I step into the center.
Seven bonds. Six bloodlines. One Valkyrie.
The alignment is complete.
Alekir spreads his arms wide, and his voice rings across the plateau like a sermon.
“The Key stands in her rightful place.” His pale fingers trace symbols in the air, and the Gate responds — pulsing brighter, hungrier. “The cycle returns to its natural beginning. The Valkyrie bloodline fulfills its ancient crime by opening what it sealed.”
Lady Virath’s hollow voice joins his, her corrupted light magic flaying the air. “Six bloodlines. Seven bonds. The perfect alignment.”
Above us, the Nightwraiths tighten their circle. Their shrieks split the silence, hungry and eager.
Every word is wrong.
Every word twists what I am. What we are.
My body is shaking — not in fear, but inpressure. Power building inside me like a storm that’s been waiting my whole life to break.
And then—
The bonds ignite.
Not Alekir’s corruption. Not engineered obedience.
Choice.
I feel it in my chest — six threads of light and darkness and chaos and berserker and elemental and shifter, all pulling toward me at once. Not because they were designed to. Not because someone forced them.
Because theywantto.
Becausewewant to.
The magic responds.
Shadows rise around me like smoke pulled upward. Bob surges larger, darker, his edges sharp enough to cut reality. Mouse grows until he’s the size of a panther, his growl vibrating through the stone beneath our feet. Patricia’s notebook blazes. Walter pulses overhead like a captured star.
Light spills from Darian’s hands and threads toward me — golden and pure, weaving through my shadows like it belongs there.
Finn’s chaos sparks jump across the circle like fireflies, connecting us in patterns that shift and dance.
Torric’s flame coils around his wrists, then reaches for me — not burning, justwarm.
Aspen’s frost spreads in symmetrical fractals, beautiful and deadly, meeting my shadows at the edges.
Malrik’s darkness stretches toward me like instinct, like coming home.
And Kieran’s dragon anchors it all — ancient and patient andhere.
This is not what Alekir created.
This is what webuilt.
The ground trembles.
The Gate’s black stone pulses, light leaking from every seam. The symbols beneath our feet blaze brighter, hotter, responding to the alignment with a hunger that makes my bones ache.
Alekir is laughing. Triumphant. Ecstatic.
