Threnody’s throat tightened. She’d never considered what happened after the cataclysm. She had believed they were simply gone, erased cleanly in the fire she’d unleashed. The thought that some had survived, locked in an endless cycle of suffering, made guilt press down harder than it already did.

  Fermata’s gaze locked onto Threnody with absolute loathing. “So forgive me if I’m not inclined to release this vessel just because you demand it.”

  Fortis’ smile was cruel as he looked at Threnody. “I enjoyed what we were becoming before you destroyed us. The power, the freedom from limitation, the right to reshape reality as we saw fit. You called it corruption. We called it evolution.”

  “Evolution toward what?” Threnos asked quietly.

  “Toward claiming our rightful place as masters of creation,” Fortis said. “Why shouldn’t we remake reality? We were the Arcana, we created magic, we built the foundations of everything that exists!”

  “Remake it into something controllable, you mean,” Threnody said.

  “Something useful,” Fortis agreed without shame. He stepped closer, his expression darkening with remembered rage. “Do you remember Threnos screaming as his soul fragmented? I do. I was there when the cataclysm hit, when your fury tore through everything we’d built. I heard him scream your name as his consciousness shattered into pieces.”

  Threnos’s hand tightened at his side but he said nothing, his expression closed.

  “What makes these two mortals special?” Fortis gestured at Ember’s body, at Owen’s stolen form. “What gives them value that our people didn’t have? Why do they deserve to live when you decided we all deserved to die?”

  Threnody looked at Fermata wearing Ember’s face, at Fortis inhabiting Owen’s body, and she could sense the mortals trapped inside. Their consciousness was buried deep but still fighting, still refusing to surrender completely despite everything.

  “They’re innocent,” Threnody said.

  “We were innocent once too,” Fermata spat. “Did you try to save us, or did you just decide we were all beyond redemption and end it? You took the easy way out.”

  “I tried.” The words came out raw, dragged from somewhere deep. “For decades I tried. I watched the corruption spread through you all, argued against it, begged you to see what you were becoming. You laughed at me and called me weak, said I was clinging to outdated ideals that had no place in what we were becoming.”

  “Because you were,” Fortis said flatly.

  “Because I refused to believe that power had to mean domination,” Threnody’s voice hardened. “Because I thought we could be better than that, that we didn’t have to become tyrants just because we had the capability.”

  “And when we proved we couldn’t, you killed us all,” Fermata said, her rage cold and absolute. “So forgive me if I don’t believe your sudden concern for these mortal vessels. Vesper’s humanity has infected you, hasn’t it? Made you soft, made you care about individual lives when you never cared before.”

  “That’s not true,” Threnody started to protest.

  “Isn’t it?” Fermata stepped closer, the trap’s resonance intensifying with her movement. “You care about Ember because Vesper cared about her. You care about Owen because Vesper’s memories show you his kindness, but what about all the mortals we’ve killed tonight? Do you care about them? What about the thousands who will die when this city tears itself apart from the damage we’ve done? Do they matter?”

  Threnody had no answer.

  “You’re just like us,” Fortis said. “You always were. The only difference is you convinced yourself that your violence was righteous, that destroying our world was mercy instead of murder.”

  “They tortured me!” she cried. “They tortured me for my power. How can you not see how wrong that is?”

  Fermata sneered and glanced at Fortis. “Poor Threnody. They hurt her. How dare they!”

  All of this talk and blaming was pointless. It wouldn’t erase what had come before. All that mattered was now and they had proved what shape their world would be if she allowed them to take her power.

  “Let your vessels go,” Threnody stepped forward, feeling the trap’s resonance wrap around her. “I won’t ask again.”

  Fermata’s smile was cold enough to freeze blood. “No. I want you to watch them burn. I want you to feel what it’s like to lose everything whilst being unable to stop it, to know you could have prevented it.” She raised her hand and power crackled around her fingers. “Then, when you’re broken and desperate, when you’ve felt even a fraction of what I endured, I’ll fracture your consciousness and use your power to rebuild our world the way it should have been from the beginning. I will give back what you took from us and the Arcana will rise again.”

  Threnody looked at Fermata, at the hatred burning in her silver eyes, at the rage that had festered and grown over millennia. She looked at what she herself had created when she’d chosen to destroy their world.

  Then she stepped forward, crossed the threshold, and triggered the trap.

  The binding snapped into place with devastating force. Reality fractured as the matrices activated exactly as Fermata had designed them. Physical bindings locked Threnody’s body, trying to freeze her in place. Magic reached for her awareness, trying to splinter it into fragments. Temporal distortions attempted to trap her in a single moment, preventing any escape. The layers hit simultaneously, each one reinforcing the others in a pattern that should have been inescapable.

  For one moment, Fermata and Fortis were triumphant.

  They could see Threnody stagger under the assault, could see the binding patterns wrap around her soul, could see Threnos caught in the outer edges as his power struggled to reach Threnody. The trap was working exactly as planned. They’d won.

  Fermata’s laugh was victorious, filled with vindication. “Did you really think you could just walk in here? That I wouldn’t plan for this? I’ve spent centuries preparing this trap, Threnody. Centuries studying how consciousness can be broken and bound. You’re mine now.”

