Page 144 of She Who Holds My Wrath

It’s not audible—not truly—but I hear it anyway. A pressure shifts behind my eyes. A tightening in my chest. A low ringing. Like the moment before a storm breaks, when the air becomes too heavy to breathe. I’ve been awake for three days straight. Possibly four. Time has stopped behaving properly.

The cavern is dim, lit only by arcane glyphs glowing faintly along the stone walls. Maps are scattered around me—realms layered atop realms, glowing threads of power weaving between them. The leylines pulse, thin and strained, like veins under too much pressure.

I stabilise one. For six seconds. Then it collapses. I slam my palm down on the floor, teeth gritting as the glow fractures and dies again.

“Again,” I mutter.

Elyistria eyes Sariya warily, both of them looking just as exhausted as me. But I’m not ready to stop. Not yet. My hands shake as I pull the spell back together, sweat slicking my palms. The magic answers reluctantly, threading itself back into place.

Five seconds. Then four. Then nothing. The line snaps. The air cracks. I fall back, my vision swimming. This isn’t random. It hasn’t been for a while.

At first, it thought it was brute force. Pressure. A siege from the outside, like too much magic pushing against old systems that can no longer hold this kind of strain.

But now? I see it. The timing is way too precise. The failures come in waves. Measured and spaced perfectly. They aren’t trying to break the leylines. They’re letting us exhaust ourselves trying to hold them.

They’re testing us. Probing us towards madness. Learning how long we can endure before we inevitably surrender like prey.

My stomach twists violently as the realisation settles. “They’re allowing the failures,” I whisper.

“What?” Sariya asks.

The thought makes my skin crawl. If they wanted the leylines gone already, with the Six’s power, they’d already be ash. I know that now. What they’re doing instead is worse. They’re bleeding us dry, forcing us to react.

I drag a hand down my face, fingers catching in my unkempt hair. “They’re letting us burn ourselves out. Testing our endurance,” I mutter, dropping my head on a heavy sigh.

Sariya and Elyistria sit beside me, both breathing heavily from overexertion. I may be the one channelling the power, but it’s their power being used. I’d feel bad, but the civilians need to get out.

Civilians. The word sits heavy in my chest. Children who don’t know how to hold a blade. Elders too frail to wield magic. Entire families who have never seen war, who believe the wards still mean safety.

I’ve been trying to find a realm. Just one.

Somewhere stable. Somewhere far enough removed that could take them before fighting truly begins. There isn’t one. Every path I trace ends the same way: compromised, vulnerable, too slow to evacuate. If war breaks fully now, the civilians will die first. Not soldiers. Not gods. The ones who can’t run fast enough. The ones who can’t defends themselves.

My hands curl into fists, the simmering anger bubbling into desperate rage. I can feel the crack forming inside me. The slow, inevitable fracture of a man realising there are no good choices left.

“Fuck,” I breathe.

I sink back against the stone wall, staring at all the maps strewn across the dark space.

“Y’know,” Lucifer’s voice cuts in lazily, “you’re going to pull something if you keep glaring like that.”

I don’t bother to look up. “Now is not the time.”

“It rarely is,” he replies, unbothered. I hear him shift, the faint scrape of his boots against the stone. “But since you’re currently spiralling in a very quiet, terrifying way, I figured I’d interrupt.”

I finally lift my head. Lucifer is leaning against one of the walls, arms folded loosely across his chest. He looks… casual. Annoyingly so. Dark clothes, relaxed posture, that infuriatingly unreadable expression.

“How long have you been standing there?” I ask.

“Long enough to know you’ve hit the wall. And that you’ve burned two goddesses out to the point they’ve fallen asleep.”

My head whips to Sariya and Elyistria, noticing the two goddesses resting against each other, both softly snoring. Guilt hits me. I’ve had them at this for hours on end, day in, day out. They’ve not complained once, they’ve just tried again and again, every time I’ve asked.

I exhale sharply, looking back at Lucifer. “Then you know we’re out of time.”

His brow raises. “I do,” he says. “Good news is, I might have a solution.”

I scoff. “Unless you’ve discovered a hidden, untouched realm immune to divine interference, I doubt it.”