Through the death-link, she felt their forces register the same thing. The collective flinch. The moment of raw terror before training and purpose clamped down over survival instinct.
They knew. Every soul here knew most of them wouldn't survive.
They were standing anyway. Because she'd asked them to.
"They chose this." Dante's voice, quiet beneath the link's noise. "You gave them something worth choosing."
"And if I can’t close it?” The words slipped out before she could stop them. "If I freeze and they all die for nothing?"
His hand found hers, squeezed once, hard enough to bruise.
"Then I'll burn through every soul between here and that gateway to give you another chance." His dark eyes held hers. "And another after that. However many it takes. You won't fail alone, Brynn. You won't fail at all."
Her throat closed.
She didn't have words. So she squeezed back, just as hard, and let that be enough.
The sky lightened, dawn bleeding across the fractured horizon.
The death-link pulsed: all positions ready.
Dante's hand released hers. But his shadows tightened around her waist one last time. A private claim beneath the weight of eleven thousand watching souls.
"Together," she said.
"Together." He made it sound like a vow. Like something that could survive even this.
Dawn broke.
Seraphina's battle-cry split the morning, four thousand warriors surging forward in a tide of violence. Vex's infiltrators vanished underground. Thessa's spirits drifted toward the paths like fog with terrible purpose.
And their thirty-five hundred advanced. Toward the corrupted paradise. Toward the gateway she'd opened and had to close. Toward thirty thousand empty shells waiting to tear them apart.
The circlet burned against her forehead. Ward-symbols flaring bright enough to taste.
Eleven thousand souls at her back. One impossible task ahead.
Brynn stopped counting and started walking.
LXXV.
DANTE
The smell hit him before his feet touched stone: blood and ash and that sickly-sweet corruption that meant Caelum's magic was close.
His shadows had already mapped the chamber during descent. Twenty soldiers at choke points. Another thirty flooding from side passages. Moving with coordination that shouldn't be possible for empty shells.
They'd walked into a trap.
"Death-knights, advance! Shadow-guards, flanks!" His shadows struck in every direction, buying seconds. "Ward-keepers, hold position!"
The chamber erupted.
Death-knights met the first wave with shields and steel. The impact shook the ground hard enough to crack stone beneath their feet. Metal screaming against metal. The copper smell of blood hitting air. Shadow-guards swept wide, cutting into exposed flanks while the center held.
But these shells had tactics. Strategy. Three surrounded each death-knight simultaneously, coordinated strikes forcing his warriors back step by step. Another group punched through the line, heading straight for the ward-keepers.
For her.
