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“I can’t make Lamont leave,” came out oddly miserable, a mirrored distaste reflected in Atticus’ stare.

Something in Orpheus’ chest unclenched.

“Just don’t let him touch me.”

“Easy enough.”

The rain began to fall when he lifted the chisel into the light. It came down in thin sheets, spraying across the flagstones in a rhythmic shish shish shish that soothed as sweetly as its cool spray. Orpheus closed his eyes and focused on the sound, losing himself to it, his muscles relaxing, his heart slowing to a steady pace. But only once his hands stopped shaking did he place the chisel to the sphere.

This was it, then. Whatever good luck he’d accumulated by saving the world was officially used up. He was a dead man walking from this point forward. Cursed yet again, but this time by a design of his own making, rather than some heretic hermits playing at god. At least he’d go out doing what he loved. Casting a spell. Crafting his magic. Pretending he was one of those mages from his books he’d once mistakenly convinced himself were real.

I was real, he thought to himself. Magic was mine.

A line to connect, two more to reinforce, the symbol for Netherflame, and a circle to close. It’s a system, he thought to himself, drafting the first sigil he’d ever taught Gwen, altering it just a little—just enough—to hopefully fill the sphere with a light that had once lit up all of Sanctuary. A channeling that was missing its source, a source he may not be able to provide, but it felt good to try, anyway.

He repeated the sigil, this time at the base of the iron support cylinder, etching an arc that would connect one with the other, a constellation of slightly different variations, like a propulsion of power from one substation to the next, ramping up and down, up and down, until a rhythm was reached and the power could sustain itself, fueled by the recycling of its own velocity.

Raw Netherflame burned forever, after all. How impossible could it be to amplify that immortality? Create from it, an exponential pull towards a capacity that had no ceiling. No limits. No cap.

But not here. Not this time. Maybe if he had longer to work on the solution. Maybe, if he had his own magic back, he could create a self-sustaining grid for the Empire that didn’t rely on oil, or gas, or—fuck—Hell itself.

The chisel fell away from the last line, rain coming down hard now, storm drowning out the world he somehow still existed within, the fugue state of spell-crafting still very real despite his lack of magic. He laid the chisel in his lap and stared at the silver-etched glass, his reflection blinking back at him, blood still smeared across his chin, hair wet with the wind-blown rain, his broken leg aching worse than ever before. But there was a lightness inside him that hadn’t existed before. An unburdening he didn’t expect from admitting his secret, which maybe had something to do with the fact that, even without his magic, he wasn’t entirely useless. He had a purpose. A place. One half of a whole he and Gwen created together.

Is that enough?

He thought it could be. He thought it might.

Something flickered in his peripheral, wavering with the puddling rain he knelt in.

Netherflame.

Through a crack in the door leading down into the utility tunnel where the sphere’s cables disappeared, Soot’s eyes blinked up, the tiniest lick of Netherflame balanced on his nose.

Gwen, Orpheus thought. By the Hells, you did it.

Orpheus carefully took the flame in hand.

“Hello, little one,” he breathed through his smile, his breath fogging in the sudden cold air. “Are you ready?”

The violet flame wiggled in his palm, a tiny dance that said: yes.

Orpheus looked up and met Atticus’ eyes. Expression grim, he nodded back, Duluth’s hulking presence once again hovering at Orpheus’ back, but one that had shifted—a warding rather than a threat.

Orpheus lifted the flame to the sphere and, with his intent, pushed.

Fire flooded into the first of the sigils and settled in. Flickering, flaring, burning bright bright bright, it caught as quickly as it went dim, little ember struggling under the enormity of what he asked.

“It’s okay, I believe in you.” He put his hand to the dying sigil and gave the spell a nudge.

Cold nipped at his fingertips, then crawled down the first line.

Then the next, and the next.

Orpheus stifled a laugh as, like an eye blinking awake, the sphere came alive.

Violet fire erupted, a series of silent pops within a faraway plane. Where a cold void had once resided, light took its place, a whorl of dark fire that followed the ouroboros path he had carved for it, life and death in a state of constant rebirth, infinity captured in a single spell, while this tiny lick of Netherflame became something so much more than itself.

“You did it,” Atticus breathed. Wind whipped his coiffed white hair into a halo, Rim pale eyes alight with the fire of the sphere. “You fixed it, Sanctuary. Orpheus.”