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The daemon plane drank greedily, the blood vanishing between cracks in the stone.

Idonea closed her eyes. She centred herself, letting all three powers meld into one. It still rubbed uneasily against her skin, the potent mix, but she let in gather.

Knelt at Lysander’s side, she pressed her palm against his chest. Idonea refused to let him succumb to his injuries.

Lysander’s jaw clenched. A low curse slipped between his teeth.

“Idonea—”

“I know.” Her voice trembled, but her focus didn’t break.

Lysander gasped as the final surge of the power faded away.

A shiver of triumph, sharp and fragile, ran through her.

“Idonea…” he said. His eyes, wide and alert, searched hers. “What have you done?”

She looked away. “What I had to.”

The portal hung before them, an unstable tear in the air itself, crackling with chaotic energy. She had to close it. Had to destroy the relic.

Her palms were slick with her own blood, a reminder of the cost, and the pulse of Current around her hummed like a living thing. She could feel the weight of the daemon plane pressing in, twisting reality in sharp, unnatural angles.

Then, she sensed him: Vinea.

He emerged from the darkness like a nightmare made flesh. The serpent in his grasp lifted its head and hissed.

"You will hand that relic to me." Vinea's voice hissed, echoing with a thousand voices at once.

Lysander pushed himself upright beside Idonea. Steel rasped as he raised his blade. But his mechanical arm hung useless at his side.

"We end this now," she said.

Vinea laughed, a sound like thunder rolling over broken cliffs. "You cannot end me, little witch. You can only return me. And the way back is the way I came. Through what your mother built into your spine."

The marks on her back flared.

All five at once. Not warm: hot, the way iron held too long in fire becomes hot. Each one a separate line of pain running from the base of her neck to her back. She could feel the shape of every mark from the inside. Five years' worth of working laid into her flesh. They were singing. They had been singing since she crossed the threshold into the Nexis, and she'd not been listening.

They were the door. The relic in her hand was the key.

And Vinea was the one who'd always meant to walk through.

She understood it in a single breath. Her mother hadn't made her into a crucible but into a threshold — the crucible was a story Nellith had told herself to bear what she was doing. The truth was simpler: the marks on Idonea's spine were the door Vinea needed, and the relic was what unlocked it. She had carried the relic into the Nexis and brought the door with her, and Vinea had been waiting for this exact moment for as long as Nellith had been making her.

"No," Idonea said.

Vinea's grin widened.

"Yes. You have nowhere to go, little witch. The marks are mine. The relic is mine. And the body? Mine."

She lifted the relic.

Lysander staggered forward. "Idonea—"

"Stay back." Her voice came out hoarse. "Whatever happens. Stay back."

Lance flared his wings overhead, screeching, but he too didn't approach.