The west wall exploded in a rain of brick and steel shrapnel.

  I blinked blood from my eyes just in time to see the shockwave tear through the nearest catwalk. A half-shifter guard went flying, slamming into the far wall with a crunch that sounded like the end of a ribcage. Smoke billowed. Lights flickered. Screams started.

  And then—boots.

  Elly was first through the breach.

  She looked like the cover of a banned grimoire: wild-eyed, coat flaring like it had a soul of its own, both hands wreathed in pulsing, crackling sigils. Her aura warped fate itself, a shifting pocket of chaos that bent luck to her will.

  She launched a pair of knives and spells so fast they nearly collided midair—one flash-froze a charging brute mid-step, the other ignited into a shrieking shower of cursed sparks that engulfed a knot of guards on the upper level.

  “Where is he?!” she screamed. “Where is my Daniel?!”

  My? That was… surprisingly nice to hear.

  Eury barreled in behind her, jacket torn open to reveal reinforced armor braided through the fabric like dragon bone. Her claws were already red when she grabbed the nearest cultist, ripped their weapon away with one hand, and body-slammed them through a support beam with the other.

  Her white blouse—of all things—was blood-spattered but immaculate in its menace.

  The room panicked.

  Then came the others.

  Lucian Voss, pale-skinned vampire and former war tactician, moved like a living scalpel. Ghost-smooth. Precise. Eyes like surgical blades. He left behind wide, unblinking corpses with twin pinpricks blooming from their necks.

  A centaur thundered in next—Ironhoof. Massive. Hooves cracking concrete. His crescent glaive cleaved through cultists like they were overgrown weeds.

  Sélis shimmered into being near the main controls, their Dopplegeist form flickering between avatars: one moment a bone-armored juggernaut, the next a silver-eyed siren with razored limbs. Their voice cracked through the chaos in perfect mimicry of an Aether commander, sowing just enough confusion for a knife to slip between ribs.

  Then came the rest: my people.

  Every damn one I’d kissed, helped, or charmed into owing me a favor.

  The Stormcaller, robed in tattered denim, hands blazing with thunder.

  The silent Dervish, her blades a whirling constellation of death.

  Reeva the Rat Queen, unseen—but her swarm was there. Rats boiled across the floor like a living tide. Chattering. Biting. Devouring.

  Someone I didn’t recognize took an eldritch bolt for Elly—hit full in the chest, skin smoking. He kept going.

  They were all there.

  Every favor. Every kiss. Every stupid, beautiful moment I thought would never matter again.

  And for a moment, I almost felt—loved.

  The lower ranks of the Eyes were no match. Not against this fury. Not against this many monsters who’d chosen to fight on my side.

  I tried to stand. My ribs screamed. My knee crumpled. The world spun.

  But the fight wasn’t over.

  And I wasn’t done.

  Then—the room went cold. Not wind-cold. Not even grave-cold.

  Soul-cold.

  Everything stopped.

  Elly’s spell fizzled mid-cast. Eury froze, claws mid-swing. The vampire halted with teeth bared. Sélis twitched—caught between frames, one foot half-in a form that hadn’t decided if it had wings.

  And then the boss stepped forward, finally revealing her true self: the Eidolich.

  She didn’t enter. She was already here. A shadow that simply remembered to move.

  Draped in burial-silk robes that shimmered like funeral glass, she glided across the battlefield without touching the ground. Her face was perfect in the way wax figures are perfect—lifeless, still, too symmetrical. Her eyes burned with stolen souls—hundreds of them, swirling like storm clouds behind crystal glass.

  Every step sounded like a nail driven into a coffin.

  She didn’t speak at first. She only studied me, her head tilted, face blank—like a scientist studying a rare disease under a microscope.

  Then she said, “You… are the one they all came for.”

  Her voice was a harmony of ash and wind. Quiet. Inescapable.

  She drifted closer. Her silks hissed like snakes through dust. “Why? You steal their powers… and yet they fight to save you. The thief of their gifts.”

  I couldn’t answer.

  Could barely breathe.

  But I still had one thing left: Anger.

  She raised her hand, and I felt it—an unraveling. Not a blast. Not a punch. But a pull. Like reality itself was trying to peel me apart, thread by thread.

  “You are not just a signal,” she murmured. “You are Null. The silence inside the storm.”

