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“Yes,” I say, but it doesn’t sound victorious.

It soundsfinal.

Because now we’ve found the right door. Which means the only thing left is to decide if we’re brave—or broken—enough to walk through it.

The moment I press my palm to the pillar, something shifts. It’s not obvious—not a blinding flash of magic or a storm breaking open in the room. It’s subtler than that. A resonance that curls through me like heat rising off stone after dark. Like recognition. Like home.

I pull my hand back slowly, skin tingling where the stone kissed it, and take a single step back—not out of fear, but reverence. The glow beneath the carvings doesn’t fade, doesn’t dim. It pulses once, steady and sure, and I feel the magic in my body answer with the same rhythm. Every crest inked beneath my skin stirs. Silas’s erratic surge of chaos. Elias’s low, creeping hum. Caspian’s decadent heat, slow and rich. Riven’s fire, already rising. Ambrose’s cold magnetism, wrapping around the rest like armor.

This is it. The one.

Not because Iwantit to be.

Because itknowsme.

I draw in a breath, hold it a second longer than I need to, and let it go. Then I lift my chin and call out, “Here. I need you all here.”

My voice doesn’t echo, but it doesn’t need to.

They come.

Elias appears first, sauntering out from behind a crooked column, flipping a coin I’m ninety percent sure he stole from Silas, which Silas probably stole from a dead dragon. He stops beside me without fanfare, eyes on the pillar, brows furrowed deeper than usual. He doesn’t say anything right away. Doesn’t joke. Which tells me more than words ever could.

Riven’s next, solid as stone, the heat from him always a little too intense, like his magic forgets I’m not trying to burn. His hand brushes mine as he steps into place beside me, not soft, but not rough either—more like a claim than a touch. I don’t look at him. I don’t need to. His presence is a constant in me now. We both feel it.

Caspian doesn’t hurry. He arrives like desire personified, slow and deliberate, gaze cutting a path across the stone carvings before drifting to me and staying there just a little too long. His voice is velvet-drenched steel when he finally speaks. “You’re sure?”

I nod, eyes locked on the crest that matches his perfectly. “I’m sure.”

Ambrose is quieter. He circles like a wolf testing a fence, studying the pillar with that calculating gaze that always makes me feel like I’ve already said yes to something he hasn’t asked. He takes it in, crest by crest, and finally stops opposite me, eyes narrowing slightly, but he doesn’t challenge it. He never does when he’s already decided the answer for himself.

And then Silas.

Of course he arrives last, bouncing a coin between his fingers and grinning like he’s got some private joke simmering just beneath the surface of his magic. His eyes drag over the ring of sigils and stop on his own. “Knew it’d be this one,” he says, leaning a little too close to the stone, fingertips grazing the edge of the carving. “Look at that—chaos looks damn sexy in stone.”

“Everything about you is chaos in stone,” Elias mutters, without looking away from the pillar.

Silas gives me a wink as he steps in beside me, always too close, always brushing against me like he thinks I won’t notice, like he’s daring me to.

We form a circle without meaning to, all six of us facing the pillar that chose us. The heat from the stone rises, not searing,not hostile—just present. Like it knows it’s been seen. Like it’s been waiting.

The crests carved into the pillar are perfect. No flaws. No wrong curves. No lies.

This is the door.

Not metaphorically.

Not magically.

Literally.

And still, none of us move to touch it again. And for once, none of us are in a rush. We stand in the quiet, all of us braced against the same impossible truth: the Hollow is dying, and this may be the only exit left.

But choosing it?

That’s not the same as surviving it.

Silas