They were listening.
"Caelum's been harvesting souls. Stripping away everything that makes you you—memories, choices, your entire self extracted and discarded. He's building an army of empty shells, and when he's done with the tormented courts, he'll come for the free settlements. For everything you've built."
She stepped to the platform's edge. Close enough to see the fear in their faces, the anger, the desperate hope they were trying not to feel.
"He calls it mercy. Calls it peace." Her voice hardened. "It's annihilation. And I will burn in every hell that exists before I let him do to you what he's done to thousands of others."
The circlet flared hot against her skin. Responding to her fury, to the ward-magic threaded through every soul here.
"You don't owe me anything. I'm the outsider who made your situation worse. You have every right to tell me to go to hell and handle this myself."
Her chest ached. Her wrists throbbed beneath the bandages.
"But I'm asking anyway. Fight with me. Not for the Reaper—" she gestured toward Dante without looking at him, "—not for any DeathLord. For what you built here. For the freedom you bled for. For every soul who'll face the same choice after you."
Silence stretched. The crowd barely breathed.
The blacksmith studied her for a long moment. "You admit you made it worse."
"Yes."
"And you think you can fix it."
"I can close the gateway. Stop the hemorrhaging. Whether we win the war against the one who started all this—" She shook her head. "I won't promise what I can't guarantee. But I'll die trying."
He looked past her, at Dante standing motionless at the platform's edge. "And him? Why isn't the Reaper the one asking?"
"Because he had the sense to know you'd rather hear it from me." She finally glanced back at Dante, then returned her attention to the blacksmith. "You earned your freedom from Death Lords. He's not here to command you. He's here to fight beside you, if you'll have him."
The blacksmith's eyebrows rose. He looked at the Reaper, standing silent at the edge of his own rally. Letting a mortal speak for them both.
Something shifted in the crowd.
"My steel doesn't fail." The blacksmith's voice had changed. Rough with something that might have been respect. "Neither do I."
An older woman stepped forward, translucent at the edges. "My wards are yours, my lady."
Then more. A tactical officer pledging his warriors. Craftsmen. Scouts. Voices overlapping until she lost count.
Some souls vanished into side streets without a word.
Parents slipped away with their children.
But enough stayed.
Enough looked at her and chose to believe.
The square dissolved into organized chaos. Another tremor hit, harder than before, and the urgency turned desperate.
An elderly soul caught Brynn's hand as she moved through the crowd. Her grip was iron, even as her form faded. "Stubborn. Toobrave for your own good." The old woman's smile was sad and knowing. "Go save our world, child."
Dante materialized at her side the moment she stepped away from the last cluster of volunteers.
"Ninety minutes," he announced, voice carrying over the chaos. "Fighters by specialty. Non-combatants evacuated. Move."
Then his hand closed around her elbow, pulling her into the shadow of a doorway where the crowd couldn't see. His body caged hers against the wall, close enough that she felt heat radiating off him without quite touching.
"You told them I'm here to fight beside them." His voice was low. Rough. "Not to command."
