I dressed in seconds, not bothering with the formal Keeper robes but grabbing leather training gear that would allow movement, allow fighting. My enhanced senses caught everything as I ran through the corridors, guards mobilizing, Natalia's sharp commands echoing from the lower levels, the acid stench of crude magic carried on the wind.
The Order of Khaos had come for the innocent.
By the time I reached the village, buildings were already collapsing into themselves, timber frames consumed by flames that burned wrong, too hot, too fast, spreading in patterns that defied natural fire. The bakery where Marcus had thanked me just days ago was a skeleton of charred beams. The cottage where the old woman taught her granddaughter to braid bread had its roof caved in, orange tongues licking at what remained.
And everywhere, everywhere, people ran screaming.
A child stumbled past me, her hair singed, her face streaked with soot and tears. Behind her stalked a figure in rough-spun robes, crude blade raised, scarification on his face glowing with stolen power. I moved without thinking, my fist connecting with his temple hard enough to snap his head sideways. He dropped, but two more took his place, emerging from smoke like nightmares given form.
"The false keeper!" one shrieked, his voice raw from smoke or madness or both. "The princes' whore comes to watch her world burn!"
The village guard had formed a defensive line near the market square, but they were farmers with swords, not soldiers. They knew how to fight wolves and bandits, not fanatics drunk on corrupted magic. I watched one guard, barely older than me, try to parry a blow only to have his sword shatter against a blade that shouldn't have been able to break steel.
The cultists were everywhere. Dozens of them, maybe more, pouring from alleys and shadows with the coordinated chaos of locusts. Their magic crawled across my enhanced senses like rot, like infection, like wounds in reality itself. Each spell they cast took years from their lives, but they didn't care. They'd come here to die, as long as they took the village with them.
"Form up!" I heard myself shouting, my voice carrying over the chaos with an authority I didn't know I possessed. "Guard the evacuation routes! Get the children out first!"
Some of the guards looked at me with confusion, I wasn't military, wasn't even technically supposed to be here. But others, desperate for any leadership, began following my commands. We managed to create a corridor toward the forest, a path for the elderly and young to flee through.
That's when I saw them.
The pregnant woman and her husband from the bakery, the ones who'd wanted to name their child after me. She was on the ground, clutching her belly, while he stood over her with nothing but a broken plank, trying to ward off three cultists who circled like vultures.
The rage that flooded through me wasn't mine alone.
I felt Kaelen's fury burn through our connection, dragon fire roaring to be unleashed. Flynn's savage need to protect what was his, and somehow, these people had become his through their connection to me. Thane's protective wrath, the kind that had once leveled mountains. Elias's cold calculation of exactly how to cause maximum damage with minimum effort.
Use us,they whispered through the bond.Let us help. Let us save them.
For a heartbeat, I hesitated. Every time I'd drawn on their power, the seals weakened. Every time I let them in, I became less human, less keeper, less controllable.
But then I saw the cultist's blade descending toward the pregnant woman's stomach, and choice became meaningless.
I reached through the Gate's connection, through the golden threads that bound us, and pulled.
Power flooded through me like molten metal poured into veins. Not carefully channeled, not controlled, just raw divine essence that set every nerve ending ablaze. Kaelen's dragon fire erupted from my hands without conscious thought, incinerating the cultist mid-strike. The blade fell as ash, the wielder simply ceased to exist, erased by heat that could melt stone.
But I was just beginning.
Flynn's strength filled my muscles, turning my body into a weapon. I moved through the attackers like death itself, each strike precise and devastating. A cultist's head separated from his shoulders. Another's chest caved inward from a single punch. Their crude magic couldn't touch me, burning away before it reached my skin like moths against a bonfire.
Thane's endurance kept me standing when I should have collapsed from the strain. Elias's foresight let me see attacks before they came, dodge blades that should have found their mark. I wasn't fighting, I was dancing, and my partners were four princes who'd been waiting centuries for this moment.
The cultists tried to retreat, but dragon fire formed walls they couldn't cross. Those who attempted their shadow-portals found them collapsing, consumed by phoenix flame that ate at the very concept of escape. Within minutes, what had been a massacre became a rout.
But the damage was done.
Half of Oakhaven lay in ruins. Bodies littered the streets, not just cultists but villagers who'd been too slow, too young, too old to escape. The market square where children had played just days ago was a crater of melted cobblestones. The bakery was gone, along with Marcus who'd tried to defend it.
And worse, two dozen survivors stood in a cluster, staring at me.
At the woman wreathed in dragon fire.
At the keeper whose eyes blazed with four different colors of divine light.
At the monster they'd been taught to fear.
The golden flames still danced around me, refusing to fully extinguish. My skin glowed from within, veins of light creating patterns that looked nothing like human anatomy. When I breathed, smoke emerged. When I moved, reality rippled.
