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Wisp’s form stabilized slightly, showing me images through its spectral windows. Marigold working with Cyrus and Elio, their magic harmonizing naturally. The way they’d looked at me during the vampire attack—not with hatred, but with determination to save me from the corruption.

They weren’t just searching for me. They were preparing for something bigger. But they didn’t know. They couldn’t.

If they understood what I’d become, what was inside me, they wouldn’t be fighting to bring me back. They’d be fighting to stop me.

Duty.The word triggered something. A memory of Mother’s voice: “True magic isn’t about control, love. It’s about letting power flow naturally.”

Flow.

The corruption cracked slightly. Wisp pressed into the gap, its clean warmth fighting the wrongness.

I pushed against Uncle’s presence in my mind. “Get OUT!”

Pain exploded behind my eyes. The portals around me shuddered, their edges jagged with that oily darkness.

You can’t fight this, boy. It runs too deep.

He was right. I could feel it poisoning my bones, my magic. But Wisp showed me something else—Marigold refusing to give up on me. Cyrus and Elio putting their animosity aside to help her. The way our magic had flowed together during the trials, before the corruption.

The way it could flow again. If I chose it.

I opened a portal—a real one, edges clean and silver like water. Through it, I glimpsed Marigold in Elio’s sanctuary, their heads bent together over maps. Searching for me. Planning some kind of rescue. But they didn’t know.

Pain lanced through my skull. Flashes of old therapy sessions. Questions I’d asked but wasn’t allowed to remember.

Who else knew?

What did my parents—

The Last—

The thought shattered before I could grasp it, drowned under Uncle’s control.

Wisp’s form solidified fully as my own will crystallized. We couldn’t break Uncle’s corruption completely—not yet. But we could fight it. Could choose, moment by moment, to be more than his tool for poisoning magic itself.

We could choose them. Even after Uncle used me to lure her into the vampire attack. Even knowing how much that betrayal must have hurt.

The corruption would return. The taint ran too deep to escape alone. But I wasn’t alone anymore.

I had Wisp. Had hope.

Had a reason to fight back.