  She leaned close. Her hand hovered over my heart.

  “I’m going to consume you. Ingest your unweaving. Tear out that rarest note in the song… and let it become part of me.”

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  I wheezed out a dry, wet-lunged laugh.

  “Lady,” I said, “you better hope eating me isn’t as disappointing as it sounds.”

  A pause.

  Then—a smile. Barely there. Cruel. Hungry.

  “I assure you,” she said, “this won’t be pleasant for either of us.”

  “Yeah,” I coughed. “Real sexy.”

  She didn’t laugh. But she didn’t blink either. She just drew a ring of light in the air—slowly, ritualistically. The runes around her wrist flared to life.

  And then—

  “No!” Elly’s voice, ragged with fury. She shoved against the cold, luck reeling in all directions, and managed one step forward before it slammed her still again.

  Eury growled deep in her throat. Sélis buckled under the pressure, glitching and spasming.

  But none of them could move.

  The Eidolich didn’t care. Her gaze never left mine.

  “You are too loud,” she whispered. “Too bright. Too dangerous to leave unfinished.”

  Ghostly fire bloomed in her hand.

  I closed my eyes. Not out of fear. Out of rage.

  Then. A voice. Thin. Cracked. Barely audible.

  “Danny…”

  Lily.

  They had her suspended in the back of the room, her body bound in a null field, limbs dangling like a marionette without strings. Her skin was ash-pale, her lips split. But her eyes still burned.

  And they locked on mine.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  I smiled through cracked teeth. “You kidding? I brought friends.”

  Right then, the Aether comm unit on the far wall crackled to life.

  Panic.

  “North perimeter is compromised—there’s—there’s fire in the—shit! They’ve got another breach incoming—something big—too fast to track—what the hell is that?!”

  The Eidolich’s head tilted. Still no fear. But… curiosity.

  I coughed again, and this time blood hit my lips. Still smiling.

  “Hey,” I said, looking up at her. “You’re gonna want to run now.”

  Another explosion. Closer. Walls shook. Beams groaned.

  “That?” I nodded toward the noise. “That’s not a rescue party…”

  The floor shook. Deep. Rhythmic.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Heat rolled in.

  “That’s a fucking dragon.”

  The northern wall didn’t explode so much as disintegrate.

  Fire and light crashed through like a second sun. The cultists still standing, those that hadn’t gone down in the supernatural assault of my allies, turned too late. They were caught in the blast wave as glass turned to steam, steel peeled like burning paper, and the floor heaved under a shock of displaced magic.

  She stepped through the blaze like it was nothing.

  Jade.

  Eight feet tall, wings unfurled and wrapped in scaled skin that shimmered with divine sigils and molten veins. Her horns arced like blades. Her eyes were greedy stars.

  She didn’t roar. She smiled.

  “Found you,” she said simply. “That little elf charm of yours made it easy.”

  The air buckled. Cultists screamed. The nearest three tried to raise their weapons—and vanished in a blur of red vapor as Jade’s tail whipped through them like a guillotine of flame.

  Then she moved.

  There was no wasted effort. Just destruction. Graceful, unstoppable, surgical destruction. Fire rolled from her with each step. Not just heat—but judgment. Walls melted. Floors collapsed. The remaining Aether guards broke ranks, some running, others burning before they even got the chance.

  Elly, still pinned by the Eidolich’s soul lock, stared with wide, stunned eyes.

  “Holy shit,” she whispered. “You actually brought Jade out of retirement?”

  “I didn’t bring her,” I croaked. “I hired her with a bargain.”

  Jade advanced toward the raised dais where the Eidolich stood—now at last forced to turn, her stillness faltering for the first time.

  “You are interrupting something delicate,” the Eidolich hissed, all breath and echo. “You have made an enemy you cannot unmake.”

  Jade smiled wider. “The benefit of being nigh immortal,” she said calmly, “is I have time to remove my enemies. Thoroughly.”

  The Eidolich raised both hands, runes blazing, but Jade was already there. The collision didn’t look like magic. It looked like a supernova.

  Their clash shook the structure. Concrete cracked. Steel supports snapped like twigs. Even the entrapment field around Lily wavered. Everyone still conscious hit the ground as waves of corrupted magic and flame collided in the space between them.

  Jade struck with a palm that shattered the Eidolich’s body into ash. But ash wasn’t the core.

