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He went still. Not angry. Not panicked. Worse. Knox went into that horrible controlled quiet he wore when Hell reached inside a century-old wound and pressed its thumb against the bruise.

For once, I did not make a joke.

“Stay with him,” Neysa said quietly.

“I am.”

Bernie laid out the rules quickly. The next probe would hit the Wards. Guy would keep the boundary stable. I would contaminate the returned data with small, controlled Earth-and-Sky interference. Bernie would catch the returning signal and ride it backward. Knox would do nothing Magical unless absolutely necessary, because his Hellmark was the road they were trying to follow.

Hank’s job was apparently to stand there with Hellhound senses and detect any change in the signal before the rest of us got spiritually filleted. Comforting.

Knox looked at me. Not ordering. Not warning me away. He held out his hand. “Ready?”

I took it. “Nope.”

His mouth twitched.

“Do it anyway,” I said.

The fourth test arrived like a question asked with teeth.

Guy’s Ward projection flared. Bronze-gold. Black-red. Then the stolen fragments of me– gold, sky-blue, too little pink and all wrong– stitched together with MacAllen resonance into a composite that made the air taste like pennies and smoke.

“Wait…” Bernie said.

“Waiting,” I said.

“Still waiting,” Knox said.

Hank sighed. “I hate organized waiting.”

“Now,” Bernie snapped.

I released the smallest thread of Magic I could manage. Tactical sparkle, but polite. A controlled shimmer of Earth-and-Sky light that refracted the probe just enough to poison what went back without severing the road Bernie needed.

Bad data, not no data. Apparently, my entire job was now Magical fraud with restraint.

Bernie’s lavender and silver Magic lashed around the black and red return thread. Not attacking it. Not cleansing it. Running beside it like a hound catching a scent.

Bernie went very still. “Got you.”

Knox’s hand tightened around mine so fast my bones protested.

The Hellmark flared beneath his sleeve. Not possession. Not corruption. Something built into the Spellwork snapped awake when Bernie tried to travel backward through the system, a trap designed to collapse its own route if anyone followed it home.

Knox bent over the table with one hand braced against the edge hard enough to make the wood groan.

“Knox?” My voice came out thinner than I liked.

“Keep going,” he gritted out.

Old me might have decided for him because I was scared. New me, apparently, was annoying enough to practice what I preached.

“Are you sure?”

Knox looked directly at me. “My choice.”

Well, damn. That one landed.