Celeste looked around at them—Mezzo burning in front of her, Ray wreathed in fire, Arcade crawling through sparks, Pitch shielding the others with his own body, Hughes holding the earth together, Skye shining through tears, Lumina refusing to let go.
Her voice came out tiny.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Mezzo’s smile shook.
“Then hurt us carefully.”
Celeste let out a broken laugh that was almost a sob.
Then she closed her eyes.
Her core pulsed.
The blue-white light around her thinned, gathering inward until it became threads instead of a storm. Carefully—painfully—she pushed the smallest part of it outward.
It entered them.
All at once.
Mezzo cried out first, back arching as red-gold fire erupted through his core.
Ray dropped to one knee, teeth clenched, phoenix-flame bursting in violet sheets from her shoulders.
Pitch snarled, claws gouging the stone as navy light flashed through his chest.
Hughes groaned as vines exploded from his arms, flowering and withering in the same breath.
Skye gasped, his forehead gem blazing so brightly the whole chamber turned moon-white.
Arcade screamed through his teeth as Celeste’s mana hit his core and shot down every quill, turning him into a living lightning rod.
Agony filled the chamber.
But the pulse softened.
The storm around Celeste dimmed from world-ending white to trembling blue.
Arcade saw the opening.
He threw himself forward, arm outstretched.
His claws closed around the rune.
“Got it!”
The moment he touched it, the metal burned through his glove. He hissed, nearly dropped it, then clamped both hands around it anyway.
“Hot! Very hot! Horrifically hot!”
“Arcade!” Mezzo roared.
“I know!”
Arcade staggered toward Celeste through the softened storm. Every step made his quills flare brighter. His teeth were gritted so hard his jaw shook.
Celeste tried to stay still.
Tried to keep the mana flowing gently.
Tried not to scream as her own body fought to burst apart.
Mezzo held her face.
“Eyes on me,” he said. “Don’t look at the light. Look at me.”
Celeste’s glowing eyes fixed on his.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to disappear.”
“You’re not allowed.”
A tiny, hysterical sound escaped her. “That’s not how that works.”
“It is today.”
Arcade reached them.
His hands were smoking.
The rune pulsed in his grip like a trapped heart.
“Back of the neck,” he said, voice shaking. “Now would be an excellent time to not vaporise me.”
But the moment she reached for the rune, another pulse ripped through her body, violent and blinding. Mezzo snarled as it struck him, his arms tightening around her by instinct alone.
Celeste sobbed. “I can’t. I can’t reach it.”
Then Lumina moved.
Weakly.
Painfully.
Still half-collapsed against the stone, she lifted one trembling hand toward Celeste.
Not dragged.
Not commanded.
Not with white, empty eyes or a chain around her throat.
Her own eyes were pink-gold now.
Tearful.
Terrified.
Hers.
“Cece,” Lumina whispered. “Let me help.”
Celeste stared at her.
Rustrows warped.
Not shook.
Warped.
The old iron scaffolding above the ward circle groaned as its rusted beams bent like hot wax. Celeste looked up just as an entire section tore loose and plunged toward her.
She screamed.
Mezzo twisted, trying to shield her, but the scaffolding never reached them.
Halfway down, it disintegrated.
Not burned.
Not shattered.
Disintegrated.
The iron broke into glittering squares of blue-white light, dissolving into nothing before the first beam could strike the floor.
Across the valley, one of the trees twisted violently. Its bark split open, leaves turning glassy and black-veined. Flowers burst from its branches—huge, luminous blooms with curling silver tongues and petals like wet stars.
No one knew the species.
No one in this world had ever seen it before.
Then the sky above Rustrows flickered.
For one impossible heartbeat, three rivers of light flowed across the heavens.
One gold.
One blue.
One white.
They curved through the torn clouds like divine veins, vast and silent, pouring from horizon to horizon.
Every Mythic stopped.
Even the ones holding shields.
Even the ones praying.
Heads lifted.
