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“No,” he agreed. “We can’t.”

She looked at him for a moment, then at the room around him. At the walls with their dense carved markings. At the shard-threaded stone she had felt humming beneath her hands when she first crossed the threshold.

“The ward,” she said. “It’s powered through the shard network. The same one embedded in these walls.”

Caelith’s expression shifted, something close to pain. “I know.”

“You’ve tried it,” she said.

“Three times,” he replied. “The first time the feedback knocked me back hard enough to crack the stone behind me. The second time I lost consciousness for approximately four hours.” He paused. “The third time I managed to hold the resonance long enough to reach the threshold. Then it doubled the pressure and drove me back before I could cross.”

Julen winced. “So it doesn’t work.”

“It doesn’t work for me,” Caelith said. “Alone.”

Maia felt it then. The shape of what she was about to say, and why he hadn’t said it first. “You didn’t think I’d come.”

He looked at her directly. “I told you not to.”

“And I didn’t listen. Which you should have predicted.” She didn’t give him time to answer. “The ward was built for you. Designed around your capabilities, your resonance, what you can do with the shards alone. But that’s not what we are together, and they knew that too. It’s why they kept us apart. The assessment proved I can’t do this alone. But that’s not what I’m suggesting.”

Caelith was very still. “It’s a gamble, Maia.”

“Maybe. But what if they modelled for separation?” she continued. “They didn’t model for this. For me being here, at the source, with you, with the shards responding to both of us at once.”

“They knew you were a factor,” he said. “You don’t think they’d account for it when they are so close to final resolution?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think they thought I’d make it here.”

A long silence stretched between them. Outside, the Fracture’s hum deepened slightly, as though registering the conversation.

“It will hurt,” he said finally. “Even if it works, the feedback from an active ward at this proximity will be significant. For both of us.”

“I know.”

“And if the resonance destabilises incorrectly, it won’t just fail. It will alert Safir and the others immediately.”

“So we move the moment you’re through.” She looked at Julen. “All of us.”

Julen spread his hands. “I’ve survived this long on bad odds. And if we do nothing we die anyway. Why not?”

Caelith looked at Maia for a long moment. She could see him working through it: the probabilities, the risks, the deeply ingrained instinct to keep her out of whatever hurt most.

“You’re not going to let me tell you this is a bad idea,” he said.

“I’m going to let you tell me everything that could go wrong,” she said. “And then we’re going to do it anyway.”

Something in him gave. It was the surrender of someone who had run out of reasons to argue with the truth.

“Then we’ll need the strongest intact shard in the room,” he said quietly. “The resonance has to be precise or it amplifies the wrong frequencies.” He looked at her hands, her injuries still visible across her palms. “Are you able?”

Her fingers ached, but she’d used them to get here. “Yes.”

He watched her a fraction longer than necessary. Then he crossed to the wall where the fragments were embedded. His hands moved with the careful precision she had come to know well, locating the right shard by touch rather than sight.

He held it out to her. “I’ve already used the largest ones in this room. But this is the next best. It’s all we’ve got.”

She took it. The familiar pull moved through her immediately, a current she no longer questioned.