  The Eidolich’s spirit remained—twisting, hissing, reforming midair. Not flesh, not shadow. Pure soul, flailing for anchor. Desperate now. Furious. And no longer interested in power.

  It reached for Lily.

  Her body. Her life.

  Its tendrils extended—like smoke shot through with malice—straight for her body. I watched Lily’s pupils dilate in horror as the dark coils reached for her, and something in me snapped.

  “No,” I whispered, my voice hoarse and tight. No.

  Jade’s voice cut through the panic like a scalpel.

  “She’s not bound to a single vessel,” she said. “She rides flesh like mist on stone. If you want her gone, Daniel... you have to sever the tether.”

  I was barely conscious. My body screamed in every nerve. My ribs were broken, my limbs numb. But when I saw those tendrils wrap around Lily’s throat like cold iron...

  There was no choice.

  “She’ll take her,” I said hoarsely. “She’ll steal her.”

  Jade looked at me. Her gaze wasn’t kind. It wasn’t cruel. It was precise.

  “And you will kill to protect her.”

  The words punched through the noise.

  Kill.

  The words hit like a punch. Kill. I wanted to run. To crawl. But the fire inside me rose—the rage at the thought of what that thing would do to her.

  I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t let this happen.

  I looked at Jade. “How?”

  Jade took one step back. Wings folding like the curtain of a stage. “Good,” she said. “You’ll only do this if you hate it.”

  The Eidolich’s fingers of void had reached Lily’s throat. Wrapping. Tightening.

  I hated it.

  I hated her. I hated what she was, what she did, what she took.

  I repeated Jade’s words—the unmaking technique. I felt something crack inside me. The air twisted. The world folded in around me like a closing fist. The breath in my lungs turned to fire and salt.

  I reached.

  Into the space between spaces. Into her.

  And I pulled.

  The universe screamed.

  The Eidolich’s shadow shattered. Her stolen magic detonated, ripping through the veil of flesh she had tried to stitch together. I saw faces—hundreds—reflected in shards of her soul. Eyes pleading. Some sobbing. Some screaming. Some whispering, “don’t look.”

  But I looked.

  I had to.

  She convulsed. The scream that came from her wasn’t hers. It belonged to something ancient. Something that had never been meant to be born in this world. My hands burned. My skin crawled with the weight of her agony.

  But I held on.

  I ripped her essence from Lily’s body.

  The rage. The ambition. The devouring intellect. I pulled all of it free.

  It hurt. It burned. My vision went white at the edges. My lungs seized. My blood boiled.

  But I kept pulling.

  Until—finally—the core unraveled like a scream thrown into a black hole.

  The Eidolich’s echo scattered into nothing.

  Her soul lost purchase. Her scream spiraled into oblivion.

  Banished.

  Not destroyed—never that lucky—but gone.

  Silence fell. The kind of silence that presses on your chest, fills your ears, and makes your very bones shudder with its weight.

  Jade didn’t speak. She simply stood there as the diminutive travel agent, her dragon form vanished, her gaze never leaving the space where the Eidolich had stood.

  Elly, frozen in shock, couldn’t move. Her eyes were wide, as if she had just witnessed something not meant for anyone to see.

  Even Eury—bloodied—stood back, her claws still dripping with the blood of the fallen, her expression unreadable.

  I couldn’t stand. My legs gave way beneath me, and I fell to my knees, the world spinning around me.

  I felt something heavy in my chest. It wasn’t just the physical pain. It was something… else.

  Lily.

  I looked at her—there she was, her body trembling, but still whole. Alive. I had saved her. I’d faced an unspeakable evil and saved my friend.

  But this time, it felt different. Something had broken inside me, something I couldn’t mend. A part of me was gone, sacrificed to keep her safe. And yet, I knew… I would do it again. For her.

  I closed my eyes, breath ragged, and whispered, “I’d die for you, Lily.”

  She met my gaze—her eyes wet, but her lips trembling in what might’ve been a smile.

  And that was when I felt it. The pull. The connection. Something between us had snapped, something visceral and raw, that felt like the very marrow of life itself. The battle was over, but the aftermath would last forever.

  Jade turned away, leaving me with my thoughts, and with Lily—the girl I had fought for.

  The girl I would never stop fighting for. Well, one of them anyway, and the other two were not far. They stood as my allies.