Chapter 28
Lucien
The wind brushes my face as I step onto the rooftop. Below us, the city stirs. Sirens wailing, neon flickering, mortals drifting through their lives, unaware of what’s gathering just beyond their sight. Xan is already here, crouched at the center of the grid we carved into the concrete hours ago.
The etched lines and buried channels pulse softly—a low, living beat—a patchwork of old warper craft stitched together with newer tricks. Conduits glimmer along the rim of the sigil, faint but constant. Just enough to draw something in.
A lure. Or a trigger. Depends on how lucky we are.
He doesn’t look up when I approach. Just mutters, “Three hours. Maybe less. If they’re watching for a spike, that’s when they’ll move.”
I nod and take my place opposite him. The air feels tight, pressing in from all sides. We’ve spent the last two days putting this plan together, keeping Cece’s routine untouched so she wouldn’t know. But I know she feels it. Something closing in. She has a sense for these things.
“You think it’s the Surgers?” I ask. “Or someone inside the High Order?”
Xan glances up. His face is unreadable, but I know that look. He’s already considered worse.
“If it were Aris, we’d have felt it by now,” he says. “This is nearly surgical. Someone with precision, ability, and . . .” He hesitates, the last word coming out uneasy. “ . . . obsession.” He searches my face before continuing. “With Cece.”
He doesn’t need to explain further.
Light seems to bend near her. Energies are tuning themselves to her. It’s like she doesn’t just brush against the deeper currents of realms—she’s part of it. And power like that? Something always comes hunting.
“I reinforced the anchors around her apartment,” Xan says, sweeping a surveyor across the sigil. It skids once before settling on the north point. Locked. “If they try to warp in again, no matter how slight, we’ll catch it.”
“And if they don’t go around her?” I ask. “If they go through?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
My jaw tightens as I turn toward the skyline, the city draped in steel and shadow. Midnight’s closing in. The air has gone cold, like something’s already begun.
Cece is probably asleep. Or at least I hope she is. My fists curl, the energy inside me stirring, sparking faintly beneath my skin.
“I won’t let them get to her,” I say—more promise than words.
Xan meets my eyes, empty of humor. Just violence waiting to be used. “Then be ready to kill whoever’s coming.”
The city’s edge bends in the distance, smeared in burnt orange and electric violet as the night settles in. Xan sets the final ward stone at the western anchor. I’ve seen him under pressure plenty of times, but I’ve never seen him like this.
The silence between us feels awkward. We’ve rebuilt wards side by side, stitched cracks in the realm, sealed bleed-throughs before. There were rules for that. Steps. Safeties.
This has none of that.
This is about her.
“East node’s warping,” Xan says, not looking up. “Feels like it’s bending toward her again.”
“She’s pushing back,” I say. “Doesn’t matter that she’s asleep.”
He adjusts the channeling sigils, guiding the excess power away with a practiced sweep of his hand. “Her field keeps expanding. If anyone’s searching for spikes, they’ll find her the moment she flares again.”
The thought hits sharp in my chest.
Cece doesn’t know what we’ve built here. She knows something’s wrong—I can see it in the way she watches the shadows—but I never told her we were using the trace she left behind to lure a breach.
It isn’t betrayal. It’s protection. A safeguard.
Still, it feels like stepping over a line I swore I wouldn’t cross.
I move to the northern anchor and press two fingers to the reinforced channel, sending a measured pulse of force through the stone. The wards answer at once, flaring hot and bright, their light racing outward along the lines we’ve drawn.
“How long?” I ask.
Xan tilts his head slightly, as if listening to a whisper buried under the hum of the grid.
“Not long,” he murmurs. “It’s tightening. You don’t feel that?”
I do.
It’s like the air’s folding in on itself. Pressure builds behind my eyes, a shimmer of static crawling down my arms. Her power is twisting the air again, distorting the space around us, tugging at the edges of reality as if the world were a thin veil stretched to tearing.
Something’s approaching.
“When they reach through, we get one chance to follow the thread,” Xan says, his voice sharpened to a blade. “If we catch the origin, we catch the sender. You ready?”
I don’t answer at first. Her charge still clings to the air, almost defiant. As if some part of her refuses to fade, refuses to let go.
“I’m not ready,” I say quietly. “But I’m doing it anyway.”
The ground heaves beneath us, a violent pulse rippling through the concrete, and the entire grid ignites. Runes flare bright, energy bursting outward in a shockwave that launches dust into the air. A rift tears open, splitting reality like fabric pulled past its limit.
Xan’s already moving, firing a tracer into the rupture, catching the distortion and latching the tether.
But for a moment, I’m frozen.
Because whatever is forcing its way through the breach isn’t just tracking her.
It’s calling to her.
And worse—she’s starting to answer.
The grid flares again, wild and frantic, spilling light in jagged bursts. And then it tears. Not stone. Not sigil—existence.
A seam splits open through the heart of the sigil, too precise to be accident, too quiet to be anything mortal.
This is no breach.
This is an older power waking up.
Xan swears under his breath. “That’s not a breach.”
I already know what it is.
“Surgers.”
I say it aloud, and the moment I do, the temperature drops. Literally. The pressure pulls inward like a vacuum collapsing in slow motion. My breath fogs in the air. The sigil flickers.
The Surgers were the first. The original realm guardians for all passage, including that of Imperium.
Before we bent reality to our will, they channeled pure energy—operated on intuition, instinct, a harmony with the world we can barely understand now.
But the gods cast them out. Said they were dangerous, uncontrollable, and sought to increase their power enough to threaten the gods themselves.
That wasn’t wrong.
But it wasn’t the whole truth.
