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“I can see all of it,” Maisie said.

Bernie’s voice went thin and sharp. “So can I.”

“Can you sever it?” I asked.

Bernie hesitated. “Maybe.”

I was going to hate that word for the rest of my life, assuming the rest of my life lasted longer than the next four minutes.

“Not while it is recoiling toward him,” Carrick said through the broken projection. “If she cuts now, the released force could tear through Knox or dump into the emergency Wards.”

The tether pulled again. Pain flashed white and hot behind my eyes. I tasted copper and smoke on my tongue.

“We need the tension reversed,” Bernie said. “The holder has to pull it fully taut in the other direction.”

I understood before anyone said it. “You need him to summon me.” It was a statement, not a question. I already knew the answer.

Silence took the room. Even the broken glass seemed to stop settling.

Bernie swallowed. “Yes.”

Maisie’s answer was immediate. “Absolutely fucking not.”

I looked at her. She was pale under the Alicorn Sight shining in her eyes, furious enough to be shaking and trying hard enough not to show it, and I loved her a little for the effort. I did not say I had to.

I did not ask her to stand down.

I asked the question I meant. “Tell me another way.”

No one answered.

Carrick closed his eyes for half a second. “None that I can see.”

Bernie shook her head once, tight and unhappy. “No.”

I looked back at Maisie. “My choice.”

Her jaw tightened. “Then I’m choosing to stand right fucking here while you make it.”

The man I had been when I first met her would have argued. But I’d spent a century being ordered, owned, dragged, and named. I was done mistaking love for command.

So, I nodded.

The exposed Infernal tether went taut.

A narrow black and red wound opened in the air before me. Not a Hellmouth. Not yet. Just enough of a tear for the leash to become visible, physical, and Magical at once, stretched between my mark and the dark below.

Hank snarled. Bernie lifted both hands. Maisie stepped closer instead of back. Guy was on his feet by the hearth, one hand braced against cracked stone, eyes fixed on me like he could anchor me by refusing to blink.

Sully rose inside me like a mountain waking.

Then the voice I had not heard outside my nightmares for a century slid through the connection.

“Enforcer.”

A century of reactions rose in me. Fear. Rage. Obedience. The old shape of survival, waiting to see which one I would choose.

I looked at Maisie. At my brother. At Bernie, blood on her face and Necromancy in her hands. At Hank, no longer joking, Hellhound teeth bared at the dark. All the things Mammon had taught me as weaknesses stood with me in the ruined watch station.