He could feel her through the connection. Her terror. Her confusion. The way her heart raced when she was trying to be brave.
Seraphina moved closer, understanding the danger in his stillness. "We'll help you?—"
"No." His shadows darkened. “Go back to your realm. He'll use the chaos to expand if we all leave."
"Reaper—"
"If I'm not back in a couple of hours, assume I've failed." He turned toward the portal. "Then burn his paradise to the ground."
He didn't wait for agreement. Just followed the thread connecting him to her, tearing open a pathway through reality.
The transition fought him. Reality buckling, twisting, trying to keep him out. Not a normal passage between realms. Something hidden, fortified, built in the spaces between spaces.
When he finally forced his way through, the refinery slammed into him like a fist.
Extraction chambers stretched endlessly. Souls strapped inside, screaming as golden light was torn from their chests. The machinery hummed, processing them one after another.
This was what Caelum meant by peaceful paradise. This was where he'd been taking them. All those contented souls. This was what he'd done to make them that way.
His shadows recoiled from the concentrated despair before surging outward, feeding on it. But the thread connecting him to Brynn was what mattered. That was what pulled him forward.
Alarms shrieked.
Figures poured from the processing chambers, shells in armor. His shadows tore through them without slowing. More appeared. Dozens, then hundreds. He carved through them, but they kept coming. Each wave more organized than the last.
Victims, not soldiers. Souls Caelum had erased and turned into weapons. And Dante was destroying what remained of them to reach her.
The facility sprawled endlessly. Levels stacked on levels, corridors branching in every direction. Processing floors filled with chambers. Shell soldiers guarding every passage.
The thread pulled him deeper. Stronger with each level he descended.
A blade found his shoulder. Another his ribs. Minor wounds, but accumulating. Dark ichor welled against his skin before his shadows surged to compensate.
His power was draining, the army learning with each wave, finding the hairline gaps that widened as exhaustion mounted.
Then the thread pulled harder. More insistent.
He moved faster, abandoning caution. His shadows exploded outward, clearing entire corridors. The facility groaned under the weight of his power—metal buckling, support beams cracking.
The thread blazed with pain.
Herpain.
Then he heard it.
Her scream.
The sound of her being tortured.
The thread flared with her agony, sharp enough to make him stagger. Last night, that voice had been gasping his name, laughing against his chest.
Now she was screaming because he wasn't fast enough.
Exhaustion didn't matter. Nothing mattered but getting to her.
He tore through the next door and found himself facing a massive chamber. Thousands of shell soldiers in perfect formation, stretching beyond sight.
And beyond them?—
