Chapter 72
LXXII.
brYNN
Nightfall was dying like the rest of the realm.
Brynn saw it the moment they materialized at the settlement's edge. Cracks branching across buildings that had stood for ages, ward-stones flickering, gardens withering to grey.
Caelum's sabotage had been killing this place slowly. Her gateway had ripped the wound wide open.
But even failing, she could see what Nightfall had been. What these souls had built with their freedom.
The same black stone and bone that made Dante's palace cold and imposing had been shaped into something else here.
Buildings pressed shoulder to shoulder, sharing walls, the architecture of people who'd died alone and refused to live that way again.
Shadow-lanterns hung between rooftops on braided wire, their pale light guttering now but clearly strung with care.
Someone had decided this corner of the Forsaken realm deserved to be lit.
Most of the doorways had no doors at all, just open arches, because people who'd been abandoned had chosen to never shut each other out.
Now the lanterns were dimming. Cracks climbed the shared walls. The open doorways gaped like wounds.
Dante's arm was still around her waist from shadow-travel, his chest solid against her back, and she needed to step away. Needed to stop leaning into him like he was the only solid thing in a collapsing world.
She didn't move.
His shadows trailed across her hips as they retreated, slow and reluctant. "They're already gathering." His breath stirred her hair, low and too intimate for what was coming.
She stepped out of his embrace and immediately missed it. Souls emerged from doorways across the settlement, watching. Warriors checked weapons. Parents pulled children close.
Their eyes watched Dante with wary distance—the look of people who'd served their time and earned their freedom, now watching the system that had tormented them walk back into their home.
"They won't want to hear from you," she said quietly.
"No." He didn't sound offended. "They earned their freedom from Death Lords. Asking them to follow one into battle would feel like being dragged back into chains."
"So what, I give the speech?" She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "The outsider who made everything worse?"
"The mortal who stands beside me without flinching." His gaze was unwavering. "The woman who came here to fix what she damaged instead of hiding behind my power. They've spent decades learning that Death Lords take. You're offering to give."
The ground shuddered. A crack split the cobblestones at her feet. The tremor rolled through Nightfall like a death rattle, and a ward-stone at the nearest intersection flickered twice and went dark.
"Besides." His mouth curved, just slightly. "You're better at making people believe in impossible things."
"That's not—"
"It is." He caught her hand, squeezed once, then released her. "I'll be there. They'll know my power backs whatever you say. But the words should be yours."
She stared at him. The Reaper. Stepping back so a mortal could lead.
"You're sure about this?"
"I'm sure about you."
Her throat tightened. No time to process that. No time for any of it.
She started toward the central square.
The path wound between close-built houses, and even now she could see traces of the life here.
A communal table set beneath a bone-arch canopy, long enough for dozens, its surface scarred from shared meals.
Window boxes where someone had coaxed pale silver moss into growing, the only living thing she'd seen in the Forsaken realm that wasn't one of Dante's black roses.
A children's corner where smooth stones had been stacked into small towers, a game abandoned mid-build.
These people had taken the materials of despair and made a home from them. And it was falling apart.
The square was packed when they arrived. Hundreds of souls pressing close, translucent forms shimmering in the dying light. Warriors ringed the perimeter. Families huddled in tight clusters.
Dante stopped at the platform's edge. Didn't follow her up.
The crowd noticed. Murmurs rippled outward. The Reaper hanging back. The mortal woman stepping forward alone.
Brynn felt every eye on her as she climbed onto the raised stone. The cold circlet pressed against her forehead. The bandages on her wrists stood out stark white.
A broad-shouldered blacksmith pushed to the front, arms folded. "We know what's happening to the realm. What we want to know is why we should listen to you."
Fair. Brutally fair.
She hadn't prepared for this. Hadn't expected to be the one standing here with a crowd waiting for answers. Her hands wanted to shake. She didn't let them.
"Because I owe you the truth about what's killing your home."
She held the blacksmith's gaze.
"Caelum of the Mourned has been sabotaging the wards for months. Weakening the barriers. Destabilizing the realm piece by piece. Everything you've been feeling—the tremors, the failing ward-stones, the corruption in the air—that's him. That's been him all along."
The murmurs that rippled through the crowd carried shock. They'd expected anyone but him.
"But I made it worse." She didn't let herself look away. "The gateway I opened tore through defenses that were already barely holding. I didn't know. That doesn't matter. I accelerated the collapse, and I'm not here to pretend otherwise."
