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Then the corruption surged harder than before—sensing its death, fighting with everything it had.
The Weavers' magic buckled. I felt one falter. Then another. The circle strained, each person pouring more than they had left.
My knees buckled.
"August—" Lily's hands tightened on my face, but I was already falling. She went down with me, both of us hitting stone hard enough that pain jarred up my spine.
The bond—half-formed, incomplete—screamed between us. Raw. Exposed. Like a wound trying to close while something kept tearing it open.
"I cannot—" The words tore from my throat. "It's too strong—"
"No." Lily's face was inches from mine, fierce and desperate. "You don't get to leave me. Not now. Not after everything."
The corruption clawed deeper. I was scattering again—pieces of myself floating apart like ash on the wind.
"Lily—"
"No."
She pressed her forehead to mine. And through the chaos, through the pain, I felt her magic pour into me—everything she had left, burning through the half-formed bond with enough force to make us both cry out.
The forest moved.
The ancient oaks leaned inward with a sound like the world creaking on its axis. Branches groaning. Roots shifting beneath stone. Bearing witness. Lending what they had.
Power flowed from bark and root and deep earth, magic that predated names, wild and untamed, older than cities, older than crowns, older than the hunts.
It poured into the exhausted Weavers and gave them strength to hold. Just a moment longer.
The bond wove faster. Threadbreaker finding Void Caller finding Threadbreaker in an endless spiral. Our consciousness bled into each other until the boundary between us dissolved like salt in water.
I felt what she felt—the exhaustion, the terror. The love so absolute it had crossed time itself.
She felt what I felt—the weight of every death, the desperate hope. The love that had chosen her over every oath my father had forced me to swear.
We were not becoming one person. We were becoming us.
The bond clicked into place.
The sensation was not gentle.
My back arched. A sound tore from my throat—half gasp, half sob. Lily's fingers dug into my shoulders hard enough to bruise.
A channel opened between us—clean, clear, and bright. My Threadbreaker magic now had two paths: the corrupted pendant, and her.
Our magic did not hesitate.
It flooded through the new bond like water finding its course after drought, abandoning the pendant entirely for the clean channel she offered.
And the corruption—Father's corruption, months of it woven into the pendant, controlling me, scattering me, making me weapon instead of man—it tried to hold.
My magic tore through it.
Dawn burning away the darkness. Every wall I had ever built finally, finally, coming down on my terms instead of his.
I felt it shred. Felt each thread of Father's magic unravel. Felt the cold recede from my chest—not slowly but all at once, like drowning in reverse.
The corruption gave one final pulse.
