Thessa's spirits drifted in from the north. Fifteen hundred ghostly presences haunting forward through the fractured light.
Eleven thousand against thirty thousand.
The math kept running in her head.
The Death Lords converged at the center. Brynn stayed with Dante, the circlet blazing against her forehead, and tried to look like she belonged among immortals.
Seraphina reached them first, six feet of scarred warrior queen. Her eyes swept Brynn with the casual appraisal of someone who'd watched empires burn.
"The human lives." Approval underneath. "Still breathing after everything?—"
"Tell me," Vex interrupted, prowling closer, form flickering at the edges, "did the Reaper consume you? Make you beg for?—"
Shadows erupted between them. Dante's darkness formed a wall, temperature plummeting until frost cracked across the ground.
"Mine." The word came out barely human.
Vex laughed, backing off. Seraphina's mouth curved with something like amusement. And Thessa simply materialized at Brynn's shoulder without warning, close enough that the chill of her ghostly form sent goosebumps prickling down Brynn's neck.
"You're standing at a crossroads, child."
Brynn flinched. Thessa's eyes held that distant look.
"The gateway closes. That much is certain." Her translucent form flickered, revealing glimpses layered over one another. Brynn bloody but standing. Brynn on her knees, screaming. Brynn alone in darkness, reaching for someone who wasn't there anymore. "What you sacrifice in the closing... that choice is still being made."
The images burned into Brynn's mind. Alone. Reaching for someone who wasn't there.
Dante.
She couldn't breathe.
"Enough prophecy." Seraphina's voice cracked like a whip. "We have a war to fight. Save the riddles for after we've won."
Thessa smiled sadly and began expanding outward, ghostly threads reaching toward each army. The death-link taking shape.
The first connection hit Brynn like a fist to the chest.
Four thousand warriors breathing as one, their battle-hunger vibrating through her bones. Then Vex's forces crashed into her awareness, restless and burning and consuming until she wanted to tear something apart with her bare hands?—
Cold cut through. Thessa's spirits joining, steadying the chaos like ice water over fire.
And beneath it all, anchoring her: Dante. Solid. Immovable. His shadows tightened around her waist as eleven thousand souls pressed against her awareness.
"Breathe." His presence bled through the link. "I've got you."
She let the flood settle into patterns instead of drowning.
His voice carried across the death-link: "Final positions. Seraphina draws their main force east. Vex hits harvesting chambers from below. Thessa extracts victims through the spirit-paths. I take the central approach with the Architect. She closes the gateway." A pause that felt weighted. "We end this today."
Acknowledgments pulsed back. Seraphina's determination, sharp as shattered glass. Vex's hungry anticipation. Thessa's gentle certainty.
Brynn made herself look toward their destination.
The horizon pulsed with sickly gold. And in that light, movement. Shapes beyond counting. Soul-soldiers emptied of everything that made them human, waiting in perfect, silent rows.
Thirty thousand.
The number she couldn't stop counting.
