The chamber shook from the gateway itself, from corruption that had grown into the stone like roots.
Dante's voice across the link: "INCOMING! Hundreds! All entrances!"
She couldn't look away. A second of broken concentration would undo everything.
But she heard it.
Steel on shells. Temperature dropping as Dante unleashed the Reaper. Death-knights shouting. Shadow-guards fighting. Dying.
Someone screamed, cut off mid-sound.
The death pulse hit like a blade. Terror, pain, nothing.
A hundred and thirteen. They'd lost a hundred and twelve getting here, and now?—
Another pulse.
A hundred and fourteen.
A third: Jill, the ward-keeper who'd stood beside her during the synchronization, whose last thought was confusion because she'd been in the back, she'd been safe, how had they reached her?—
A hundred and fifteen.
Tears and blood ran down her face. Her body was breaking—blood vessels bursting in her eyes, muscles tearing.
She was dying, the magic burning her hollow.
But the gateway was closing.
Another stone ground into place. Another channel snapped back, light shifting gold to white and holding. Her ancestors' work remembering itself.
Behind her, the battle raged—Dante's voice calm, certain, coordinating the defense.
He was out there. Could be dying right now. Could already be gone and she wouldn't know because she couldn't turn around, couldn't check, couldn't do anything but stand here with her hands fused to stone while he?—
Don't. Don't think it. Don't let it in.
But she couldn't stop her mind from showing her: Dante falling. Dante's shadows going still. Dante's voice cutting off mid-command the way Jill’s scream had cut off, there and then not, alive and then just—nothing.
She poured everything into the closure. Every drop. Every spark.
The ward-stones blazed like stars.
Perfect patterns. What her ancestors had built to last.
The soul-flow channels redirected with a sound like bones setting, like the world remembering how to breathe.
The gateway sealed.
Her hands tore free from the stone—skin peeling away, bloody handprints left behind.
Her legs buckled.
"It's done." The words came out barely a whisper. "It's closed."
She turned, needing to see him, needing to know?—
Chaos. Shells flooding through every entrance. Death-knights falling back. Shadow-guards desperate. Dante's shadows everywhere, coordinating retreat.
