Ben mirrors me, shifting back to coordinate verbally. “Derek—evacuate civilians through the eastern corridor! Rhonan, Evren—maintain that fire barrier! Rafe—“
“On it!” Rafe’s centuries of borderland combat experience shine as he weaves complex counterspells, disrupting Faelan’s corruption at its source.
But we’re being pushed back. The throne room is crumbling around us, crystal walls shattering and raining deadly shards that force us to constantly shift position.
Through it all, I feel Lyanna. Not cowering behind our defensive line—fighting. Her healing magic flows in reverse, seeking corruption threads to unravel. Every construct we drive toward her position, she touches with purifying energy, making them dissolve permanently instead of reforming.
She’s not just defending. She’s using the battle itself to strengthen the evidence, making Faelan’s corruption more visible with each construct she purifies.
I catch her eye across the chaos. She nods once—she knows what I need.
I shift back to wolf form, using my enhanced speed to drive constructs toward her position in coordinated strikes. She hits them with targeted healing bursts that reveal their true nature—pure corruption given temporary form. Each one that dissolves adds another thread to the evidence display hovering above us, strengthening rather than weakening the proof of Faelan’s crimes.
Faelan sees it happening. Sees his desperate attack actually helping expose him further. His face contorts with inhuman rage, the last vestiges of his aristocratic mask crumbling completely.
“No. NO!”
The air behind him tears open with a sound like reality screaming. A portal. Hastily constructed and bleeding dimensional energy from its unstable edges. He’s going to run rather than face capture and judgment.
“He’s escaping!” Derek shouts from across the throne room.
Before anyone can reach him, Faelan gathers every scrap of remaining corruption in the throne room—pulling it from the constructs, from the walls, from the very air—and hurls it at us in one final, massive blast. Not trying to kill anymore. Just trying to create enough chaos to cover his escape.
The wave of dark magic crashes toward the center of the throne room where Lyanna stands, still maintaining the evidence display. She could let it go, could shield herself. But she won’t—I see it in the set of her jaw, the way she plants her feet wider. This proof is too important.
I’m already moving, my wolf form covering the distance in heartbeats. But the corruption wave is faster, and I know I won’t reach her in time to get her clear.
Ben and Rafe throw up shields with everything they have. Rhonan exhales a wall of dragon fire hot enough to melt stone. But the corruption is too concentrated, too powerful—Faelan burning through his own life force to make this final attack overwhelming.
I shift back to human form mid-leap, throwing my body toward Lyanna with every ounce of speed I possess.
Our eyes meet for a fraction of a second. I see her determination. Her refusal to abandon the evidence, even if it costs her everything.
The corruption wave crashes into us as I reach her, my arms wrapping around her body. The impact drives us both to our knees, dark magic slamming against us like a physical wall. I feel it trying to burrow into my skin, that familiar sickly burn I remember from the contamination crisis—cold and wrong and hungry.
But Lyanna’s hands are already glowing. Not shielding. Unraveling.
Golden-green light erupts from her palms, and I feel the moment her healing magic locks onto the corruption’s structure.She’s not fighting it with brute force—she’s reading it, the same way she read the contamination in our pack’s blood. Finding the threads. Understanding the pattern.
Then pulling it apart.
The corruption wave shudders, its momentum faltering. Lyanna’s breath comes in sharp gasps against my chest, her whole body trembling with effort. I hold her tighter, lending her my strength through the bond—everything I have, every scrap of Guardian endurance, flowing into her.
“I see it,” she whispers, her voice distant with concentration. “The structure. It’s the same as the contamination. The same as the constructs. All connected to him.”
Her hands move in precise patterns, golden-green light weaving through the dark magic like a surgeon’s blade through infected tissue. Where she touches, corruption dissolves—not dispersing, but unmaking. Returning to nothing.
The wave begins to collapse inward on itself.
Faelan screams—a sound of pure rage and disbelief. He pours more power into the attack, his physical form visibly deteriorating. Patches of his skin slough away, revealing the pulsing corruption beneath.
But Lyanna doesn’t stop. Her purification spreads outward from our position, racing through the corruption faster than Faelan can feed it. The golden-green light intensifies until I have to squint against the glare, her healing magic blazing like a second sun in the heart of the throne room.
The purification screams through the chamber—a sound like metal tearing, glass shattering, something ancient and poisonous finally dying. Crystal walls crack. The floor buckles beneath us. I pull Lyanna closer, shielding her with my body as debris rains down around us.
When the light fades, the corruption is gone. Not retreated—gone. The constructs have dissolved into nothing. The ambientdarkness that clung to every surface has been burned away. Even the sickly feeling in the air has lifted.
Faelan staggers backward, his ruined form barely holding together. Behind him, a portal tears open—hastily constructed, bleeding dimensional energy from its unstable edges.