Mouths fell open.
The three rivers shimmered once—
then vanished.
The storm screamed on.
Ray stumbled through the buckling chamber, one arm wrapped around Lumina. Pink-white sparks flickered weakly from Lumina’s hands, her body limp and trembling.
“Move,” Ray hissed through gritted teeth. “Come on, Lumi. Nearly there.”
She dropped to one knee and shoved Lumina closer across the cracked stone, rolling her toward Celeste just as another pulse blasted through the floor.
Ray’s foot slipped.
She fell backwards with a sharp cry, phoenix-fire bursting around her as she hit the ground and skidded away.
Lumina landed beside Celeste, one trembling hand stretched out.
Celeste stared at her.
For a heartbeat, fear swallowed everything.
The memory of the chain.
The command.
The way Lumina had crawled toward her because someone had made her body obey.
But the chain was gone now.
Only the thread remained.
Soft blue-white.
Soft pink-gold.
Reaching between them because both of them wanted it there.
Celeste’s voice trembled. “Lumi… you don’t have to.”
“I know.”
Lumina’s hand shook harder.
“That’s why I can.”
Something in Celeste broke open.
Not with power.
With trust.
She reached back.
Their fingers touched.
Lumina’s mana flowed into her—not like a lock snapping shut, not like a leash tightening around Celeste’s throat.
Like cool water over burned skin.
Pink and lavender silk wrapped around the edge of the storm, not smothering it, not owning it, just softening the places where it tore too sharply through Celeste’s body.
Celeste gasped.
The agony did not stop.
But it became shapeable.
Manageable.
The blinding white in her eyes dimmed to blue-white focus.
Mezzo saw it.
“There,” he breathed. “There she is.”
Arcade shoved the rune into Celeste’s shaking hand.
“Your turn, Anime.”
Celeste’s fingers closed around it.
The metal burned her palm, but she held on.
Lumina squeezed her other hand. “I’ve got you.”
Mezzo held her face between both scorched hands. “Eyes on me.”
Celeste looked at him.
At Lumina.
At all of them.
Ray burning at the edge of the storm.
Pitch braced like a shield.
Skye shining through tears.
Hughes holding the earth together with roots wrapped around his arms.
Arcade sparking and swaying but still standing.
Celeste breathed in.
Then, with Lumina’s mana steadying the storm around her, she lifted her own rune to the back of her neck.
Her hand shook.
For one awful second, she thought she would miss.
Then Lumina’s fingers tightened around hers.
Celeste clicked the rune into place.
Click.
The sound was tiny.
Almost gentle.
Then Celeste screamed.
Her mana snapped back into her body so violently the air imploded.
The barrier shattered.
The ward circle collapsed.
Stone buckled beneath them. The ceiling split with a deafening crack, great slabs of ancient Mythic masonry dropping into the chamber as roots, runes and Kymara light tore free from the walls.
Mezzo wrapped himself around Celeste.
Ray grabbed Lumina.
Pitch threw his body over Skye.
Hughes roared and hauled a dome of earth and roots over them all as Arcade collapsed beneath a shower of sparks.
The room came down in white dust and broken light.
Then—
silence.
For a moment, there was nothing but silence.
Dust drifted through the ruined chamber in slow, pale curtains. Broken runes flickered once, twice, then went dark. The warped stone settled with soft, exhausted cracks.
The arena was gone.
In its place was a crater.
A vast wound had been carved into the heart of the valley, its edges blackened, glassed, and webbed with roots Hughes had forced through the earth at the final second. Chunks of old masonry lay half-buried in dust. The altar had split clean down the middle.
Blue-white mana still drifted over everything in slow, dangerous ribbons.
It clung to the broken stone.
To the roots.
To the air.
To Celeste.
Then Cosmo stumbled onto the ridge above the crater, one arm wrapped around a bundle of old brass-and-slate runes. His dragon wings were half-spread for balance, trembling with exhaustion.
