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She didn’t touch me. She didn’t have to. Her fingers were just there, steady and close, offering nothing I had not chosen and demanding nothing I was not ready to give.

Carrick broke the silence first. “Knox, mark where Keevandrie was positioned.”

I did. One small slash on the upper catwalk outside the anchor structure. Outside the center point. Outside the place where everything bent inward.

I had been inside it.

Keevandrie had been outside it.

That was not an industrial accident. That was intentional placement.

“In ritual mechanics of this type,” Carrick said, “the living anchor cannot be incidental. It has to be tied into the Spellwork before the gateway activates. Otherwise, the structure collapses before it can stabilize.”

Bernie’s face went pale. “Which means Maisie was right.”

I looked up at her.

“The base tether couldn’t have originated after you arrived in Hell,” Bernie continued. “Something had to be attached to your Magic Topside first.”

Carrick’s voice turned grim. “We must use caution here. We cannot jump to conclusions and run off half-cocked. We do not know who currently holds the other end, and we do not know that Keevandrie personally created every component of the Hellmark. What we do know is one thing: the trap required Knox to be Magically tagged before he fell.”

The cold inside me finally cracked open.

Not with a roar. Not with shattered furniture or fire bursting from my skin. That would have been easier. Cleaner.

Instead, I went very, very still.

“So, I didn’t fall into Hell,” I said.

Guy watched me the way only a brother could watch another man walk to the edge of an abyss. “Yeah.”

I looked down at Maisie’s aligned papers, at Carrick’s glowing diagram, at the X marking the exact point where my life had split open. “They dropped me exactly where they wanted me.”

Sully’s grief moved through me like the slow collapse of a mountain.

“They murdered Knox MacAllen in front of the world,” I said quietly, “and delivered what was left of me to Mammon.”

Maisie’s voice cut through the quiet. “Except they fucked up.”

Every eye in the room turned to her.

I stared at her. “How do you figure?”

Maisie pointed directly at me. “You’re standing right here.”

No pity. No soft, careful speech. Just fact.

Sully went very quiet inside me. Then, with deep satisfaction, he said, “I like her.”

“Hard to miss,” I said, because apparently my survival instincts had been damaged beyond repair.

“Don’t ruin my moment, Dead Guy.”

Guy looked between us. “She does that a lot?”

“Constantly,” I said.

Maisie lifted one shoulder. “And yet, you’re obsessed with me.”