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Silas, the idiot, laughs as he spins beneath the chaos, his power weaving green like a sickly shimmer around his hands. He doesn’t even bother dodging—hepulls. His magic sinks its claws into the envy thick in the air, the envy these creatures feed off,and hetwistsit back on them. The bats turn on each other mid-flight, claws ripping into wings.

“Jealous little bastards,” he calls out, grin sharp.

Elias is quieter—no flourish, no grand gestures. But Sloth’s magic curls around him like smoke,lazy, deadly. He yawns as a bat lunges toward him, and the thing folds mid-air like its bones liquefied, crashing to the ground with a wet snap. His lethargy bleeds out of him and into the creatures, slowing them, dulling their senses, until they hit the ground in heaps.

Lucien doesn’t move.

He juststands there, spine straight, face blank.

And when he finally lifts his chin, power radiates off him in waves. His Dominion ripples through the clearing, a blast of pressure that cracks the branches overhead. And the bats—what’s left of them—stop. Their bodies shudder, folding in on themselves like paper. Theydropfrom the sky as if the very weight of him has crushed them.

I move last.

Greed isn’t messy. It’s not explosive. It’sprecise. I stretch a hand out, and the shimmer of my power pours through the clearing like liquid gold, snaking through the shadows. My magic latches onto the last few stragglers, coils around their bodies like a vice.

And then Itake.

I strip them down—not flesh, not bone, but magic. Their Hollow-rot energy rips away from them and into me, folding into the void inside my chest like another coin added to my vault. They crumple, hollowed out, useless.

The clearing is silent again except for the harsh sound of breathing.

I dust ash off my shoulder, glancing over at Lucien. His jaw is tight, his posture rigid—but not from the fight. From what he knows is still ahead.

“What now?” Silas says, brushing bat guts off his shirt.

I don’t look back at him. My eyes are fixed south, toward the Spiral.

“She’s still running,” I murmur, voice low. “And if she seesthat,she’ll think we’re the monsters.”

And maybe… maybe we are.

The farther south we move, the quieter it gets. Even the Hollow’s usual pulse—the hum of something ancient and starving in the dirt beneath us—has dimmed like it’s holding its breath. And that terrifies me more than anything.

Silas breaks away first.

It’s not graceful. It’s not careful. It’s chaos, as usual, but this time… it’s not performative. His limbs are wild, reckless, tearing through the undergrowth, calling her name without shame, without pretense.

“Luna!” he yells, voice cracking on her name like it’s the first time he’s ever used it without teasing. “Luna, please—just answer me, love.”

His magic whips green around him like smoke on the wind, unrestrained, desperate. He’s not even hiding it now—the way he’d burn this entire world to find her. He’s tearing at the fabric of this place and doesn’t give a damn who sees him unraveling.

It should annoy me.

But it doesn’t.

Because I understand it in a way I didn’t before. Not the chaos, but the compulsion. That once something belongs to you—even when they don’t know it—you’d shatter the sky to put them back where they belong. And she belongs with us. With him.

We clear the tree line, and I watch Silas practically stumble over himself, voice wrecked and raw as he keeps calling her name, breathless.

“Luna! I swear to the fucking Hollow, if you don’t answer me—”

His voice cracks again, and it’s not funny.

It’s not cringey. It’s a man begging. And maybe I finally understand why she lets him close when she keeps the rest of us at arm’s length.

Her tracks scatter around the edge, and I slow, scanning the ground, noting the way her boot prints slip and drag like she’s running without looking, like she doesn’t care if she falls.

I glance sideways at Silas, who’s already shouting again, tearing into the clearing like he’ll scream the entire world down until she hears him.