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The raw infernal current explodes downward through the fractured sigils.

Not hunger.

Not devouring.

Power directed with terrifying accuracy.

Black-gold fire races through every remaining summoning line simultaneously, flooding the ritual geometry with compressed devourer essence stripped of will and turned into pure force. The sigils overload instantly. Red symbols burst apart beneath the stone like arteries detonating under pressure. Vaerith’s hidden conduits ignite one after another in violent sequence, each explosion racing faster than the last.

The courtyard detonates.

Flame erupts upward in controlled pillars so massive they punch through the storm itself. The ruined dais explodes into shards of burning stone. Estate windows shatter inward. Buried summoning marks rip free from the ground and disintegrate in sprays of red sparks. Every false conduit Vaerith tied into the district lights up at once, exposing the full shape of his corruption before collapsing into ash.

The force of it slams through the courtyard hard enough to knock people flat.

Isolde remains anchored against me through all of it.

The devourer convulses overhead.

Without stable sigils to hold the breach open, its remaining form begins tearing apart completely. The hollow chest implodes inward. The fractured antlers collapse into burning dust. Streams of black-red essence rip backward through the tether into the infernal current flooding the destroyed circle below.

The creature tries one final time to claw into my consciousness.

I close the channels.

The last fragments of its will slam against sealed structure and break apart like waves hitting stone.

Then the devourer disintegrates.

Not unleashed.

Not scattered.

Absorbed, broken down, redirected, and burned through the ritual that summoned it.

The breach shrieks.

A sound like metal tearing through the bones of the world rips across the district as the torn veil collapses inward. Red light implodes toward the center of the ruined circle, dragging smoke, sparks, and loose infernal residue with it. The storm above the estate twists violently once before the unnatural pressure snaps apart.

Rain crashes back into the courtyard in cold, ordinary sheets.

Silence follows.

Not true silence. People are still breathing hard. Stone still crackles from residual heat. Somewhere near the trade hall, someone sobs openly from relief. But compared to the roar of the summoning, the sudden absence of infernal pressure feels enormous.

I stay kneeling in the center of the destroyed circle, both hands braced against blackened stone while steam rises from my skin.

The hunger inside me has changed again.

It no longer thrashes against every threat searching for somewhere to spill. It coils deep beneath my ribs with terrifying density, heavy and alert and entirely under my direction. I feel larger somehow, not physically, but structurally, as if the channels inside me widened around the devourer’s force and never fully closed afterward.

Rhazek approaches slowly.

His expression remains unreadable for several seconds as he studies me through drifting steam and rain.

Then he says, very quietly, “You survived integration.”

Sable pushes past him immediately. “Move. I need to make sure his organs aren’t trying to become abstract concepts.”