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The crowd still breathes.

That fact settles over the courtyard with more force than any speech Vaerith could have delivered. Clerks cling to one another near the trade hall steps. Minor nobles stare at the burning ward lines with soot streaked across their fine clothes and horror hollowing their faces. Lady Othrel stands rigid beside a cracked pillar, one hand gripping her cane so tightly her knuckles have gone pale beneath dark skin. Syrenya watches the flames devour Vaerith’s hidden conduits with sharp, glittering satisfaction, rain sliding down the emerald silk plastered against her arms.

I remain on one knee inside the scorched circle, my palm pressed hard against fractured stone while the last currents of stolen soul-energy tear through my core and drain downward into the burning lattice beneath the courtyard. Pain throbs through every inch of me in brutal waves. My horns ache with a pressure so deep it feels rooted in my skull. Gold light still burns beneath my skin, bright enough to turn the rain striking my arms into hissing steam. The place inside me where the devourer latched onto my hybrid structure feels stretched raw, the infernal architecture flexed dangerously wide around power never meant to pass through mortal flesh.

Isolde’s hands stay locked over mine.

They tremble.

I feel the strain in her through the bond, sharp and exhausted and stubborn enough to make my chest tighten harder than the devourer’s attack did. She kneels beside me in soaked gray fabric stained with ash and mud, hair hanging loose around her face where the storm ripped pins free. Her breathing remains measured despite the heat radiating from my body and the flames roaring through the circle around us.

I turn my head toward her carefully. Even that small movement sends sparks sliding across my vision.

“You still with me?” I ask roughly.

Her eyes lift to mine immediately, fierce beneath wet lashes. “You are asking that while glowing like a collapsing forge.”

“So yes?”

“Yes,” she says, though the word shakes slightly at the edges. “Unfortunately for both of us.”

A laugh tears out of me, ragged enough to hurt.

The bond steadies around the sound.

Behind us, Sable climbs over a collapsed section of stone barrier with the expression of a woman moments away from either hugging me or committing felony assault. Her braid has half come loose in the storm, and soot streaks one side of her jaw.

“You colossal idiot,” she snaps the instant she reaches us. “I leave you alone for one summoning cycle and you decide to fistfight a devourer through municipal infrastructure?”

I cough once, smoke scraping my throat. “In fairness, it was a very bad municipal infrastructure.”

“That is your defense?”

“It’s the best one I have right now.”

Sable drops to a crouch beside Isolde, eyes scanning the glowing cracks spreading beneath my skin. Fear flashes across her face before she crushes it flat beneath irritation.

“You’re overheating,” she says.

“Observant.”

“You smell like burning metal.”

“Still better than Vaerith.”

“That’s a low standard.”

Rhazek approaches through the drifting steam with infernal script still burning along both forearms. The red-gold glow paints harsh angles across his face while he studies the fractured summoning circle and the devourer writhing above it. His expression remains controlled, but I know him well enough now to recognize tension in the set of his shoulders.

“The primary conduits are broken,” he says. “The entity is losing stable entry.”

The devourer thrashes overhead as if enraged by the statement itself. One massive claw slams into the courtyard stones hard enough to crack another ring of paving apart. Blackened fragments explode outward through sheets of rain. Several nobles scream and stumble backward.

Vaerith finally steps forward again through the smoke.

His composure has cracked around the edges now. Rain and ash streak his robes, and fury burns openly across his face as he looks at the ruined dais, the exposed summoning lines, and the crowd still alive to witness his failure.

“You think you’ve stopped anything?” he shouts over the roar of flame and storm. “The veil is already torn. The devourer has tasted this district. You cannot force it back.”