It was like shoving a mountain. The force of my push rebounded up my arm, jarring my shoulder in its socket, but Aria stood rooted to the trembling stone floor. Her boots ground into the dust, and a flicker of earth-brown light rippled across her skin, a geometrical lattice of hardened endurance. It was Thane’s power. She was channeling the Bear Prince’s immovability, actively and stubbornly shielding herself against my intent.
"I said run!" I roared, the sound tearing from my throat, raw and desperate. This wasn't a skirmish; it was a slaughter waiting to happen. "Move, little keeper!"
The armored figure standing in the catastrophic ruin of the wall took a single, synchronized step forward. It, he, she, they, it didn't matter, was eight feet of gold-wrought plate armor that shone with a radiance that hurt to look at. The metal wasn’t forged; it was grown, seamless and perfect, lacking the rivets and imperfections of mortal craft.
A Sentinel of the High Seat.
I hadn't seen one in a millennium, not since the day they wrapped me in chains in the mortal realm. Sentinels didn't speak; they eradicated. They were the blank-faced enforcers of Zeus’s paranoia, unthinking extensions of the divine will. The weapon in its gauntleted hand was a spear of pure, condensed godlight, humming with a high-pitched whine that made the dragon, still leashed within my soul, roar with a mixture of fury and impotent frustration.
Aria spun on me, her eyes wild. The amethyst irises were gone, swallowed by the swirling, prismatic colors of my brothers, the amber of the wolf, the brown of the bear, the turquoise of the phoenix. She clutched that damned leather-bound journal to her chest like it was a shield that could stop a god's wrath, her knuckles white.
"He said all or nothing!" she screamed over the rising, drilling whine of the Sentinel’s weapon. The sound was vibrating the very stones of the floor.
I grabbed her shoulders, my fingers digging into the worn leather of her tunic, desperate to shake sense into a mind that was clearly cracking under the strain. "Theron is dead! His advice died with him! Look at that thing, Aria! That is not a soldier; that is an executioner!"
"He said I am the door!" Her voice cracked, hysterical but laced with a conviction that terrified me more than the spear. She wasn't looking at the exit I was trying to force her toward; she was looking past me, over my shoulder, at the swirling chaos of the Gate where Flynn and the others were currently trapped in the agonizing friction between worlds. "If I leave now, the connection snaps. The door closes. Forever."
"If you stay, you die!" I snarled, shaking her hard enough to rattle her teeth. "That Sentinel will turn this mountain to glass just to seal the breach! You cannot fight Olympus with half a soul and a stolen book found in the dust! This is not a battle you can win!"
She slapped my hands away. The contact sent a jolt of dragon fire, my own fire, reflected back at me, racing up my arms instantly. It was a feedback loop that nearly brought me to my knees, a searing reminder that our souls were currently woven together. Her skin was burning hot, glowing with the heat of a star strain, the physical toll of holding the connection open for three ancient beings.
"I’m not fighting them," she said, her voice dropping to a terrifying, hollow calm that belonged to a veteran general, not a sheltered girl. "I’m finishing it."
The Sentinel raised the spear, and the tip flared, a miniature sun being born in the gloom of the Sanctorum. The shadowsin the room elongated and spun wildly as the light source intensified.
I didn't think. I moved.
I threw myself in front of her, expanding the shadow of my partial manifestation. I tried to summon scales, wings, anything to build a wall of draconic flesh between her and the erasure that was coming. But I was anchored. The golden cord binding me to the Gate snapped taut, jerking me back, checking my movement like a vicious dog on a rusted chain.
I snarled, thrashing against my own magic, against the very bond Aria had forged to save me. I was the Dragon Prince, the scourge of armies, and I was reduced to a helpless spectator, leashed by the physics of my own salvation.
The spear flashed.
There was no sound of release, no thunderclap. Just a beam of white heat that slashed the air where Aria’s head had been a fraction of a second before.
She dropped into a crouch, moving with a blurring speed that made the eye water. A trail of golden sparks lingered in the air where she had been standing. It was Flynn’s supernatural reflex, the instinct of the Wolf, guiding her muscles before her brain could even register the threat. The beam struck the far wall of the chamber, and the stone didn't explode. It vanished.
The rock simply ceased to exist, leaving a smooth, smoking crater that glowed with residual heat. The air rushed in to fill the vacuum with a sharppop.
Sentinel fire with a core of godlight. It didn't burn matter; it erased it from the tapestry of existence.
"Aria!" I lunged for her again, but the tether caught me around the ribs, agonizing anxiety and physical restraint warring in my chest. "We are out of time! The subtle way is gone! You cannot finesse this!"
She looked up at me from her crouch, blood from her nose dripping onto the cover of the journal. The red droplets sizzled against the leather, boiling away from the sheer heat radiating off her skin. "Then we don't finesse it."
"What are you?—"
"Theron said if I don't commit, the four of you will tear me apart whether you mean to or not," she gasped, her eyes locking onto mine. The amethyst was creeping back in, fighting for dominance over the chaos of our projected magic. "He said I have to be the door, or gate, or whatever. Not open it.Beit."
I froze. The battlefield noise, the hum of the spear, the crumbling stone, the roar of the rift, it all seemed to drop away into a muffled silence.
I knew what she was saying. I knew the mechanics of the prison better than its architects. To open the Gate and let us through one by one required a Keeper to act as an anchor, a distinct entity holding the rope, pulling us from the mire. But to let usallthrough at once, against the pressure of Olympus pressing down from above? That required a vessel. A conduit capable of holding four divine essences simultaneously without shattering.
"No," I whispered, the horror of it settling cold and heavy in my stomach. "Aria, no. You will burn. The amount of power... it will incinerate your nervous system before you take a single step. You are mortal. Your biology cannot sustain the power of a god, let alone four."
"I’m not mortal," she countered, standing up. The golden markings on her neck were pulsing violently, spreading upward across her jaw like living ivy. "Not anymore."
The Sentinel took another heavy, inevitable step into the room. The light from its armor cast long, terrifying shadows that rotated around the chamber like the hands of a clock countingdown to midnight. It leveled the spear again, this time aiming not at us, but at the mechanism of the Gate itself.