Someone in the crowd made a sound of disgust. A woman pulled her children back another step.
"So you're here to apologize?" The blacksmith's voice was flat. "While our home crumbles?"
"No. I'm here because I'm the only one who can close what I opened. And I can't do it alone."
The ground heaved. Stone cracked near the fountain with a sound like snapping bones, and a child cried out. When the tremor passed, no one had fled.
They were listening.
"Caelum's been harvesting souls. Stripping away everything that makes you you—memories, choices, your entire self extracted and discarded. He's building an army of empty shells, and when he's done with the tormented courts, he'll come for the free settlements. For everything you've built."
She stepped to the platform's edge. Close enough to see the fear in their faces, the anger, the desperate hope they were trying not to feel.
"He calls it mercy. Calls it peace." Her voice hardened. "It's annihilation. And I will burn in every hell that exists before I let him do to you what he's done to thousands of others."
The circlet flared hot against her skin. Responding to her fury, to the ward-magic threaded through every soul here.
"You don't owe me anything. I'm the outsider who made your situation worse. You have every right to tell me to go to hell and handle this myself."
Her chest ached. Her wrists throbbed beneath the bandages.
"But I'm asking anyway. Fight with me. Not for the Reaper—" she gestured toward Dante without looking at him, "—not for any Death Lord. For what you built here. For the freedom you bled for. For every soul who'll face the same choice after you."
Silence stretched. The crowd barely breathed.
The blacksmith studied her for a long moment. "You admit you made it worse."
"Yes."
"And you think you can fix it."
"I can close the gateway. Stop the hemorrhaging. Whether we win the war against the one who started all this—" She shook her head. "I won't promise what I can't guarantee. But I'll die trying."
He looked past her, at Dante standing motionless at the platform's edge. "And him? Why isn't the Reaper the one asking?"
"Because he had the sense to know you'd rather hear it from me." She finally glanced back at Dante, then returned her attention to the blacksmith. "You earned your freedom from Death Lords. He's not here to command you. He's here to fight beside you, if you'll have him."
The blacksmith's eyebrows rose. He looked at the Reaper, standing silent at the edge of his own rally. Letting a mortal speak for them both.
Something shifted in the crowd.
"My steel doesn't fail." The blacksmith's voice had changed. Rough with something that might have been respect. "Neither do I."
An older woman stepped forward, translucent at the edges. "My wards are yours, my lady."
Then more. A tactical officer pledging his warriors. Craftsmen. Scouts. Voices overlapping until she lost count.
Some souls vanished into side streets without a word.
Parents slipped away with their children.
But enough stayed.
Enough looked at her and chose to believe.
The square dissolved into organized chaos. Another tremor hit, harder than before, and the urgency turned desperate.
An elderly soul caught Brynn's hand as she moved through the crowd. Her grip was iron, even as her form faded. "Stubborn. Too brave for your own good." The old woman's smile was sad and knowing. "Go save our world, child."
Dante materialized at her side the moment she stepped away from the last cluster of volunteers.
"Ninety minutes," he announced, voice carrying over the chaos. "Fighters by specialty. Non-combatants evacuated. Move."
Then his hand closed around her elbow, pulling her into the shadow of a doorway where the crowd couldn't see. His body caged hers against the wall, close enough that she felt heat radiating off him without quite touching.
"You told them I'm here to fight beside them." His voice was low. Rough. "Not to command."
Her pulse jumped. "It's what they needed to hear."
"It's also true." His thumb traced the inside of her wrist, right above the bandage. "You understand something I never learned. How to make people want to follow."
"Dante—"
"I've commanded armies through fear for centuries." His shadows wound around her waist, pulling her closer. "Watching you do it through faith is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen."
His mouth hovered an inch from hers. She could feel his breath, warm against her lips.
"Terrifying," she managed. "That's romantic."
"It is." His eyes held hers. "You have no idea what you've become."
Then he stepped back.
His shadows released her slowly, trailing across her hips like a promise.
"Ninety minutes." His voice had dropped low enough to make her knees unreliable. "Then after we win this war..."
He didn't finish. Didn't need to.
She pushed off the wall on legs that weren't entirely steady. "Try to keep up, Reaper."
His smile was the most dangerous thing she'd seen all night.
She walked back into the chaos, skin still burning where his shadows had touched her.