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They took to the Gilded Palace’s corridors together, footsteps beating a tandem rhythm, terror compelling them towards a shared goal.

Warn Sanctuary. Stop them. Save them. Then figure out how to get Daedra back into Hell without unleashing Lore.

I should have killed her, Fenrir thought, taking a turn down a long stretch of corridor, white-washed halls glowing ultraviolet in the rising twilight. I should have killed her years ago, before she ever got the chance to summon Ohm.

But then Orpheus never would have trusted him. Loved him. Turned on Lore and did what needed to be done and healed their hells-damned planet.

They didn’t know, how were they supposed to? For as long as magic had been on Earth, it’d been in sparse pieces, little blips in history when a mage emerged with an unlikely gift. Understood by few, marked as miracles by the rest, magic had been nothing more than stories grounded in the reality of a world beyond their own. A world they’d only ever glimpsed, until the Incident tore the veil between Earth and Hell wide open, and the truth came spilling out alongside humanity’s death.

Behind him, Daedra’s gasping came hard, punching through their footsteps. Fenrir glanced over his shoulder and winced at how gray she’d become.

“Almost there,” he said, reaching for her arm. He caught her a second before she went down, and Daedra clung to him. Two hands wrapped like a vice around his forearm, strength in her grip if not in her legs.

“By the flame,” she hissed, wetness reaching her eyes, chest heaving with every breath. “I won’t make it.”

Fenrir kept his voice gentle. “You will.”

“I need Netherflame, Ama. The only person who has it is Gwen.”

“Well, good thing we’re heading straight for her, yeah?”

Daedra met his eyes, then shook her head. “How do you do it? I don’t understand.”

“Do what?”

“Hope,” Daedra said. “How are you able to hope?”

“Because without it, I’m already dead.”

That hardened something in Daedra’s face, understanding shared in the tenacious need to keep going, to never give up even against the direst odds. It was a hero’s mindset. The kind of resolve that had kept Fenrir alive all these years but framed by an immutable belief that so long as he fought for altruistic reasons, he’d come out on top.

Which made it all the more curious that Daedra clung to his arm; this person who had arrived as his enemy and now approached something of…if not a friend, then an ally. And it made Fenrir wonder whether Sanctuary was the enemy he thought them to be. If there wasn’t a way to save them and the Myrkur and Orpheus, all in one fell swoop.

They arrived in the courtyard alongside dawn, the morning gray with a brewing storm, every soldier’s eye on him.

Gravel crunched under their boots, whispers following him with each step, salutes short to follow. Fenrir tempered his panic and held steady, kept his grip on Daedra’s elbow despite how the soldiers watched. He’d expected to ride out on Nightmare to a crowd of cheers and waves, but everything had shifted; reality upended in a way that left him reeling. No longer was this a simple search and rescue mission. Again, the world was at stake, and again, Fenrir found himself at the center of it.

Fate, it seemed, always had a plan.

Fenrir was tired of being a part of it.

“Can you ride?” he asked when he spotted Nightmare waiting outside the barracks along with the other horses, already saddled and packed out with the supplies he’d given one of his guards. Their entourage waited, six hand-picked soldiers who had stayed behind to be his guards rather than ride out with their brethren volunteers.

Daedra eyed the horse and bit her lip, breaths coming too fast and shallow.

“Ama…”

“That bad?” Fenrir murmured.

“They’re clever beasts. Not to be trusted.”

All hells. Daedra didn’t like horses?

“You’re really gonna love Fifi,” Fenrir laughed. “We’ll take the horses down the mountain, after that I have a couple vehicles on their way. Then you’ll only need to…”

To live long enough to get him to Sanctuary.

“I’ll make it,” she breathed, and Fenrir jerked his chin to a stable hand who took off to find him another horse. “I have to reach your mage.”