“The dispelling wards!” he shouted, voice cracking. “I have them!”
Brassmane turned, blood still dark at his mouth. “Now!”
Cosmo dropped to one knee and slammed the first rune into the earth.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Each one hit the ground with a deep metallic note, as if the valley itself had become a bell. Circles of old ward-script burst outward from the stones, spiralling down the crater walls in bands of copper, silver and pale green light.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the wards opened.
The excess mana screamed.
Every loose ribbon of Celeste’s power snapped toward the runes at once. The air bent as the wards drank it in, pulling blue-white fire from the stone, from the broken altar, from the torn sky above Rustrows. Light streamed into the ward circles like rivers being dragged backwards into the earth.
Cosmo gritted his teeth, both hands pressed to the central rune as it burned beneath his palms.
“Come on,” he hissed. “Come on, take it—”
The runes flared brighter.
The last of the wild mana tore free from the chamber and vanished into the wards with a thunderous pulse.
Silence fell hard.
Solas stood frozen near the crater edge, the mana gun still hanging uselessly in his hand.
His face had gone grey.
He stared at the ruined arena. At the unconscious hybrids. At the place where reality had almost split open and not come back.
“This is unreal,” he whispered.
Cosmo looked up at him, breathing hard.
Solas’s grip tightened around the gun.
“I should have shot her.”
Brassmane’s head turned slowly.
Even bloodied, even half-collapsed, the look he gave Solas could have split stone.
But before he could speak—
Mezzo moved.
He grabbed Celeste again, clutching her tight, his laugh half-broken, half-joyful, tears streaking through the soot on his face.
“You did it—”
His voice cracked.
“You did it!”
He pressed his forehead to hers, trembling so badly his wings shook.
“You chose it yourself. That’s my girl.”
A sob broke through his laugh.
“That’s my feckin’ girl.”
Celeste blinked up at him, dazed, her eyes still faintly glowing blue-white.
Mezzo smiled at her.
Soft.
Wrecked.
Alive.
Then he bent and kissed her forehead.
Just once.
A tiny, shaking press of warmth against her fur.
“You’re here,” he whispered. “That’s enough.”
Around them, the others rushed in—hugging, crying, trembling in disbelief and relief.
Ray dragged Lumina close, one hand buried in her hair.
Pitch collapsed to one knee beside Skye, breathing hard, his claws still dug into the stone.
Arcade tried to make some clever comment, opened his mouth, sparked violently, and decided against it.
Bonbon cried somewhere beneath Kirrin’s cloak until Celeste weakly reached for her.
Then the pain hit.
All at once.
Mezzo’s arms slackened.
His smile flickered.
Then his strength went with it.
He collapsed beside Celeste, one scorched hand still curled near hers.
Ray gasped and dropped.
Arcade folded sideways with a burst of green sparks.
Pitch snarled once before his strength gave out.
Skye whimpered and crumpled against him.
Hughes’ root barrier withered at the edges as he fell to both knees, bark peeling from his arms in smoking strips.
Lumina clutched Celeste’s hand until both of them collapsed together.
Brassmane’s roar tore across the crater.
“Healers!”
The Famdderwyddon surged forward at once, skirts and shawls snapping in the mana wind. Daroganwyr followed behind them, hands outstretched, faces pale beneath their veils. The remaining elders staggered into motion, some bleeding, some barely standing, all moving as quickly as their battered bodies allowed.
Brassmane stumbled after them, one hand pressed to his chest, blood still dark at the corner of his mouth.
“Now,” he rasped. “All of them. No one is left untreated.”
At the edge of the crater, Elder Arlo stood alone.
Shaken.
Soot-streaked.
Blood on his lips.
His staff trembled in his hand as he looked over the ruined arena, the shattered wards, the unconscious hybrids, and the soft blue-white glow still pulsing faintly beneath Celeste’s skin.
Under his breath, almost too quiet to hear, he murmured—
“May the Light guide what she has unleashed…”
