“The line,” I warn. Dastian adjusts, eyes narrowed, keeping to the thin curve I set. Dreven’s shadows ripple, then flatten, hugging quartz without crossing.
Nyssa presses her palm to the sigil. “Door. Now.”
The frame tightens into the width of her hand. A clean slot cut for a single purpose. The proxy tilts its head as if amused. I can work with that.
“On my mark,” I say, keeping my voice even. “Dastian, cage the air in front of the seam. If he lashes, you shove it sideways, not back. Sideways bleeds off force.”
“Sideways. Got it,” Dastian replies, palms up, sparks tight and controlled.
“Dreven,” I continue, “hold the ring. If a stone shifts, you put it back with violence.”
His jaw ticks. “Done.”
Nyssa glances at me, steady as granite. “You?”
“I thread you a tether,” I tell her. “Wraith-net. He won’t like it. You will feel it.”
“Do it.”
I step closer until the blue-white geometry reflects in her eyes. I don’t touch her. I don’t need to. I cast the net through her seam, a lattice of quiet authority that hums against the Crown’s braid. It isn’t a prison. It is a guide rope in a cave.
The proxy watches us arrange ourselves like it’s already bored. “You perform ceremony.”
“We perform control,” Nyssa says. She places her palm against the slit of light. “Door’s open.”
He hesitates. Good. It means he understands loss.
I pull again at the edges, soft and swift. Two more souls slip free. A fisherman mutters a wordless thanks before he fades. The pressure spikes hard enough to sting my teeth. He is done watching us steal.
“Now,” Nyssa says.
He commits.
It hits the seam like a tide turned into a blade.
The frame screams. The quartz ring shudders. Air collapses toward the slit and rebounds in a pressure wave that tries to knock us off the line. Dastian slams his hands out and shoves the force to the side. It shears past the entrance stone and punches a track through the wet grass to our right instead of blowing the geometry apart.
“Hold,” I bite out.
Dreven’s shadows snap tight across the quartz. A stone near the base shifts a hair. He forces it back into true with a hard pulse, and the ring steadies.
The proxy implodes—no drama, no mess—just gone. The weight is all at the seam now, pushing in a column the width of Nyssa’s hand.
She plants her palm and lets it meet her.
The tether hums against my teeth. He tries to flood, but the geometry narrows him, and my net holds fast through her seam, a grid strung through the braid of the Crown. He finds the lines and tries to slip between them. I tighten. He can move, but only where I say he can move.
“Sideways,” I snap when a lash throws off the seam toward Dastian. He’s already there, redirecting it across the field, harmless. Another pulse knifes for the ring; Dreven hammers it down with pure refusal.
Nyssa doesn’t flinch. The pressure spikes across her palm. I feel him test her bones, her blood, her mind. He tests for the fracture. She gives him nothing but a door shaped like her will.
Chapter 40
Nyssa
He hits like pressure turned into intent. It forces up my arm in a brutal, clean line and looks for a way to unwrap me from the inside.
No.
