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It doesn’t wait for permission. Itknowswhat’s coming.

I blink back tears, the world swimming in and out of focus. The forest darkens, tunneling my vision to a single point.

Sacha. Fighting for his life.

And deep inside me, something answers.

The net’s energy pulses visibly, each wave driving Sacha further into the ground. He struggles to rise, but the power slams him down with devastating force.

Something inside me snaps.

The silver light rises, no longer content to remain hidden beneath the surface. It surges upward, fierce and unrelenting, as though it hasits own intent. My breath turns shallow, gasping pulls that won’t fill my lungs. Razor-sharp pain spears my chest, and radiates outward through every nerve, every limb. I dig my nails into my palms, until blood beads and runs down my wrists, anchoring me to the present while something inside me begins to stir.

I try to hold it. To steady it. To keep the line between control and surrender intact. But this power isn’t meant to be contained. It doesn’t want calm. It doesn’t want to witness. It wants to answer.

Cracks form inside me. Not visible ones, but splintering along the fault lines of restraint and helplessness, spreading like fractures in glass. Each second deepens them. I can feel myself coming apart.

“Varam’s clear,” someone whispers beside me.

A hand comes into my vision, pointing to where a shape is disappearing into the trees. A shadow melting into shadows, as the Veinwarden leader escapes whatever slaughter is about to follow. But the movement doesn’t register beyond a flicker in the corner of my vision.

Because I can’t look away from Sacha.

My entire world has narrowed to the clearing below, where he’s kneeling, surrounded by enemies who hunted him. Who imprisoned him. Who have spent a lifetime trying to destroy everything he is.

And now they want to do it again.

The force building inside me answers my fury, growing stronger with every breath I take. It’s elemental, ancient. It carries grief and rage and something I don’t have words for. Something that feels like prophecy cracking my chest open wide.

Sacha forces himself upright again, despite the net still bindinghim. Darkness coils around him, denser than before. The air itself buckles, reality twisting around him, as though it’s answering his refusal to fall, to submit, to die. Above him, his raven stutters and flickers, wings losing shape with every beat, its form collapsing in on itself.

And above it all Sereven’s voice rises. His incantation grows louder, gaining weight and force with each released word. Words that echo across the clearing. Words I shouldn’t be able to hear or understand, but somehow do.

Return to darkness what darkness has claimed.

The crystal flares in his hand. Not with light now, but with something that devours it. Energy pulses outward, tearing through the last of Sacha’s shadows.

Sereven steps forward, face etched with triumph, his arm lifted high.

Then a crack like shattering glass pierces the air.

The darkness implodes. Folds inward instead of expanding and my soul knows what’s coming the moment before it happens.

In the space of a breath, Sacha is gone.

No body. No shadow. No trace.

Nothing.

The raven shrieks, one last piercing cry that seems to carry the weight of entire worlds, before dissolving into black mist, scattered like ashes on the wind.

Silence falls.

Absolute. Consuming.

He’s gone. A man who survived twenty-seven years of isolation.Who carved meaning from captivity. Who held me last night as if I were something precious, not just a means to an end.

My heart seizes in my chest, skipping several beats before slamming back to life with painful force. Time stretches, elastic and unreal. Too slow. Too brittle. I can’t breathe. Can’t swallow. Can’t believe what I’ve just seen.