final words still echo inside her chest.
Next life.
Her grief sharpens into something almost unbearable. Something holy. Something dangerous.
