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She doesn’t speak again, not right away, and I don’t push her. Luna is never still, not truly. Even when her body stills, her mind races beneath the surface, sharp and unforgiving. She processes in layers, peeling truth back until she either bleeds from it or makes someone else do the bleeding. Right now, she’s deciding which of us will pay.

I’ve seen this look in her before. The first time she chose us, she choseme, knowing what we were, what we could destroy. I watched her stare down the abyss andstep into itwillingly. That same look is in her eyes now. But this isn’t the same abyss. This time, itlooks back.

He was never supposed to be anything but forgotten. Not bound, not remembered, not named. We made that vow together, the seven of us, in a world still smoldering from our first ruin. We chose silence because desire, in its purest form, was a kind of annihilation we didn’t dare to survive. We feared what he’d turn us into. What he'dreveal. What we’dbecomeifwe stopped pretending we weren’t monsters and just gave in to the rot inside us.

But Luna… she wasn’t built like us. She doesn’t retreat. She doesn’t bury. Shelooks. And gods help us, if Theo gets close enough to read her… if he peers through those storm-glass eyes and sees what none of us have been able to name, what if sheletshim? What if he names something inside her that none of us even realized existed?

It makes something ancient in me turn to ice.

Because I don’t want to admit this: part of meunderstandsTheo. He’s not chaos, like Silas. Not hungry, like Caspian. Not dominance, like Lucien. He’s not even wrath. He’s the spacebetweenall of it. The why behind the ruin. He is craving distilled to its rawest element, and if Luna becomeshiscraving… if she’s the one thing he can’t satiate or silence or burn through, He’ll consume her. Or she’ll consumehim. And I don’t know which terrifies me more.

I am old. Older than time as she knows it. I have worn kingdoms like coats and walked through centuries with my mind split open to knowledge most would drown under. But evenIcan’t predict this. And that’s what unravels me most. Not her fury. Not even her pain.

It’s the not knowing. It’s the slow, sinking dread that we may have introduced her to the one person who will make her questioneverythingwe are, everything we gave, everything wewere ever supposed to be to her.

And if Theo can do that, if Desire touches a part of her soul we never reached, then Luna might not chooseusagain. And that’s the outcome none of us were prepared for.

Why now? Blackwell didn’t stumble into this. He didn’t trip over some forgotten chamber and find Theo blinking in the dark, confused and changed.He released him.Deliberately. With calculation. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in thelong unraveling centuries of my existence, it’s that Blackwell never moves without purpose.

We didn’t justburyTheo. Wesealedhim. Not physically, there’s no cell or stone thick enough to cage what he is, but metaphysically, spiritually, in the core binding that ties all eight of us to the world and each other. The moment Blackwell carved us from dust and divine arrogance, he split our essences across seven flames, and then cast Theo’s into the dark. Weshouldn’thave been able to do it. He was made of the same root, born of the same violent breath of sin and will that forged the rest of us. But wedid.Somehow, wedid.

So whybreakthat now?

Why let out what we all agreed could never walk free again?

The seal we made, seven bound as one, should have required every one of us to break. All seven. All in agreement.Thatwas the safeguard. A unanimous act of ruin, or nothing at all.

But Blackwellbroke it alone. He shattered what shouldn’t be possible without so much as a word of warning. And that terrifies me in ways nothing has in eons.

Because it means one of two things.

Either Blackwell has found a power older and more dangerous than what we were built from, some ancient command lost to time and sin, or...

Theo was never truly sealed.

And if that’s true, if weonly thoughtwe had caged him while he waited, and watched, and learned, then this isn’t Blackwell playing god again. This is Theo finally moving the board in the open.

And he’s starting with Luna. She’s the axis now. The convergence of what we are. Each of us was bound to her in a way that was never meant to happen, and yethad to happen.The bonds weren’t designed, they werefelt.They were fated. Or maybe failure.

Theo must feel it too. He’s always been drawn to need like a predator. And there’s something about Luna, something vast and fractured and sharp beneath her skin, somethingmissing, perhaps, that calls to Theo’s nature like blood to a blade.

But even that doesn’t explain why Blackwell wouldriskher.

Unless…

Unless it isn’t about Luna at all.

Unless Blackwell needsDesireback in the world.

Which means something worse is coming. Something bigger than the sins we’ve carried, bigger than the love we’ve built, bigger than even Luna. Something thatrequiresthe one thing none of us ever wanted to face again.

And that’s the part that makes my gut twist.

Because if that’s true,

Theo isn’t the storm.

He’s the herald.