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DANTE

T he moment it hits, my knees give out.

Not from pain—though it hurts , gods it hurts —but from the force of it. A sudden burn at the center of my chest, sharp and bright and alive.

A pulse.

One beat. Then another.

It’s like a second heart kicks to life inside me, waking up from months— years —of stillness. I can barely breathe around it. And then I feel her.

A whisper of shadows and fire. A sliver of magic so familiar it punches through the fog still clinging to my memories.

Liora.

Not a dream. Not a ghost. Real. Alive. Calling me.

I stumble toward the edge of my warded circle, grabbing the tracking runes I carved in the floor with a shaking hand and pressing my palm down. “Come on. Come on—show me where you are.”

The spell flares to life, tracing the signature in the pulse she sent.

Coordinates render in light. Strange glyphs. Unstable readings. Fuck.

Underworld plane. Tier Seven.

I clench my jaw so hard it cracks.

Seraphiel.

Of course it’s him. I knew it.

I don’t need the rest of the memories to fill in to know it. My instincts scream it before the magic even confirms it.

She’s in his fucking court.

“There’s only one shot to breach the gate,” Tamsin tells me later that night, her mismatched eyes locked on mine from across her ruined dining room table. “During the eclipse.”

I called her over once memories came back. Her name was on the list I was trying to remember and as things started to drift back, I knew I needed more intel on what I was thinking about getting myself into.

I nod. “Yeah. I figured.”

She raises a brow. “You figured? You know how many people have tried that and didn’t come back with their souls intact?”

“She’s worth it.”

Tamsin mutters something under her breath—probably a curse—but there’s no real heat behind it. She’s pissed because she knows I mean it.

“Seraphiel won’t be in his court during the eclipse,” she adds, pushing a mug of something that smells like wet smoke across the table. “Intel says he always disappears during the convergence. Old realm debts. Ancient bindings. No one knows where he goes, but the gate weakens just enough.”

“Then that’s when I go. It’s tomorrow night, isn’t it?”

“You’re going to need backup.”

I shake my head. “I can’t risk anyone else.”

Tamsin sighs like she’s aged ten years in one breath. “Dante, this is suicide.”

I stand, strapping my blades across my back, slipping the bone pendant beneath my shirt.

“Then I’ll die trying.”

The next night, the eclipse bleeds across the sky like ink in water. The Veil shudders.

I feel it in my teeth, in my bones, in the low roar of my blood as I step through the convergence point at the canyon’s edge.

The world shifts around me. One blink I’m in the mortal realm. The next, I’m in his.

Tier Seven.

Seraphiel’s hell.

The underworld doesn’t burn.

It sings.

The air buzzes like a low choir, eerie and dissonant. The ground pulses beneath my boots, like it’s breathing. Everything here looks wrong. Angles too sharp. Shadows too slow to follow.

But I don’t stop.

Her scent is faint but steady. Dark silk and misplaced rain.

I move like a blade through the halls. Any enforcer dumb enough to get in my way ends up on the ground, bleeding or broken. Their armor doesn’t hold against what’s woken up in me.It also helps that, according to Tamsin, his most powerful ones are with him, but I still don’t think it would matter.

I’m not just a shifter now. I’m Guardian-born and my old blood has reawoken. This is what I have to do. What I was born for.

And I’m not leaving this pit without her.

By the time I reach the lower levels, the air’s thick with heat and sorrow. I pass cells that shouldn’t exist. Places built to house beings that never belonged in cages.

And then I feel her.

Her fear. Her fury. Her hope.

The bond flares bright, as if the final lock snaps off, and it burns through my chest like wildfire.

“Liora,” I whisper.

She’s close.

I round the final corridor, cut down the last warded door—and there she is.

Bound.

Kneeling in the middle of a containment sigil carved into the floor. Her hair hangs loose, obsidian and starlit. Her head jerks up the moment she sees me, and those violet eyes?—

“Dante?”

Her voice cracks like it’s the first time she’s spoken my name in years.

I don’t think. I just run to her.

“Don’t move,” I growl, crouching to disable the lines carved around her. My hands shake, my chest’s heaving, but I keep going. “I’m getting you out. We don’t have time.”

“Dante—” she grabs my wrist, her touch electric, like the bond’s lighting up between us faster than we can process it— “How did you find me?”

“You called me.”

Tears pool in her eyes, and I feel her magic stir, trying to reach mine. The connection threads tight between us again—raw, real, unbreakable.

But behind us, there’s a rumble through the court.

“Shit,” I mutter, “We have to move now. Before he finds out.”

“Listen, there are others?—”

I break the runes and the invisible barrier is gone. For a moment she stares at me as alarms begin to wail like dying stars overhead and I’m almost afraid she is going to refuse to go with me.

But then, Liora steps forward, throws her arms around my neck and crashes her lips into mine.