The ward split. A shockwave burst outward, knocking Poppy onto her hands. The sigils snapped like broken ice. The moonwell flared in panic, spilling silver light into the air like a fountain.
The circle was broken.
The revenant—what remained of it—collapsed inward, half melted, but its single intact eye rolled toward Poppy. It smiled, and then it fell apart.
Poppy’s breath hitched.
“Mingxi. The entity. What happens if the circle is gone?”
His voice dropped to a dead-calm whisper. “It can reach.”
She stared, throat tight. “Reach for what?”
He hesitated. “You.”
The valley dimmed, and Lysandra’s body jerked once, violently, as if something inside her had just realized the distance no longer mattered.
Poppy’s glow flared desperately.
The entity laughed through Lysandra’s mouth. A hollow, fracturing laugh, and Poppy felt the pressure multiplying. Splitting. Pressing in from three sides at once.
And it wanted her.
Chapter 72
Poppy backed toward the moonwell, heart pounding, moonlight searing at her fingertips. The water inside the stone basin pulsed with each beat of her heart, glowing brighter with every passing second.
The moon was climbing toward the point where everything would align.
“Poppy!” Mingxi called, voice rough even through fox form. “Do it! Whatever you have to do. Now!”
She looked up and saw the moon—white and full—was moments away from hitting the zenith, the exact point above the valley where moonlight touched nothing but air before piercing downward, straight into the well.
Her breath caught. This was it. She placed her hands on the moonwell’s stone edge. The water surged toward her palms, the world dimmed, and the moon brightened.
Lysandra’s corrupted side snapped its gaze toward Poppy, blackened eye widening with fury. “Stop her!” the entity snarled.
Revenants turned as one, redirecting course. Caelan threw himself into their path, sending another tidal wave crashing through the valley. Mingxi darted between them, ripping through limbs and spines, foxfire blazing like a star. But the numbers kept growing.
Lysandra staggered forward, left side trembling, right side eerily controlled. Her voice fractured between two tones.
“Poppy,” she whispered weakly. “Don’t—”
Then the entity surged up like a shadow behind her ribs. “Finish her.”
It raised her right arm. Black cracks crawled brighter.
Poppy pressed her palms harder to the stone, light flaring between her fingers.
She whispered, unsure if it was instinct or memory, “Moon above… water below… join in me…”
A beam of silver shot up from the water, meeting the falling moonlight like two halves of a blade. The instant the beams connected, the light hit her chest like a physical blow.
Poppy gasped, nearly collapsing, but she held on. Light surged around her, curling into ribbons, twisting into sigils she didn’t recognize but somehow understood.
Mingxi snarled, slamming into a revenant that was inches from reaching her.
Caelan raised his trident and drove it into the ground. A ring of water erupted outward like a shockwave, flattening another dozen undead, but Lysandra walked through the blast untouched. Her left side hitched, her step faltering for half a breath. Her right side glowed.
