Something inside Dante shattered.
He felt it break. Every wall he'd ever built collapsing simultaneously. Every thread holding his restraint together snapping at once.
Because she was dying.
The only person who'd looked at what he truly was and seen him beneath it. Who'd chosen him, knowing exactly what he was. Who'd said "you don't scare me" and meant it with her whole heart.
Who'd made him want to be something more than what he was born to be.
And she was broken because he'd looked away for one second.
The temperature plummeted instantly. Frost spread across every surface in seconds. The ward-stones. The walls. The ceiling. Even the blood pooling beneath Brynn's body.
His shadows erupted.
They swallowed Caelum's golden light whole. Consumed it. Devoured it like starving things finally allowed to feed. His form became less solid, less defined. The shape he wore out of convenience beginning to dissolve.
Death incarnate.
The Reaper.
Finally unleashed.
The chamber walls cracked. Stone screaming under pressure. Reality fracturing at the edges where his shadows touched.
Caelum's expression cracked like porcelain. His smug smile faltered as he felt the weight of what he'd done, what he'd unleashed.
"Reaper—" He backed up. His voice lost its arrogance. "I didn't mean—she was just a mortal, we can find another?—"
"Don't." The word made the walls shake. Made reality shudder. "Don't speak. Don't breathe. Don't dare continue existing in my presence."
"She was nothing?—"
Wrong answer.
"She survived losing everything and learned to steal hope from the darkness." Dante's voice was cold. "She is every forsaken soul who refused to break, distilled into one impossible woman."
His form shifted further, less human with every word. More concept. More of what he'd always been beneath the restraint.
"And she is mine."
The possessive snarl echoed through the chamber. Through the death-link. Through every realm simultaneously.
Caelum threw up barriers. Light flaring in layers. Every defense he'd learned over millennia.
Dante's shadows touched them.
They exploded like glass.
His power didn't break through. It erased them. Made them cease to be because death didn't negotiate with those who'd forfeited their right to exist.
Caelum's face went white. "Brother, please—we can bring her back, there are ways, rituals?—"
"I was never cursed, Caelum." Barely recognizable as language now. "I was born this way. Death given form and will."
His shadows surrounded Caelum. Cutting off every escape.
"I choose to be gentle. I choose to show mercy. I choose to protect instead of destroy."
