I see hope. Real, tangible hope for a world where integration works not just politically but personally, magically, at the deepest levels.
But that future requires surviving the death moment. Requires trusting that my visions aren’t fate but warnings—decision points where choice matters more than predestination.
“Lyra!” Magnus’s voice cuts through the vision-storm. “Come back! You’re going too deep!”
He’s right. I’m losing myself in possibilities, in futures that might-be, forgetting the present that actually is. The Matrix is trying to pull me deeper, to make me one with its systems, to trap me in the neural interface permanently.
But I’m not done yet. Still have prisoners to free, still have equipment to sabotage so Crane can never use it again.
I force my consciousness back to the present, back to the task. The remaining prisoners are harder cases—transformations that happened months ago, pathways that have started to adapt to their corrupted forms. But I push through, using everything I’ve learned, refusing to abandon anyone to Crane’s nightmare.
Twenty reversals. Twenty-three. Twenty-five.
The last two prisoners are the worst—grafted so thoroughly that separation seems impossible. One has been Broken for nearly eight months, her original form almost completely lost. The other is barely alive, his warring magics destroying him from within.
“Leave them,” Crane says, and he sounds genuinely sorrowful now. “Those two are too far gone. The kindest thing is to let them die.”
“No.” I push deeper into the Matrix, searching for traces of their original signatures. “Everyone deserves a chance to be whole again. Everyone.”
I find it—buried deep beneath layers of forced transformation, hidden but not destroyed. The echo of who they were, what they’re meant to be. I amplify those signals, teach theMatrix to recognize them, and initiate the most complex reversal yet.
It takes everything I have—all my remaining strength, all my magical reserves, all my understanding of healing and integration and how magic flows through living bodies. The Matrix strains under the complexity, threatening to overload, but I hold it together through sheer determination.
The reversals complete simultaneously. Both prisoners collapse in their cells, freed from their grafted forms, returned to themselves. Alive. Whole. Saved.
Twenty-seven prisoners. Twenty-seven successful reversals. Every single one of Crane’s victims freed from forced transformation.
I did it.
The realization hits the same moment my body does—I’m falling, consciousness fragmenting, the neural interface trying to drag me into permanent connection with the Matrix. Through the bond, I feel Magnus’s terror as he realizes I’m trapped, unable to disconnect cleanly.
But I prepared for this. While I was working, while Crane was distracted watching his prisoners restored, I was also exploring the Matrix’s systems. Learning its security protocols. Discovering that it’s built on Haven’s Heart architecture I recognize from Elena’s lab.
And I know exactly how to destroy it.
I send a command through the neural interface—not a shutdown but a cascade failure, triggering every safety override simultaneously. The Matrix begins tearing itself apart, power surging through systems never meant to handle such loads.
“What did you do?” Crane screams, rushing to the console. “The Matrix is overloading! It’ll destroy everything—the laboratory, the facility, all my research!”
“Good,” I manage to say as the neural interface finally releases me. I tumble out of the chair, barely conscious. “Can’t let anyone else use your nightmares.”
The laboratory fills with alarm sounds, emergency protocols activating. The coalition forces have breached deeper into the facility now—I can hear fighting in the corridors, the organized assault finally reaching the laboratory level.
Crane stands in the center of his ruined work, his degraded body trembling with rage and despair. “You destroyed it. Years of research, countless breakthroughs, the future of shifter evolution—destroyed by a short-sighted healer who can’t see past her primitive morality.”
“I see perfectly clearly,” I say, forcing myself upright despite exhaustion. “You were never creating the future. You were torturing people to fuel your own degradation. That’s not evolution. That’s just madness.”
He roars—an incoherent sound that’s part human, part animal, all rage—and lunges at me with his malformed claws extended.
But Magnus is there.
My mate interposes himself between Crane and me, wings spread wide, leopard form blazing with ice magic and protective fury. The two chimeras collide—one created through theft and force, the other through love and choice.
The difference is absolute.
Magnus’s stable dual-form moves with perfect coordination, wings and claws working in harmony. Crane’s degraded body fights itself, stolen parts conflicting, toxins that created him now destroying him from within.
It’s not even a real fight. Magnus drops him in seconds, pinning the mad doctor to the floor with claws at his throat.