  But their triumph died quickly.

  Threnody straightened, her awareness expanding through the trap to examine its construction from within. The resonance they were using to bind her? She had created the ley lines from the ashes of their world. She had become the Echo, a repository of all magical memory, the living archive of everything their people had known and everything magic had become after. Every sigil Fermata and Fortis had woven stood on foundations Threnody herself had laid.

  The trap was sophisticated, carefully constructed, fuelled by enough death to hold something far more powerful than they understood…but it was still built from her magic, still using principles she had established.

  Threnody didn’t break the trap. She didn’t have to when she could rewrite it.

  The binding meant to fracture her consciousness turned outward as she inverted the pattern. The anchor points throughout the residential quarter flared with power and the cage Fermata had built to contain Threnody became a cage that held them all.

  Fermata’s eyes widened as she felt the trap wrench out of her control and turn against her. “No! What are you doing? You can’t⁠—”

  “I created the ley lines,” Threnody said. “I built the foundations of magic in this world. Did you really think I wouldn’t understand how to unmake what you constructed from them?”

  Threnos understood immediately what she had done. His power wrapped around the matrices, reinforcing the lattice with his own strength.

  Fermata struck first, her attack aimed directly at Threnody’s consciousness. She felt the assault try to splinter her awareness and blocked it, turning the force back on Fermata. Fortis roared and launched himself at Threnos, reality bending around the sheer force he wielded.

  The air tore between them.

  Threnody and Threnos worked together with the instinct of eons. When she reached for the ley lines, he was already there, supporting the sigils with his own power. When Fortis tried to fracture Threnos’s concentration, she blocked the attack before it landed. They moved together, anticipating, covering weaknesses, reinforcing strengths. Their bond was stronger than ever, their connection surviving millennia of separation and suffering.

  Together, they could do anything.

  Save them, Vesper whispered. Please…

  Threnody could sense the souls of the vessels through the chaos. Ember was fighting against Fermata’s control, her consciousness battered but refusing to surrender. Owen’s awareness was dimmer, crushed beneath Fortis’s brutality, but still present and clinging to existence.

  They were still alive and still fighting, and she had to save them.

  Fermata and Fortis fought with nothing to lose. They were trying to kill Threnody, to unmake her the way she’d unmade their world, and revenge had consumed them so completely that nothing else mattered. They didn’t care about their vessels anymore, didn’t care about survival beyond making Threnody suffer. They would burn Ember and Owen to ash if it meant destroying her too.

  Reality fractured with each exchange of power. Buildings collapsed inward as their structures failed. The ground split open, revealing chasms that led to spaces between spaces. The ley lines distorted, their resonance warping into frequencies that made the air vibrate and tear.

  Fermata struck, every strike designed to fracture, to separate, to break the unity between Threnody and Threnos. Fortis brought chaos to the battle. His attacks came from impossible angles, violent and unpredictable. He didn’t care about strategy or defence, he just wanted destruction. Together, they were devastating.

  But Threnody had something they didn’t. Vesper’s presence strengthened within their shared consciousness, lending courage she hadn’t expected. The Resonant’s determination, her fierce love for the people who might still be saved, flowed through her and gave her purpose.

  And she had Threnos beside her, real and solid after millennia of believing him lost forever.

  She wasn’t alone anymore.

  Threnody reached through the chaos, feeling for the threads that connected Ember and Owen to themselves. She could sense where their consciousness remained, buried deep but not broken. If she could preserve their souls the way Threnos had preserved Ash, if she could separate mortal from Arcana without destroying either, then perhaps this time the ending would be different.

  She could break the cycle instead of repeating it.

  Power clashed in waves that distorted reality. Four Arcana fought within the cage, and the world burned around them.

  To whatever end.

  Chapter 24

  Blair pressed herself against the shattered remains of a stone wall, the rough edges digging into her palms as she peered through the gap where the structure had collapsed. The Spirefields spread before her, twisted buildings and fractured streets converging on the square below.

  She could see the Arcana clearly from this vantage point. Four figures standing in what had once been a residential square with a garden and fountain, now transformed into a killing ground. The cobblestones were scorched black in places, cracked and buckled in others. Bodies lay scattered at the edges, turned to ash.

  The Echo stood at the northern end of the square. Threnos flanked her right side. Across from them, Fermata and Fortis waited. Seeing them in Ember and Owen’s bodies made her angry, seeing their eyes blaze with silver, their expressions twisted with hate. Those weren’t the people she’d known.

  They’d positioned themselves carefully, Blair realised. Each of them stood at precise points in the square, and the ley lines beneath their feet pulsed with unfamiliar sigils.

  A trap. She could see it in the pattern, in the way the magical currents had been twisted and anchored.

  The Echo kept walking forward. Threnos matched her pace, the two of them moving in perfect harmony. Neither of them slowed as they approached the centre of the square where the trap waited.

  Blair’s throat tightened. She wanted to shout, to scream a warning, but the sound died before it could form. If she revealed herself now, all four of them would turn their attention toward her for the span of a single heartbeat, and it would mean her death. She knew all too well what they could do to a person. How they could turn someone to ash with a glance.

