"I’m not planning on it," Skye says. "But I can promise I'll always come back."
Harlow stands a few steps behind Skye, letting the reunion happen. Rumi goes to him first, touching his arm, and I watch Harlow's whole body ease at the contact. Then Harlow looks at me, and instead of the small nod I'm expecting, he crosses the distance between us and pulls me into a hug. His arms are cold against my back and my fire flares instinctively, warming the space between us until we're standing in a pocket of something that's neither hot nor cold.
"Thank you for getting them here safe," he says quietly against my shoulder.
"Thank you for getting him here alive," I say back.
"You're both different," I say when he steps back. Skye's aura carries threads of pale cool light, and Harlow's carries traces of warmth.
"The death realm changed us," Skye says. "We're more connected now."
Skye's expression shifts suddenly as he turns back toward the sanctuary, and whatever questions I have die in my throat. I follow his gaze, and that's when I notice the silence.
Phoenix Sanctuary was never quiet when we left. Students called to each other across the courtyards, music leaked from practice rooms, someone was always arguing or laughing or running late for something. The place hummed with the particular noise of people learning to stop being afraid.
Now the courtyards are empty. As we head through the gates, the few students we pass move with their heads down, their shoulders hunched, their essence pulled so tight against their bodies that they look like they're trying to disappear into themselves. One girl flinches when she sees us, before she recognizes Skye and the tension in her face cracks into something desperate with relief. She's a fire-type, I remember, a little carefree, albeit terrified of Grimrose in general.
Now her hands are clenched in her pockets and the sparks are gone entirely.
"You came back," she whispers, and she runs, calling to others, and within minutes word has spread through the sanctuary. Students emerge from dormitories and classrooms, cautious at first, then faster, crowding toward us with expressions that cycle between hope and fear so rapidly I can barely track them.
But the fear doesn't leave their faces. Not even when they see all six of us together.
The shadows are everywhere. They pool in corners where the light should reach, cling to the underside of archways, gather along the base of walls in thin dark lines that pulse when I look at them directly. My fire recoils from them the same way it recoiled from Dmitri's projection in the valley. They feel hungry, pressing against the edges of my essence, testing whether they can reach the heat underneath.
The anger that ignites in my chest is immediate. He's done this to our home and turned it into a version of Grimrose, the place we dismantled, the system we broke apart. The prison we tore down is being rebuilt from the inside, and every student I see with their essence locked down and their eyes on the floor is proof that we didn't leave soon enough.
Dante is in the central courtyard, and he looks like he's aged a decade in the time we've been gone. His divine aura flickers instead of burning steady, and the lines around his eyes havedeepened into grooves. His robes are wrinkled, and there's a tremor in his left hand that he keeps trying to hide by gripping his staff. Rumi reaches him first, catching his father's arm, and the sound Dante makes when he sees his son is small and broken and immediately swallowed back down.
Skye and Harlow quickly brief us regarding what’s going on and what they’ve found over the last two days but seeing it is worse than hearing it secondhand. Skye's face is tight with the exhaustion of two days spent fighting this alone with Harlow and Dante, and when he looks at the six of us finally together in this courtyard, I can feel the relief and the urgency warring in him through the bond.
"We need to assess how much worse it's gotten since yesterday," Skye says. "Splitting up might be the best bet so we can cover more ground." All of us hear what he doesn’t say ‘even if I don’t want to’. We just arrived back together and already need to split to conquer more ground. I hope at some point there’s a happy ending or a light at the end of the tunnel.
Jade and Ambrose take the western wing. Skye and Harlow head for the ward anchors to check whether the reinforcements they built with Dante are still holding. Rumi and I get the eastern corridors and the lower levels.
We walk in silence for a while, checking classrooms and dormitories, finding shadows in places they shouldn't be and students huddled in groups that scatter when they see us. Some of them recognize me and call out, asking when it will get better, when the shadows will stop. I tell them soon and hope I'm not lying.
The corruption has a weight to it, a pressure against my fire that makes every step feel like pushing through water. The deeper we go into the eastern wing, the worse it gets. Classrooms that should be bright and warm feel muffled, like something has been draped over them that absorbs light and sound.
"Fuck," I say, rubbing at the center of my chest where my fire keeps flinching away from the shadows. "This is so much worse than I thought it would be."
Rumi glances at me. "Are you scared?"
"I am terrified," I admit.
"Good," he says. "So am I. I'd be worried if you weren't."
We keep walking, closer together now, our shoulders brushing with every step. The corridor narrows and my fire pushes the shadows back while Rumi's balance keeps them from closing in behind us.
His thumb moves across my knuckles, and when he looks up at me I catch the love and adoration that’s been there ever since I stepped into his and Jade’s room. I lean in and he meets me halfway, the soft kiss helping me relax amongst the dark essence surrounding us. His hand comes up to cup the side of my face as his aura wraps around me. I rest my hands on his waist, feeling the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the faint vibration of the black threads in his essence moving with his golden light instead of against it.
When we break apart, I look around and find that the shadows in the corridor have pulled back several feet, pushed away by the combination of fire and balance without either of us trying.
"We should probably focus on the mission," he murmurs, but his hand is still on my face and neither of us moves to step back. His thumb traces my jaw once before he lets go, and we start walking again with our shoulders touching and the warmth of what just happened still buzzing between us.
The corruption gets worse as we descend into tunnels below the main level that neither of us knew existed. The stonework down here is rougher and far more ancient than the building above, covered in symbols I don't recognize that have been half-consumed by the shadows clinging to every surface. I let my fire rise and the shadows recoil from the light, pulling backfrom the walls like living things. When my wings manifest and phoenix flame fills the tunnel, they scream, a thin high sound at the edge of hearing that makes my teeth ache. They retreat further into the deeper darkness, and for a moment I can see clearly: impossibly old stone, carved with a precision that suggests someone built this place long before Grimrose was even conceived.
Rumi's divine senses reach further than my fire can illuminate. "It feels like Dmitri has been nesting here," he says, and his voice is tight. "There's a chamber below us. Something massive. I can feel thousands of essences compressed together."
