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She’d brought Ren back.

That should’ve been impossible. But she’d done it.

And she would do it again.

Standing at the intersection of two ravaged avenues, hair whipping around her, Taly spread her arms wide as golden magic exploded out of her in a vortex that shot upward to slam into the sky.

Calcifer was dead, but she could fix it. The Universe didn’t get to take him. Not without a fight.

She looked up into the spiraling dark—into the jagged tear she’d carved into the heavens.

Into the Neither—that place between this life and what came next.

If Calcifer was in there, she’d find him. And she’d drag him out.

She shoved her magic into the rift with a scream—reckless, furious, wild. The cobbles beneath her feet trembled, then lifted, pulled into the rising storm of wind and aether.

Defying the laws of nature and the divine came with an added bonus—it made her a beacon.

Harpies fed on aether, and she was radiating it in waves. All she had to do was throw it around, burn bright enough, and they came, flocking like moths to a flame.

It was thrilling. Exhilarating. Every flick of her wrist, every wild spell she cast, unleashed more brilliance, more destruction.

And it didn’t burn down. Just kept pouring in, too much, too fast, but she didn’t care.

Let it burn.

Let it all burn.

The sky groaned as the tear widened, a gaping maw of darkness. Harpies spiraled helplessly into it, their cries lost in the wind.

The pain was blinding.

Every inch of her throbbed, every cell straining as she fought to keep them together—fought to keep herself from scattering like stardust while the power raged outward.

Tears streaked her face, but then, somewhere in the haze of agony, a sound bubbled up—a laugh, raw and unsteady.

The pain softened into something else. Joy .

What was her body, her flesh, compared to this?

It was everything, this power. It was her air, her bread, her manna.

It was pure time energy ripping through her, like she’d grabbed a live wire of eternity.

To endure it, to be consumed by it, was a blessing.

And there was still more.

She could feel it there below the threshold of her subconscious—an endless, untapped ocean that was being trickled into her drop by drop, guided by the voice whispering through the howling storm.

More.

The ground rumbled with a sound like thunder as shattered glass, loose stones, even bits of metal were yanked into the swirling vortex, vanishing into the churning sky.

On either side, the buildings shook, their windows rattling. Taly’s reflection wavered as time began to warp.

It started with her at the center, the effect rippling outward.

The years peeled away from the canvas of reality like layers of paint. Pavement surfaced beneath the cobbles. The buildings rose taller. The air blurred with the bright, artificial lights of a city as starsteel and stone crept over plain wood construction.

The Tempris of yesterday blurred with the here and now as high above the harpies spiraled to their deaths.

More.

Give it more.

The goddess’s voice wailed from inside the storm, echoing from all corners.

Give it everything.

And Taly obeyed. She had no choice. Her head tipped back in offering as she tunneled further into that awesome power.

Your hands are mine now.

The storm churned and twisted, wind laced with golden fire, lightning streaking through the darkness like veins of molten aether.

You are my fury made flesh.

The words wrapped around her like chains, and the strength of them flooded every inch of her.

She was fury, nothing else.

It was what she’d been made for.

Faces surfaced within the chaos—warped, contorted, caught between past and present. A deluge of death that should never have been allowed to happen.

Twenty-seven dead in the fire that took Vale. Sacrificed to get to her.

Her mother’s laughter. Silenced.

Aimee and Aiden’s father. Gone.

And the others—those who had fallen today, nameless but no less hers to carry.

The storm swallowed their screams, folding them into the winds like a chorus of the lost.

Taly saw it now—what she had cost them. She saw the lives that might’ve unfolded, futures stretching forward, whole and unbroken, if only she had never been there to blot them out.

No more.

The words rose up in her. The defiance. The single-minded rapture of being pointed at something and unleashed .

Not everything could be undone. Not yet. But today was hers.

This time, she chose where the blade would fall.

Azura had always said it was impossible to resurrect a person once their soul had already set sail across the Neither. You had 30 seconds at best before they left the Black Dock and set sail for Moriah.

Taly had never attempted a resurrection. Much less tried to cheat Death of his quarry. But she was beyond rules. Beyond the natural order.

She was fury— and she would tear the world apart with it.

She could feel each soul as it departed. High above the city—somehow lifted from her body—she saw their anima rising, threads of light stretching skyward until they snapped.

It was decided.

As the storm howled and the city continued to flicker through the ages, reality forming and re-forming with her at its epicenter, Taly reached beyond herself.

She pushed past the Weave—into the void outside it.

Into the inky black of the Neither, where she found the felled souls crowded on Charon’s ferry.

She pulled them back. Boat and all.

In her mind, she felt it—the solid thud of wood meeting wood as the black ferry struck the dock, the shuffle of souls stepping ashore.

Taly stared up through the eye of the storm into the endless void of the Neither where souls poured forth like falling stars.

They fell over the city, their glowing vapor trails bleeding light into the sky before scattering to the wind.

And still that voice thundered, relentless and unforgiving, Give it more.

