Her circlet blazed.
The war held its breath.
LXXVI.
BRYNN
The moment Brynn's hands touched the corrupted ward-stone, something tore open behind her eyes.
Something worse than pain. Her mind was forced to contain years of corruption all at once. Caelum's modifications clawing at her awareness, fighting her attempt to undo them—like the work was alive, refusing to die.
Her circlet blazed white.
Ward-sight flooded in. She saw the original architecture her ancestors had built, with clean lines and every angle precise, now buried under rot, golden corruption threading through the patterns like veins of infection. Spreading. Growing. But underneath, still intact, still waiting: the original protocols, sleeping for ages, hoping someone with the right bloodline would come.
Her ward magic poured through the patterns, ripping at the corruption like peeling back dead tissue to find what was still alive beneath. The gateway convulsed, golden light pulsing erratically, fighting her.
The stone burned beneath her palms—skin blistering, flesh cooking against ward-work that didn't want to be fixed. The bandages on her wrists, already soaked from Caelum's torture, went hot and wet, blood running down her arms and dripping onto the stone.
Her blood mixing with her ancestors' work.
"Channel! Now!"
Power slammed into her from behind.
The ward-keepers responded. The entire network opened. Every stone they'd synchronized, every point in Dante's realm—all of it flowing through her mortal body at once.
Her spine arched. Every nerve lit up. Magic that should have killed her poured through in torrents.
This is what it feels like to burn alive from the inside.
The gateway howled, reality screaming as she forced it to change.
Soul-flow channels flickered. For one moment, they stopped flowing inward. The corruption wavered.
Then it surged back twice as hard.
Copper flooded her mouth. She'd bitten through her tongue. Every muscle locked as centuries of Caelum's work pushed back at once.
Opening had been turning a key.
This was holding a wound closed while something on the other side tried to tear it open.
Her hands were melting.
She could smell her own flesh. Sharp. Nauseating. But if she let go now, she'd lose everything. Every soul who'd died to get her here.
Updates crashed through the death-link:
Seraphina: "Taking heavy losses. Can't hold much longer. Finish it NOW."
Vex: "He knows. His army is converging. MOVE FASTER."
Thessa: "Spirit-paths collapsing. So many trapped in processing..."
She pushed harder—blood running from her nose. Vision fracturing. Her magic tore through corrupted patterns with desperate violence.
One modification burned away. Then another. Ward-stones began grinding back toward their original positions. A channel was redirected. Light shifted from sickly gold to clean blue-white.
