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Guy stepped directly into my personal space, getting right in my face, his hazel eyes burning with an absolute, unyielding authority that acted as an emotional counterweight to a century of isolation. "Listen to me, Knox. I just got my brother back. You are not walking back into Hell. Period."

"If I'm the literal vulnerability that lets Hell breach these Wards, Guy…"

"Then we fix the fucking mark," Guy snarled, slamming a hand against my shoulder. "Not you. The mark."

“Thank the Great Goddess somebody actually gets it,” Maisie grumped. “Guy, maybe you can make your boneheaded brother see that he is not the weapon. He isn't the enemy. Something horrific was done to him. He is the victim, not the threat.”

Without a response, Bernie stepped forward, her hands glowing with the faint lavender-and-silver light of her Necromantic Magic. She raised two fingers, attempting to gently probe the outer boundary of the black and red Hellmark to find a severance point.

The instant her Necromantic energy hovered near the sigil, the Hellmark flared violently, spitting a chaotic nest of jagged, red sparks that hissed through the air like an angry viper. The backlash was so aggressive that Bernie had to violently yank her hand back, her eyes narrowing.

"Nope," Bernie stated deadpan, shaking out her fingers.

Maisie raised an eyebrow. "Highly technical diagnosis."

"I went to Necromancer school for literal centuries to learn that specific vocabulary," Bernie shot back without missing a beat.

Crossing her arms, her expression turned deeply analytical as she looked at my arm. "The Hellmark is deliberately constructed to resist Hell Magic, Necromancy, and my guess is that will be the same for Dragon Magic. Why? Because those are exactly the traditional, heavy-hitting powers Mammon would expect anyone standing around an elite Guardsman to use. It’s an insulated circuit."

Then, Bernie’s eyes shifted, locking squarely onto Maisie. "But the Spellwork didn't expect you." She pointed at Maisie. “You're not stronger than the mark. You're different. Whoever built this thing prepared it to resist Hell Magic, Necromancy, probably Dragon Magic…”

“But not Alicorn.”

“Exactly. Your Magic draws from both Earth and Sky in a way they didn't anticipate.”

“So I'm the loophole?”

“Looks that way.”

The humor vanished. Guy stepped back, his eyes searching my face, and I knew exactly what was coming next.

"Tell me exactly what happened on that oil rig, Knox,” he asked softly.

The atmosphere shifted instantly, turning cold and grim. The lingering traces of warmth from the hug evaporated as my mind was forced backward into the dark– the memory of Keevandrie’s betrayal. The blinding, cataclysmic blaze of the explosion. The terrifying sensation of the containment Wards shattering into a million pieces, and the sickening, endless lurch as I fell backward into a yawning Abyss of Hellfire.

For a hundred years, I had carried those broken pieces in absolute isolation, assuming the truth died with me. Now, for the first time in a century, I had someone standing right in front of me who might actually hold the connecting threads.

Looking my little brother dead in the eye, my voice dropped into a low, dangerous register. "You ever hear the name Keevandrie?"

Guy went entirely, terrifyingly still. The casual smirk vanished from his face. His eyes turned to absolute flint as his posture locked.

"Yeah," Guy ground out, his voice shaking with immediate, lethal recognition. “Carrick told me all about her.”

My eyes narrowed into slits. "She was on the rig."

6

The words hung in the middle of the canyon like a sheet of ice. Nobody spoke. Nobody so much as exhaled.

I watched the transformation roll over Guy MacAllen in real time. The casual, teasing little brother who had just been cracking jokes about Knox’s ‘dead’ status completely vanished. His shoulders squared, his jaw locked, and his eyes went so dark they looked like twin chips of hazel glass. I had no clue what bedtime stories the renowned Dragon Elder had filled Guy’s head with regarding this Elven Sorceress, Keevandrie. Still, Guy clearly knew enough to understand that her presence on the oil rig a century ago was a catastrophic revelation.

Guy’s voice dropped an octave, tight and dangerous. “You’re sure?”

Knox leveled his brother with a look that could have stripped paint off a barn. “I spent a hundred years seeing that bitch’s face every time I closed my eyes in the dark, Guy. I’m sure.”

“Ouch.” I shifted my weight, a sharp pang of empathy twisting in my gut. I had heard that the MacAllens were a walking drama series, but I was quickly realizing it wasn't going to be a casual family-history conversation over sweet tea. It was ancient, heavy-duty trauma, and it was currently bleeding all over the gray sand.

Guy didn't let the silence fester. He snapped his head toward the surrounding wasteland, his eyes scanning the ridgeline before locking onto the pulsing purple geometry of the Wards. “We’re not doing this here,” he barked, his military cadence slamming back into place.