Chapter 74
LXXIV.
brYNN
Her boots hit ground that rippled with each step—solid stone becoming soft, then solid again, like walking on something that couldn't make up its mind.
Above her, the sky had cracked where the realms collided—purple and red and silver bleeding through the fractures like light through a broken window.
And seeping through all of it, Caelum's golden glow.
The color of warm honey. The feeling of something rotting underneath.
Thirty-five hundred souls materialized around her. Death-knights. Shadow-guards. A thousand freed souls from Nightfall who'd believed her when she said this was worth dying for.
What if she was wrong?
The thought came to her before she could stop it. What if she couldn't close the gateway? What if she froze at the critical moment and everyone who'd followed her here paid for her failure with their existence?
"Brynn." Dante's voice cut through. His shadows brushed her wrist. "Stay with me."
She nodded. Shoved the doubt down where it couldn't paralyze her. Straightened her spine.
Other transport circles flared across the convergence point.
Seraphina's army hit the ground to the east like a storm making landfall—four thousand warriors in red-stone armor, war machines towering behind them. Frames of fused bone built from the dead of wars they'd already won.
Vex's forces materialized to the west—two thousand beautiful nightmares that prowled instead of standing, vibrating with hunger that made the air shimmer.
Thessa's spirits drifted in from the north. Fifteen hundred ghostly presences haunting forward through the fractured light.
Eleven thousand against thirty thousand.
The math kept running in her head.
The Death Lords converged at the center. Brynn stayed with Dante, the circlet blazing against her forehead, and tried to look like she belonged among immortals.
Seraphina reached them first, six feet of scarred warrior queen. Her eyes swept Brynn with the casual appraisal of someone who'd watched empires burn.
"The human lives." Approval underneath. "Still breathing after everything—"
"Tell me," Vex interrupted, prowling closer, form flickering at the edges, "did the Reaper consume you? Make you beg for—"
Shadows erupted between them. Dante's darkness formed a wall, temperature plummeting until frost cracked across the ground.
"Mine." The word came out barely human.
Vex laughed, backing off. Seraphina's mouth curved with something like amusement. And Thessa simply materialized at Brynn's shoulder without warning, close enough that the chill of her ghostly form sent goosebumps prickling down Brynn's neck.
"You're standing at a crossroads, child."
Brynn flinched. Thessa's eyes held that distant look.
"The gateway closes. That much is certain.
" Her translucent form flickered, revealing glimpses layered over one another.
Brynn bloody but standing. Brynn on her knees, screaming.
Brynn alone in darkness, reaching for someone who wasn't there anymore.
"What you sacrifice in the closing... that choice is still being made. "
The images burned into Brynn's mind. Alone. Reaching for someone who wasn't there.
Dante.
She couldn't breathe.
"Enough prophecy." Seraphina's voice cracked like a whip. "We have a war to fight. Save the riddles for after we've won."
Thessa smiled sadly and began expanding outward, ghostly threads reaching toward each army. The death-link taking shape.
The first connection hit Brynn like a fist to the chest.
Four thousand warriors breathing as one, their battle-hunger vibrating through her bones. Then Vex's forces crashed into her awareness, restless and burning and consuming until she wanted to tear something apart with her bare hands—
Cold cut through. Thessa's spirits joining, steadying the chaos like ice water over fire.
And beneath it all, anchoring her: Dante. Solid. Immovable. His shadows tightened around her waist as eleven thousand souls pressed against her awareness.
"Breathe." His presence bled through the link. "I've got you."
She let the flood settle into patterns instead of drowning.
His voice carried across the death-link: "Final positions.
Seraphina draws their main force east. Vex hits harvesting chambers from below.
Thessa extracts victims through the spirit-paths.
I take the central approach with the Architect.
She closes the gateway." A pause that felt weighted. "We end this today."
Acknowledgments pulsed back. Seraphina's determination, sharp as shattered glass. Vex's hungry anticipation. Thessa's gentle certainty.
Brynn made herself look toward their destination.
The horizon pulsed with sickly gold. And in that light, movement. Shapes beyond counting. Soul-soldiers emptied of everything that made them human, waiting in perfect, silent rows.
Thirty thousand.
The number she couldn't stop counting.
Through the death-link, she felt their forces register the same thing. The collective flinch. The moment of raw terror before training and purpose clamped down over survival instinct.
They knew. Every soul here knew most of them wouldn't survive.
They were standing anyway. Because she'd asked them to.
"They chose this." Dante's voice, quiet beneath the link's noise. "You gave them something worth choosing."
"And if I can’t close it?” The words slipped out before she could stop them. "If I freeze and they all die for nothing?"
His hand found hers, squeezed once, hard enough to bruise.
"Then I'll burn through every soul between here and that gateway to give you another chance." His dark eyes held hers. "And another after that. However many it takes. You won't fail alone, Brynn. You won't fail at all."
Her throat closed.
She didn't have words. So she squeezed back, just as hard, and let that be enough.
The sky lightened, dawn bleeding across the fractured horizon.
The death-link pulsed: all positions ready.
Dante's hand released hers. But his shadows tightened around her waist one last time. A private claim beneath the weight of eleven thousand watching souls.
"Together," she said.
"Together." He made it sound like a vow. Like something that could survive even this.
Dawn broke.
Seraphina's battle-cry split the morning, four thousand warriors surging forward in a tide of violence. Vex's infiltrators vanished underground. Thessa's spirits drifted toward the paths like fog with terrible purpose.
And their thirty-five hundred advanced. Toward the corrupted paradise. Toward the gateway she'd opened and had to close. Toward thirty thousand empty shells waiting to tear them apart.
The circlet burned against her forehead. Ward-symbols flaring bright enough to taste.
Eleven thousand souls at her back. One impossible task ahead.
Brynn stopped counting and started walking.