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District burns.

Hybrid proves unstable.

No.

I tighten my hands into fists so hard my nails split skin.

Then I do the exact opposite of what the devourer expects.

I pull it deeper.

Isolde gasps.

The tether jerks violently as I stop resisting the inward pressure and drag the devourer’s invading essence farther into my core instead of trying to expel it. The creature surges forward instinctively, certain it has won ground, certain the larger predator has finally forced submission.

Idiot.

The moment it commits deeper, I close around it.

Every lesson Rhazek beat into me during training snaps into place at once. Absorption is not feeding. Hunger is not chaos. Direction matters more than force. Structure matters more than appetite.

The infernal architecture inside me shifts.

The hunger changes shape.

Until now, every surge has been reactive: defend, consume, survive, restrain. The devourer’s pressure forces something sharper awake. My hunger stops answering attacks and starts issuing commands. The infernal current inside me gathers into focused channels instead of violent tides. I feel pathways forming beneath my ribs, precise and deliberate, each one directing energy where I choose instead of where instinct lunges.

Rhazek sees it immediately.

His eyes widen.

“Corin,” he says quietly.

Sable looks between us, panic flashing across her face. “Why did he say your name like that?”

“I’m improvising,” I grind out.

“That is never comforting!”

The devourer thrashes inside the tether, finally realizing the trap. I drag it deeper anyway, pulling its fractured essence through narrowing channels that compress its vast hunger into smaller and smaller streams of raw infernal current. It fights every inch of the process. Alien memory slams against my thoughts. Endless plains. Endless feeding. Endless power taken by force.

I answer with Isolde’s hands on my chest.

With Sable screaming insults behind a wardline because she refuses to lose me quietly.

With Rhazek teaching me control instead of surrender.

With the simple fact that I choose what I become.

The devourer’s essence fractures further.

The monstrous shape above the courtyard flickers violently as pieces of its form unravel into streams of black-red current feeding through the tether into me. The hollow chest caves inward another degree. Its antlers splinter apart in burning cracks.

Vaerith finally understands what is happening.

“No!” he shouts.

I look up at him through gold-lit rain.