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DANTE

T he sun hasn’t risen.

It won’t. Not today.

The sky’s stuck in that eerie not-light—gray bleeding into copper, like the world’s caught holding its breath before something breaks. None of us slept. No one even tried.

We’ve been sharpening blades and sketching wards into stone, tracing every line like it might be the one that holds the darkness back even though we know better. But it might buy us time.

I look around at my loft, home that doesn’t feel like home anymore. It feels like a fucking tomb waiting to be filled.

The witches are chanting softly in the back hall. The shifters are pacing outside, tails stiff, jaws tight. The vampires sleep with one eye open—or don’t sleep at all. The warlocks sit in the corners like broken statues, muttering to their shadows.

Everyone’s waiting because we all felt it. When Liora lit up the night like a damn second sun, Seraphiel felt it too.

And now he’s coming to take what he thinks belongs to him.

She’s standing in the map room when I find her—hands braced on the table, hair braided down her back like a war banner, shoulders squared under a weight no one else could carry.

The glow still clings to her skin. Dimmer now, but no less dangerous.

Like she’s wrapped in something ancient and barely restrained.

My mouth goes dry.

“You haven’t eaten,” I say softly, crossing the room.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You still need?—”

“I need to focus,” she snaps, but it’s not at me. Not really. She’s just holding herself together with frayed strings and caffeine and sheer willpower. “He’s going to tear the world apart. I haven’t had enough time to practice with this. Hell, I don’t think there is practicing with this. I almost feel dumb for calling all this power to me and–”

“You had to, Liora. You needed to. And you can control it.”

“But–”

I step in front of her, gently taking her hands. “They’ll follow you.”

Her eyes lift to mine. “They’ll die for me.”

“Then let’s make sure they don’t have to.”

The plan’s simple. Not because it’s smart.

Because there’s no time to get fancy.

We protect the Veil lines. We anchor Earth’s magic with every blood-bound witch and sigil-tied warrior we’ve got. We draw Seraphiel into the physical realm.

And then we kill him before he can kill us or before he slips back into the shadows in his mist form.

“You still have doubts,” she says later, her voice quieter now. “I can feel them.”

I don’t lie.

“I have fear.”

“For me?”

“For losing you.”

She closes the gap between us, rests her forehead against my chest. “And if you do?”

“Then I die fighting for you,” I murmur. “Same as I lived.”

I place my hand on her cheek and brush a loose stand away. She leans into my palm and almost smiles.

“I love you. Even in death.”

I kiss her hard and say against her lips, “I love you too.”

It happens just after the horizon fractures.

A low rumble shakes the foundation of the world. Birds scream into the sky and vanish. The Veil shivers and then it splits.

A seam opens in the distance—black and red and bleeding shadow. The sky stretches wide like a mouth screaming in reverse, and Seraphiel steps through it like he owns the fucking stars.

His wings blaze behind him—six of them, spectral and flickering like dying galaxies. His armor drips molten magic. His eyes are gold. And they lock onto her.

“Mine,” he says, and his voice hits like thunder pressed to bone.

Liora doesn’t flinch.

She glows.

Power unfurls from her like a second skin, her hair whipping around her face as light and shadow crackle off her fingertips. She steps forward, not back.

Not this time.

I move with her, blade in hand. Heart pounding like a war drum in my chest.

Liora doesn’t hesitate—her steps are sure, her magic already alive around her like a storm with its eyes locked on destruction. Her voice cuts through the air like thunder.

“Not yours,” she snarls. “Not ever.”

The ground cracks beneath us, jagged lines splintering outward like veins of flame. The sky splits open, churning with violet clouds and black lightning. The Veil groans like it’s alive— like it’s screaming.

And then all hell breaks loose.

The first wave of Seraphiel’s army descends like smoke given shape.

Wraiths bound in burning chains. Fallen fae twisted into monstrous forms. Shadowbeasts stitched together with nightmare and bone.

They hit the line of our defenses like a crashing tide.

Shifters shift mid-run, snarling, lunging with claws bared and teeth flashing. Witches chant as they fight, spells woven with blood and will, flinging fire and ice and ancient curses that slice through the enemy like wind through grass.

The rogue fae are almost invisible—vanishing, reappearing, sliding between planes and stabbing with glamoured blades dipped in poison so old it hums.

I tear through a snarling revenant with a swipe of my sword, pivot, duck under a whip of shadow, and drive my blade through the chest of a creature with eyes like cracked mirrors and a mouth that never stops whispering.

The field is chaos.

Blood and light and fire.

And above it all—standing just beyond the rift he tore open, untouched by the fighting, six wings spread wide and glowing like apocalypse—is Seraphiel.

Watching.

Smiling.

I shift part way so I can still wield my weapons and take down a beast that lunges for one of the witches, shielding her with my body before kicking it off and spinning to block another blow. My arms are burning, my ribs bruised. Someone screams nearby, and I can’t tell if they’re ours or his.

And still—he doesn’t move. Just stands there, watching Liora like she’s the only thing on the battlefield worth noticing.

She’s a goddamn inferno.

Magic spilling from her fingertips in twin streams of gold and shadow, her hair whipping like ink in a hurricane. Her power levels half the field—twists the air into a vacuum, then explodes it outward, flinging three of Seraphiel’s enforcers across the courtyard like rag dolls.

One of them gets up. Barely.

Liora lifts her hand and he turns to ash.

The rebels rally behind her.

Every time she strikes, they surge forward.

We’re gaining ground. Slowly. Painfully.

But then he laughs.

Seraphiel. Still untouched. Still unmoved.

He raises one hand—and every single one of his enforcers still standing freezes.

Then falls back.

Retreats like shadows sucked back into night.

The battlefield stills. Only the moans of the wounded and the hiss of dying magic remain.

And then he starts walking.

Toward her.

Each step echoes like a drumbeat from the underworld.

His wings stretch wider. His armor glows brighter. His smile is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

He looks at Liora, eyes blazing like two suns on the verge of collapse.

“Enough,” Seraphiel says, calm, amused. “Let’s not keep fate waiting, little star.”