“They shouldn’t be able to open a channel this deep,” Xan mutters. “They need a tether.”
“They have one,” I say.
Her.
I close my eyes and reach for the imprint I left on her when I pulled her across realms, when I brought her back. It’s a thin thread now, pulsing faint, but I feel it.
She’s not just awake.
She’s aware.
Not panicking or afraid—but focused.
I press my hand to the sigil’s node and send a surge into the breach. Not to seal it—that chance is long gone—but to stall its hunger.
I can see them now, just beyond the veil. Their forms are made of fused energy, not flesh. They vibrate out of phase, always moving, always watching. They don’t rush. They don’t need to.
Because they’re not here to fight.
They’re here to claim.
“She’s ascending,” one of them says.
The voice cuts through the space between us. Not audible. Not thought. Something else entirely—a frequency my body shouldn’t even be able to register.
“She was ours before she was yours,” another adds. “She remembers.”
“Bullshit,” Xan snarls, launching another tracer into the breach.
They don’t even flinch. They’re not here to argue—certainly not with us.
“She’s pulling toward them,” I whisper, and the truth hits like iron in my chest. It isn’t just that they’re calling to her. She’s answering. Willingly.
Her presence surges again. Blocks away. Her apartment.
Whatever part of her is waking sends a shock through the city, sharp and unmistakable.
The skyline shivers. I catch it then—not her body, but her echo.
A shadow of her power slides through the air, bending as it drags itself toward the rupture, like the realm is giving up and letting her lead it.
“She’s crossing over,” I say. “This isn’t a response anymore. She’s on the move.”
Xan’s eyes widen, horrified. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s aligning with their pull.”
Which is exactly what the Surgers want. Because if she finishes the transition—if she lets go of this realm entirely—we might never get her back. Not as she was. Not as Cece.
I reach for her across the breach with everything in me. Not with my body—there’s no time for that—but with my field, stretching past the tear, bending force and memory, pulling the shape of her energy back toward mine. Toward the mark I left when I dragged her from the tracks and rewrote her fate.
“Cece,” I whisper. “You’re not theirs.”
For a split second, everything slows. It’s as if the world stands still.
And I feel her.
Like a live wire across my spine.
“Luc?”
It’s her thought, and there’s no fear or confusion in it. Just something far more dangerous.
Temptation.
“They feel like home,” she says. “I remember pieces. Before the train. Before everything . . .”
“No!” I push back. “That’s not memory—it’s a facade. They’re twisting what you are. It’s not real. This is your home. You don’t belong to them.”
The breach surges, and with it, the Surgers step closer—three of them now, more forming behind.
Sigils flare as Xan ignites the failsafe, power crawling up his arms. “We have to collapse the conduit,” he warns. “If we don’t, they’ll pull her fully into their phase. If we sever it—”
“We lose her.”
That hangs there between us.
But there’s no time for second-guessing or debate. Because at the breach’s edge, Cece begins to manifest—her essence bleeding through the tear, sharp as light, too bright to belong to this world. She’s slipping, no longer wholly herself.
But I’m not letting her go.
I can’t. I won’t.
I pour everything I have into the anchor mark—a surge that shakes my bones and sears through the node. The sigil scorches under my touch, its cry tearing across the field. A signal forged with a single intention.
Choice.
“Cece,” I say her name as the air buckles around us. “It’s them . . . or me. Their truth, or the one we chose. The one we’re still shaping together. Stay with me.”
I step closer, lowering my voice.
“Please. I can’t lose you. I don’t want a world that doesn’t have you in it.”
And just before the breach consumes her completely . . . she hesitates.
Her light shudders.
And then—she pulls back.
She takes control and chooses herself—and us.
The breach howls in protest. The Surgers reach, but miss. The connection collapses like glass into dust. Cece’s energy slams back into her body across the city, and I feel the air settle.
I hit the ground hard, slumping onto the concrete, arms hanging over my knees as I struggle to catch my breath, every ounce of energy I had gone.
Xan drops to a knee, panting. “We’re not going to get that lucky again.”
I stare at the burned-out sigil, the breach scar still pulsing faintly beneath my boots. “No,” I murmur. “Next time, they won’t try to take her.”
Xan glances at me. “Then what?”
“They’ll try to turn her.”
Minutes pass, and I still stare at the place where Cece’s projection vanished. Not out of shock, but because I felt it happen. The hesitation. For a split second, she didn’t want to come back.
And I get it.
The Surgers don’t just pull. They offer a kind of belonging none of us can compete with. Not with logic. Not even with protection. They offered her origin. And to someone who’s never had that, it’s everything.
“She’s not safe,” Xan says, breath tight. “They’re going to try again. We’re past subtle tactics now. They’ll escalate.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “I know.”
He pauses, then adds, “You felt it too, didn’t you? That moment when she almost chose them?”
I nod.
“She’s slipping.”
“No,” Xan says. “She’s evolving. Faster than anything we’ve seen. Too fast. She’s not syncing with this world anymore. She’s syncing with theirs. You said it yourself—she doesn’t just bend energy. She’s pulling it.”
Warpers bend the field. Cece is shaping it. It’s something completely different.
“She needs to be contained,” he continues. “Or trained. Or something. If the High Order catches wind of this—”
“They won’t!” I snap. “Not yet.”
“You can’t hide her forever, Luc.”
“I don’t have to hide her.” I look toward the city, toward the thin line of light coming from her window across the buildings. “I just have to make sure she doesn’t forget who she is before they convince her she’s something else.”
Xan lets out a breath. “Then we need to move fast.”
He’s right.
This breach wasn’t an attack.
It was a test.
They didn’t want to take her.
They wanted to see if she’d come willingly.
And next time?
They won’t ask.