Chapter 76
LXXVI.
brYNN
The moment Brynn's hands touched the corrupted ward-stone, something tore open behind her eyes.
Something worse than pain. Her mind was forced to contain years of corruption all at once. Caelum's modifications clawing at her awareness, fighting her attempt to undo them—like the work was alive, refusing to die.
Her circlet blazed white.
Ward-sight flooded in. She saw the original architecture her ancestors had built, with clean lines and every angle precise, now buried under rot, golden corruption threading through the patterns like veins of infection.
Spreading. Growing. But underneath, still intact, still waiting: the original protocols, sleeping for ages, hoping someone with the right bloodline would come.
Her ward magic poured through the patterns, ripping at the corruption like peeling back dead tissue to find what was still alive beneath. The gateway convulsed, golden light pulsing erratically, fighting her.
The stone burned beneath her palms—skin blistering, flesh cooking against ward-work that didn't want to be fixed. The bandages on her wrists, already soaked from Caelum's torture, went hot and wet, blood running down her arms and dripping onto the stone.
Her blood mixing with her ancestors' work.
"Channel! Now!"
Power slammed into her from behind.
The ward-keepers responded. The entire network opened. Every stone they'd synchronized, every point in Dante's realm—all of it flowing through her mortal body at once.
Her spine arched. Every nerve lit up. Magic that should have killed her poured through in torrents.
This is what it feels like to burn alive from the inside.
The gateway howled, reality screaming as she forced it to change.
Soul-flow channels flickered. For one moment, they stopped flowing inward. The corruption wavered.
Then it surged back twice as hard.
Copper flooded her mouth. She'd bitten through her tongue. Every muscle locked as centuries of Caelum's work pushed back at once.
Opening had been turning a key.
This was holding a wound closed while something on the other side tried to tear it open.
Her hands were melting.
She could smell her own flesh. Sharp. Nauseating. But if she let go now, she'd lose everything. Every soul who'd died to get her here.
Updates crashed through the death-link:
Seraphina: "Taking heavy losses. Can't hold much longer. Finish it NOW."
Vex: "He knows. His army is converging. MOVE FASTER."
Thessa: "Spirit-paths collapsing. So many trapped in processing..."
She pushed harder—blood running from her nose. Vision fracturing. Her magic tore through corrupted patterns with desperate violence.
One modification burned away. Then another. Ward-stones began grinding back toward their original positions. A channel was redirected. Light shifted from sickly gold to clean blue-white.
The chamber shook from the gateway itself, from corruption that had grown into the stone like roots.
Dante's voice across the link: "INCOMING! Hundreds! All entrances!"
She couldn't look away. A second of broken concentration would undo everything.
But she heard it.
Steel on shells. Temperature dropping as Dante unleashed the Reaper. Death-knights shouting. Shadow-guards fighting. Dying.
Someone screamed, cut off mid-sound.
The death pulse hit like a blade. Terror, pain, nothing.
A hundred and thirteen. They'd lost a hundred and twelve getting here, and now—
Another pulse.
A hundred and fourteen.
A third: Jill, the ward-keeper who'd stood beside her during the synchronization, whose last thought was confusion because she'd been in the back, she'd been safe, how had they reached her—
A hundred and fifteen.
Tears and blood ran down her face. Her body was breaking—blood vessels bursting in her eyes, muscles tearing.
She was dying, the magic burning her hollow.
But the gateway was closing.
Another stone ground into place. Another channel snapped back, light shifting gold to white and holding. Her ancestors' work remembering itself.
Behind her, the battle raged—Dante's voice calm, certain, coordinating the defense.
He was out there. Could be dying right now. Could already be gone and she wouldn't know because she couldn't turn around, couldn't check, couldn't do anything but stand here with her hands fused to stone while he—
Don't. Don't think it. Don't let it in.
But she couldn't stop her mind from showing her: Dante falling. Dante's shadows going still. Dante's voice cutting off mid-command the way Jill’s scream had cut off, there and then not, alive and then just—nothing.
She poured everything into the closure. Every drop. Every spark.
The ward-stones blazed like stars.
Perfect patterns. What her ancestors had built to last.
The soul-flow channels redirected with a sound like bones setting, like the world remembering how to breathe.
The gateway sealed.
Her hands tore free from the stone—skin peeling away, bloody handprints left behind.
Her legs buckled.
"It's done." The words came out barely a whisper. "It's closed."
She turned, needing to see him, needing to know—
Chaos. Shells flooding through every entrance. Death-knights falling back. Shadow-guards desperate. Dante's shadows everywhere, coordinating retreat.
His voice through the link: "Fighting retreat! Wounded first—"
Still alive.
Golden light erupted across the chamber.
Caelum materialized at the center.
Light blazed around him like a dying sun. His mouth twisted. His hands shook at his sides. Every trace of the compassionate mask had cracked away, leaving something raw underneath—something that had been hiding.
"You closed it." The words came out broken, incredulous. "You actually—"
He looked at the sealed gateway. The restored ward-stones glowing blue-white. Centuries of his work undone.
His masterpiece. Burned to nothing.
When his eyes found her, they were empty of everything except one thing.
She'd seen rage before, had survived his torture, endured his attempts to break her.
This wasn't rage.
This was a god denied his heaven. And she was the one who'd taken it from him.
Some things couldn't be forgiven. Some things demanded blood.
She had just enough time to think: He's going to kill me himself.
Then Caelum moved.