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Then my Hellmark erupted.

Not because Bernie had failed. Because she had succeeded.

Everything layered over the oldest connection was gone. No Fogarty relay. No Topside gateway architecture wrapped around it. No Topside road borrowing Arrhythmia’s Wards. What remained on my arm burned simpler. Cleaner. Nastier.

One ancient line of Infernal Magic cut through the mark and pointed down.

Hank stopped being funny.

That, more than the pain, told me we had found something worse. His shoulders lowered. His mouth parted over teeth that were suddenly too sharp for the shape he wore. A low growl rolled through the ruined cabin, and every hair on my body rose in answer.

“Greed,” Hank said.

Bernie froze.

She knew that Magic. I saw it in the way her face emptied. Not fear. Recognition. The kind that came with history and scars.

“Mammon,” she said.

The name did not surprise me. That was the worst of it. It settled into the ruined cabin like it had been waiting above our heads the whole time, patient enough to let us strip away everything else before showing its hand.

The emergency communication sputtered back in a narrow, broken line. Carrick’s face appeared in fragments above the fractured projection, one eye, half a mouth, a flash of silver hair, then enough of him to scowl with purpose.

“I have three seconds of data,” he said, voice thin with interference. “Maybe less.”

The shattered Topside relay flickered once in Bernie’s ruined circle. Carrick’s remaining projection sharpened around it.

His expression went still. “Keevandrie.”

Guy pushed himself upright beside the cracked hearth. “You’re sure?”

“That is her geometry.” Carrick’s voice cracked, then returned. “Not similarity. Not family resemblance. Hers.”

The pieces locked together without mercy. Keevandrie had engineered the anchor-gateway architecture. Fogarty’s Necromancy had been incorporated into the Topside relay and kept that road open. Mammon had received what came through and held the Infernal end.

“Keevandrie built the delivery system,” I said. “Fogarty helped keep the road open. Mammon got what came through.”

“That is what the evidence now supports,” Carrick said.

Then the remaining Infernal tether pulled.

Hard.

My knees buckled.

Not the way the old summons had taken me. That mattered. I did not feel my will slide out from under me. I did not feel obedience click into place like a collar locking shut. This was force. External. Brutal. A hook through the oldest part of the mark and a hand on the other end dragging hard enough to make my bones remember Hell.

Sully braced inside me. “Hold.”

I held.

Barely.

Bernie wiped blood from her temple with the back of one hand and stared at the simplified mark like it had become a language she hated but could finally read. Maisie’s Alicorn Sight still burned bright, gold and sky-blue with the faintest pink shimmer, tracking the ancient line cutting through me and down.

They saw it at the same time.

All the camouflage was gone. No relay architecture. No borrowed Wards. No sympathetic nesting to hide the oldest line. The true Infernal tether was exposed enough for them to see the shape of it.