Without thought, the magic surged from her, weaving through the city. Roads began to repair, entire buildings reassembled.

More.

Reality buckled as the crack in the sky yawned wider, its jagged edge peeling back to expose the cold, endless dark that existed before time began.

More.

Taly was screaming even as she laughed, on the verge of being ripped in two.

Her skin glowed, light spearing from between the seams of her body. She was unraveling, but she didn’t care. This body didn’t matter. It was a channel, a vessel, immaterial and mortal and—

And this was not her.

These weren’t her thoughts, her feelings.

Or were they? Where was she in this tangle?

Her spine arched as if something inside her was tearing loose. They were too much the same, her magic and this power. Cut from the same primordial cloth. She couldn’t pry them apart, couldn’t wrest back control.

And why should she?

The thought slithered into her mind, wrapping around the edges of her panic like a balm.

The power wasn’t fighting her—it was cleansing her. Breaking her apart so she could be built back greater .

The sky pried apart, golden threads appearing. Shimmering in lieu of the dawn. The Weave laid bare to any who might look upon it.

Her voice was gone, throat ragged from screaming. She didn’t care what came next. She just had to keep reaching.

Keep herself whole long enough to pull him back.

And then—

From the depths of the Neither, a black speck fell, like a dark star pitched from Hell.

It hit the street running, letting out a feral roar .

Taly whipped towards the sound. And for a single, shattering moment, her breath caught.

Magic lashed the sky. The world twisted around her. But none of it mattered.

Because through the storm, with the winds still raging, that was Calcifer running down the street to meet her.

Calcifer, who was changing, shifting, massive paws turning to gold-tipped hooves as his legs stretched to carry him faster and farther and his wings spread wide behind him.

A winged horse. A pegasus. Jet black with golden hooves and gold-tipped wings and, as always, tufts of golden fur on ears that were just a little too big.

It was just like the books Taly read as a girl. The same books she’d shown Calcifer during the many long, sleepless nights at the palace.

He didn’t slow down as he approached, and Taly jumped, gripping a fistful of black mane as she swung herself onto his back. She hugged the girth of his body with her knees.

With a mighty flap of his wings, they were airborne.

The power was still spilling out of her, but it was no longer the most important thing. Not compared to the warmth of Calcifer beneath her hands, the steady rise and fall of his breath.

He needed her. Maybe everyone else would get by without her. Maybe they’d be better off if she let herself be consumed back into that well of awe-inspiring power that birthed her own. But he wouldn’t. Without her, he’d die.

And that was enough to pull her back—to have some of herself, her own will, resurface.

She had to close the rift. Had to keep the city from being swallowed whole.

Had to bar the ferry’s path before Charon claimed what was his.

They rose, higher and higher—spiraling around and around the storm of her magic to where reality dissolved into eternity.

Taly clenched her fist, gathering her magic there. The air thinned, her breath coming in sharp, visible puffs.

Higher and higher.

Around and around.

Only when they were high enough—when the void clawed at her, the cold seeping into her bones, and every last bit of aether had been dragged from her body and compacted into a single, blinding mass.

When she was close enough to see a shape cutting through the dark, moving without wind or sound.

Only then did she unleash it.

The golden gale ejected from her body and was immediately sucked upward.

Beneath them, the storm collapsed, its winds dragged into the same pull.

Taly threw her arms around Calcifer’s neck as he fought against the force, struggling not to get sucked in too.

The aether kept pouring out of her, an endless stream spewing into the blackness of space. And she let it. If the void wanted power, she would give it everything. Anything to take herself back.

Slowly, impossibly, it began to close.

The more she fed into the wound, the faster it sealed, the jagged edges of the Weave knitting shut.

A breathless laugh escaped her, half-strangled by exhaustion and swallowed by wind. Thank the Shards. For a moment, she was afraid she might’ve broken reality.

For my fifth gift , the goddess whispered, her voice threading through the storm, weaving through the rocks, debris, and bits of harpies it carried, I will make you eternal.

Taly felt it like a flame passing through her, a final searing push of power.

A golden hand slipped over hers from behind, and for a moment, warm breath ghosted over her ear.

Arise fair maiden of the Dawn and take your place in the Hall of Legends. When your body is dust, they will still sing of the day you cheated Death of his rightful claim.

And as the first rays of a new morning broke over the horizon, gilding her skin, Taly exploded.

Power ripped from her in a blinding burst of gold.

Light scorched her vision. Wind shrieked, flinging her from Calcifer’s back.

She fell.

Air knifed past her ears, the world tilting, spinning. Magic peeled off her skin in golden streaks as the city twisted far below.

As the last bit of that strange magic finally bled out of her, the bond snapped into focus.

Through someone else’s eyes—someone far away and running to get to her—she saw everything.

The dark clouds rolled back, and the sky healed. The stars dimmed, yielding to the soft glow of long-awaited dawn.

And Taly fell through it—through that first blush of morning, golden wisps of magic trailing behind her like the remnants of a fading star.