Nezavek is the hardest. He can't maintain form without contact with my marks. The moment I step away, he begins dispersing. So we adapt. He leans against me, one arm around my shoulders, my marked back pressed to his chest. It's intimate in ways that have nothing to do with desire and everything to do with survival.
"The broker network," he says as I help him to what remains of a chair. "The Collector has been using it for decades."
"To send hunters after you."
"To send them to their deaths. Every bounty, every lead, every piece of information that led someone to me, he orchestrated it all."
Päivi, now mostly formed though missing her left ear and several fingers, brings documents from the ruined chamber. Some are crystallized at the edges, others burned, but enough remains to see the pattern.
"Forty-three hunters in the last century," she says, her voice skipping like a damaged recording. "All told the same story. Void Walker. Killer. Monster."
"Were any of them related to victims?" I ask.
"Most. The Collector chose carefully, people with motivation, skill, nothing left to lose."
Like me.
My hands curl into fists, nails digging into my palms until they ache. But I don't scream. Don't throw things. That's not how I process betrayal. I go quiet, deadly quiet, the kind that used to make my squad mates step back.
"Where is he now?" I ask.
"His gallery," Nezavek says. "Where he keeps them. Where Melara..."
He doesn't finish. Doesn't need to.
"Then that's where we go."
"We're in no condition."
"We're in the only condition we'll ever be in." I cut him off, soldier instincts taking over. "You're dissolving. Mikaere's down an arm. Päivi's missing pieces. The realm is collapsing. We don't get stronger from here. We only get weaker."
"She's right," Mikaere rumbles. "If we're going to strike, it has to be soon."
"Can you fight?" I ask him directly.
"Three arms are sufficient for crushing crystal skulls."
"Päivi?"
"I'm... functional. My memory of the gallery's layout is intact."
"Nezavek?"
He presses closer against my back, and I feel his smile against my neck. "As long as you're touching me, I can fight."
"Then we plan."
We gather in what's left of the library. Books fall upward into nothing. Shelves exist in seventeen dimensions simultaneously. One section is on fire with flames that freeze instead of burn. But Päivi creates a bubble of stable reality, a small space where physics still functions.
She spreads maps made of starlight and shadow. "The gallery exists partially outside normal reality. Here, but also nowhere. The Soul-Still anchors it, and him."
"Destroy the anchor, destroy him?"
"Possibly. Or possibly destroy several dimensions. The artifact doesn't just preserve his victims, it holds multiple realities in stasis."
"Risk we'll have to take."
I study the maps, my tactical mind cataloging entry points, choke points, possible ambush sites. But this isn't a normal battlefield. The gallery operates on dream logic, nightmare rules.
