He sees Theo struggling. Sees Bree trapped.
Seth moves—shoves Theo aside hard enough to send him sprawling.
Black smoke surges from the Void, wrapping around Seth’s wrists and hardening like gauntlets. He grabs the chains with both hands.
The heat strikes the smoke and gutters out.
Seth pulls.
The chains scream—metal shrieking like something alive and dying. He tears them apart, silver dissolving into ash.
For one heartbeat, his eyes go completely black.
Then they fade back to normal.
Seth staggers backward, staring down at his hands. The smoke is gone. His skin is unmarked. He looks confused. Horrified.
“What—” His voice cracks. “What did I just do?”
No one answers.
Bree gasps—a sharp, desperate sound—and her body arches off the obsidian floor. Silver light flares around her, brighter than it’s been since we found her, and the veins pulsing through the walls react, some of them flickering from silver to black and back again.
The Nightmares shift, smoke curling thicker from their hooves.
Stellan moves first, dropping to his knees beside her. His hand hovers over her shoulder, then settles gently. “I’m here.” His voice cracks. “We’re here. We’ve got you.”
But the black threading her Ether remains, woven too deep to fade on its own.
Theo pushes himself upright, hands burned raw, skin blistered and red. Rhett presses a hand near the worst of it, heat sealing the edges. The skin still weeps.
The veins in the walls writhe.
Not subtly. Visibly. Like serpents trapped beneath stone, twisting and coiling as the silver light flickers faster.
Some of them turn black.
The temperature drops so fast my breath fogs.
“He knows,” Stellan says quietly.
Seth’s still staring at his hands. “What?”
“Ethos.” Stellan’s gray eyes lift to meet mine across Bree’s unconscious form. “He knows the chains are broken.”
“Then we make a stand here,” I start to say. “In his chamber—”
“No.” Stellan’s voice cuts sharp. “We can’t fight him here. This is his domain. His power.”
Movement catches my eye before anyone can argue.
The familiars appear—shadows slinking free from the obsidian glass. The fox, the raven, and the serpent uncoiling from Seth’s wrist. All three move toward the chamber entrance.
Their forms begin to glow faintly, silver light tracing through the darkness like breadcrumbs in the black.
Waiting.
“They’re showing us the way,” Theo says quietly.
