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The two powers don’t just merge. They shatter and reform, breaking down into their component parts and rebuilding into something entirely new. Shadow and light, death and life, darkness and warmth, all of it braiding together into a cord of pure power that’s neither one nor the other but both at once.

It pours out of us like a flood, and this time I don’t try to control it. Neither does Kaia. We just hold on to each other and let it come.

The magic hits the ground and spreads outward in a wave, racing toward the advancing Rot. Where it touches, the new wards begin to form. Not like the old ones, woven slowly and carefully over days. These erupt from the earth itself, silver-black threads of power that shoot up like trees growing at impossible speed.

They form a wall.

The Rot hits it and screams.

CHAPTER 16

Kaia

I drag Malak through the bakery door before he can argue.

He stumbles, still weak from the barrier’s collapse, shadow-claws flickering in and out like a dying light. Behind us, the wall we created holds, but I can hear the Rot throwing themselves against it. Each impact sends vibrations through the ground, through my bones.

“We need to get you somewhere safe,” Malak says, catching himself against the counter. “Somewhere far from here.”

“No.” I’m already moving toward the kitchen, pulling him with me. “We need to be smart about this.”

“Smart would be running.”

“Smart would be understanding what we’re dealing with.” I shove through the kitchen door. The familiar space grounds me—the steel counters, the industrial mixer, the racks of cooling bread from this morning that feels like a lifetime ago. “The Rot is drawn to hunger and life force, right? That’s what you said.”

“Yes.”

“And right now, the biggest concentration of life force is in town. All those people. All those families.” I start pulling bags of flour from the storage closet, dumping them on the counter. “They’ll go through our wall eventually. And when they do, they’ll head straight for Main Street. For the houses. For everyone who doesn’t have a chance of defending themselves.”

Malak stares at me. “What are you doing?”

“Giving them a bigger meal.” I tear open the first bag, white powder exploding across the counter. “We need bait. Something so irresistible they can’t help but chase it.”

“You want to bait them here? To the bakery?”

“I want to bait them away from town entirely.” Another bag. Another cloud of flour. “We take it to them. Lead them back to the breach. But we need something strong enough to override their instinct to consume the town.”

Understanding dawns in his eyes. “You’re going to bake.”

“I’m going to bake the most powerful thing I’ve ever made.” I haul a fifty-pound bag of sugar onto the counter, my arms screaming. “And then we’re going to drive it straight into the Hollow.”

For a moment, he just looks at me. Then something shifts in his expression, a mixture of awe and terror.

“That’s insane.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

He doesn’t answer.

I dump the sugar into the industrial mixer, the kind that can handle a hundred pounds of dough at once. Flour follows. Yeast. Salt. Water from the tap that runs cold over my shaking hands.

This is the most frantic bake of my life.

My hands move on autopilot, muscle memory taking over while my mind races. I’ve made bread thousands of times. Kneaded dough until my shoulders ached. Shaped loaves in the dark hours before dawn. But this is different. This isn’t about precision or technique or following a recipe.

This is about survival.

The mixer roars to life, and I don’t just pour ingredients into it. I pour everything else. Every emotion I’ve been holding back since this nightmare started. The terror that’s been sitting like ice in my stomach. The fierce, desperate love I feel for the baby growing inside me, this impossible child that shouldn’t exist. The newfound feeling I haven’t had time to examine, the one that makes me look at Malak and see not a monster but something else entirely.