“Impressive.” The Cardinal’s voice drifts across the chamber, conversational despite the magnitude of what’s happening. “Your control has improved since Morrith. You’re ending cleanly—no residue, no cascade. The Yael bloodline at its purest expression.”
I don’t answer. Can’t spare the attention.
The pain intensifies. I feel blood at the corner of my mouth—internal damage beginning, the price of pushing too hard. My hands shake with the effort of maintaining precision at this scale. One mistake, one moment of lost control, and the termination will propagate beyond my intended targets.
Like Morrith. Like all the other times I’ve failed.
Not this time.
Eleventh anchor.
The framework groans with instability. The central nexus pulses erratically, its rhythm disrupted by the damage I’ve inflicted. Four anchors remain. Four points holding the Choir’s annihilation engine intact.
The termination hits harder than expected—the framework fighting with desperate intensity, pouring power into the remaining structure. The impact staggers me, drives me to my knees. Fresh blood joins the old at my lips.
“The fifteenth might kill you.” The Cardinal’s voice has lost its conversational tone. “Your body can’t sustain this level of output. End the next anchor, and you’ll die before you can reach the seventeenth.”
They’re right. I feel it—the limits of my bloodline magic, the threshold beyond which lies permanent damage, death, the end of everything I am.
I now understand why the Cardinal isn’t trying to stop me. He doesn’t need to. He knows I can’t finish what I’ve come to do.
Arax continues to fight. I can’t see him, but I feel his domain colliding with the Cardinal’s defenses, feel the violence of his approach, feel the relentless determination that drives him toward me despite every obstacle.
He’s coming.
I need to give him time.
The fifteenth anchor waits. One more termination, and I cross the point of no return.
I reach for the anchor—and the ritual reaches back.
