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“He waits alone,” Brashir corrects. “He’s made his home high in the spires of the north. A place where nothing can reach him. He built it from stone and storm. It’s not a city. It’s a fortress of wrath. It burns when he dreams. The locals worship him as a god of vengeance. They bring him offerings. He accepts none.”

My lungs move, but the air doesn’t reach.

“He’s still waiting for you, Luna,” Brashir says. “He’s never stopped.”

The world tilts, but Theo is there now, his hand on my back, grounding me.

“So go,” Brashir says, stepping down from the dais, each footfall thunderous. “Find them. Bond again. Contain what they’ve become. Because if you don’t, ”

He stops in front of me, towering.

“There won’t be anything left of the world to save.”

Brashir lifts one arm, and the space to his right warps like oil poured over flame. The air bends, thickens, then tears open from the center out. It doesn’t hum, ithowls, quietly, a wind through the bones of the world.

The portal forms in jagged strokes. No gentle oval, no ripple of water. It’s raw. A wound in reality, its edges glowing with that same molten gold threaded through the walls of this place. Throughhim.

Beyond it, I see… nothing. At first.

Then the image forms: a canyon carved into a gray desert, jagged stone cliffs marked with towers that jut from the earth like iron thorns. A storm brews on the horizon, slow and thick and unnatural, like it’s been waiting centuries to move. The sky above the canyon pulses, fractured with lightning that doesn’t touch the ground. The prison is down there, buried deep beneath those cliffs. A fortress without a name.

Brashir lowers his arm and the portal holds.

“This is as close as I can put you,” he says, turning back toward us. His robes shift, metal-threaded cloth brushing the stone like whispers. “The perimeter of the facility is warded with old sigils. Not mine. Mortal-built, then reforged by something darker. I cannot breach its heart. But you will.”

He reaches behind his throne and brings forward two bags, simple on the outside, leather and brass, worn and buckled. He hands one to Theo, who slings it over his shoulder without question, and the other to me. It’s heavier than it looks.

“There’s gear,” Brashir says. “Weapons. Clothes. Rations. Nothing fancy. This world does not reward luxury. Only preparation.”

Theo’s already unbuckling his, checking inside. I leave mine sealed. My hands feel too brittle.

Brashir steps closer. Not looming now. Justthere. Immense and quiet and watching with something too heavy to be pity.

“You’ll be weak when you arrive,” he says to me, voice lower now. “This place sustained you while you were within it. The old magic held you intact. Once you leave, the bond you carried with your Sins will be gone. You’ll be like any other mortal woman walking into the end of the world.”

I look up at him. “Then what’s the point?”

He studies me. Long enough that I think he won’t answer.

“You held them together,” he says. “More than I wanted to admit. More thananyof us wanted to believe. We thought theywere dangerous because of you. That you were their leash. Their indulgence. A flaw in divine order.”

He exhales, deep and slow. A sound like wind through stone.

“But it wasn’t you who fractured them. It was yourabsence.”

I stop breathing.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, and his voice doesn’t shift but something in his eyes does, like a storm breaking just beneath the surface, “I think I was wrong about you.”

I don’t know what to say. I never expected an apology from something like him. I didn’t think godscouldbe sorry.

He turns to Theo now, his tone sharpening slightly. “And you. You still carry your mark. But it’s unstable. Fragmented. You were never properly bound to her.”

Theo lifts his eyes, unreadable.

“If she’s to survive what’s coming,” Brashir says, “she’ll need that bond. She’ll need your power. YourDesire.”

A faint smile flickers across Theo’s face. It’s not smug. Not even cocky. Just… inevitable.