Kael moved through them like a blade through silk, leaving bodies clutching at their throats, blood spilling between their fingers.
He was covered in cuts, breathing hard, but no one dared step forward.
They had seen me begin my fight with the Devourer. They trusted me.
Like a well-oiled machine, they adjusted their positions with what strength they had left.
Zephyr, freed from the cage of spears, resumed firing, each arrow finding anyone who came too close to Daemon or me.
I could feel the trust they had in me, and I refused to let them down.
I gave more of myself to the Veil.
My knees threatened to buckle. My vision swam. The stump where my hand had been screaming in pain.
The throne room floor cracked. Stone split as competing magics warred. My Veil-bindings compressed inward against the Devourer’s ever-expanding, curse-like power.
The Devourer smiled through Aeron’s face, undeterred.
"You cannot hold me forever. Your body bleeds. Your strength fails. And I have eternity."
It was an undeniable truth.
If this continued, the bindings would fail, and I would collapse. The Devourer would be free to finish what he’d started.
Unless,
The thought crystallized with perfect, terrible clarity.
I couldn’t banish something that had nowhere to go. The Devourer existed here because the Veil had been torn, because my ancestors had opened doors that should have remained closed. You couldn’t unmake him. Couldn’t kill him. He wasn’t bound by the laws of life and death as we were.
But I could send him home.
The Devourer’s eyes widened.
For the first time, I saw fear.
His shadows released Daemon and rushed back to their master. The Devourer fought harder, the force driving me to my knees, but I had come too far to yield.
I pulled on the Veil. Not to strengthen the bindings.
To open them.
The Devourer opened his mouth to speak.
Too late.
I reached through the Veil, past the layers of reality that separated dimensions. Found the vast, empty dark where the Devourer had been born.
Where he belonged.
The Void.
And I tore.
The breach opened like a wound in space, not wild, not uncontrolled, but precise. A surgical incision held open through absolute discipline.
Through it, I felt the Void.