  There was nothing she could do.

  Blair’s fingers ached where they gripped the wall. Her sword hung heavy at her hip, inadequate and useless. She’d come all this way to plead humanity’s case, to beg the Echo to show mercy, and now she couldn’t even get close.

  The Echo said something, her voice too quiet to carry across the distance. The other Arcana replied, growing more and more enraged as they spoke. Whatever words the Echo said in return made Fermata’s expression twist into something ugly and triumphant.

  Blair’s heart seemed to stop as the Echo stepped forward and triggered the trap…then everything erupted.

  Power exploded outward from the square in a shockwave that slammed into her. She threw her arm up, squeezing her eyes shut as the force rattled her bones and ripped the air from her lungs. The wall she’d been hiding behind shuddered, chunks of stone breaking free and crumbling over her.

  But when Blair opened her eyes, reality was tearing apart.

  The four Arcana moved through the square with impossible speed. The Echo struck first, power surging from her outstretched hands in waves that distorted the air. Stone exploded where her attack landed, entire buildings crumbling inward as their foundations disintegrated. Threnos was beside her in an instant, his own magic weaving with hers to create patterns that blazed with opalescent light.

  Fermata and Fortis answered with violence.

  The ground beneath the square split open. Cracks raced outward from the epicentre, jagged lines spreading across cobblestones and into the surrounding streets. Buildings buckled. The Victorian townhouse to Blair’s left twisted, its brick facade rippling like water before the entire structure collapsed inward. Across the square, a Georgian manor leaned sideways, its foundations liquefying beneath it. The building toppled, falling with dreamlike slowness, and when it hit the ground, the impact sent tremors through the earth.

  The air began to fracture. Thin lines appeared in empty space, spiderweb cracks spreading across nothing. Her artificial Resonance screamed warnings beneath her skin. The ley lines beneath Nightreach were breaking. She could feel each one as it snapped, magical currents suddenly severing. The damage was spreading outward from the square in waves, rippling through the city’s foundations.

  Blair pushed herself away from the wall. Her legs shook, but she forced them to hold her weight. She had to get ahead of the destruction before she died under a pile of rubble. She couldn’t die here, not before she pleaded humanity’s case to the Echo.

  She turned and ran.

  The streets blurred past her as she sprinted through what was left of the city. Her boots pounded against broken cobblestones, each step sending jolts through her injured shoulder. Behind her, the sounds of the battle continued. Explosions that shook the ground. The shriek of reality tearing.

  A building ahead groaned. Blair’s Resonance flared, warning her half a heartbeat before the structure tilted sideways. She threw herself left, diving through a gap between two still standing walls as stone crashed into the street behind her. The impact sent debris flying. A chunk of brick struck her calf, hard enough to bruise, but she kept her feet under her and kept running.

  Dust choked the air. Blair coughed, eyes watering, but she didn’t slow down. Her magic showed her the safe path, the route that would keep her ahead of the worst destruction. She followed it on instinct, dodging right when a fissure opened to her left, and jumping over cracks that tried to spread beneath her feet.

  The ground rippled. For a span of three heartbeats, the cobblestones moved like water, rising and falling in waves that made Blair’s stomach lurch. She stumbled, caught herself against a doorframe that was somehow still intact, and waited for the ground to solidify again before pushing off and continuing.

  A twist in reality caught her peripheral vision. The air folded in on itself, collapsing into a point of absolute darkness before expanding outward again. She changed direction without thinking, her Resonance guiding her around the distortion. Behind her, something collapsed with a sound like tearing metal. She didn’t look back.

  Blair vaulted over a fallen archway, landing hard on the other side, pain shooting through her ankle, but momentum carried her forward. Three more streets. Four. The devastation spread in every direction, but her magic showed her the paths that were still navigable, still solid enough to cross.

  Then something hit her from above.

  Pain exploded across the top of her skull. Her vision went white, then dark, then white again. The world tilted sideways. She was falling, the ground rushing up to meet her, and then she was down. The cobblestones slammed into her shoulder and hip with bruising force. Her sword clattered from her grip, the blade ringing as it struck stone and skittered away across the broken street.

  Blair lay there, her vision swimming. Above her, a building loomed at an impossible angle, half its facade missing. A chunk of stone rested on the cobblestones beside her head.

  Blood ran down her forehead, hot and sticky. She tried to sit up but pain stabbed through her skull, forcing her down. Her arms wouldn’t obey, her fingers numb and useless. The ground felt soft beneath her, though she knew it was solid stone.

  She closed her eyes. The darkness was immediate and complete, and with it came exhaustion so profound it felt like drowning. Her body ached everywhere. The cut on her forehead bled steadily. Her lungs burned from running, from breathing air thick with dust and ash. Her shoulder throbbed. Her heart…her heart was breaking.

  It would be so easy to stay here. To let the darkness take her. No more running. No more fighting battles she had no hope of winning. Just quiet. Just rest. Somehow it felt peaceful, even as the world tore apart around her.