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I push myself upright slowly, every muscle in my body protesting the movement.

Isolde rises with me immediately, one hand braced against my arm as if she expects gravity itself to become hostile. Honestly, fair assumption at this point.

“You really should stop giving speeches while standing next to obvious evidence of your crimes,” I tell Vaerith. “It’s a terrible long-term strategy.”

His pale eyes flash toward Isolde. “You exposed your own bloodline for this creature.”

The word lands hard enough that several nearby nobles visibly tense.

Creature.

Like I am something dragged up from the same hole as the devourer behind me.

Isolde straightens beside me before I can answer. Her chin lifts sharply, rain running down the side of her throat while the folio remains tucked against her ribs like a blade made of paper.

“My bloodline survived despite you,” she says. “Corin survived despite you. The only thing your house ever created successfully was a ledger full of corpses hidden behind accounting language.”

Syrenya lets out a delighted little sound from the outer courtyard.

“Oh, excellent,” she calls. “That one’s going to spread.”

Vaerith ignores her completely now. His attention fixes on me instead, and I see genuine uncertainty behind his anger. He expected frenzy. He expected slaughter. He expected me to crack open under the devourer’s pressure and feed the district to my hunger.

Instead, his own ward lines are burning around him while the people he tried to manipulate watch from a safe distance.

The devourer roars again.

The sound rolls through the courtyard in a wave strong enough to shake loose chunks of stone from the estate walls. The hollow in its chest pulses wildly as it struggles against the collapsing summoning architecture. I feel the creature’s attention settle on me once more, furious and starving and increasingly unstable.

The hunger inside me answers immediately.

Heat surges through my core again, fast and vicious, and gold light flashes brighter beneath my skin. The place where the devourer latched onto me earlier burns like molten iron driven through my ribs.

Her hand tightens on my arm. “Corin.”

“I know.”

“The pressure is climbing again.”

“Also know.”

Rhazek’s gaze sharpens. “It is attempting to force resonance through the remaining breach.”

Sable mutters a curse under her breath. “Can’t anything in this city just die normally?”

The devourer drags another portion of itself through the torn veil. More of its torso emerges from the summoning circle, ribs unfolding wider around that impossible hollow chest while black fluid hisses from fresh tears in reality around its body. The courtyard darkens beneath its shadow.

Then its attention locks fully onto me.

Every instinct in my body screams warning.

The hunger surges upward with savage recognition, eager to meet the challenge again, eager to tear into the thing trying to claim territory inside my own soul. My hands curl involuntarily as black-gold flame spills between my fingers.

Isolde steps directly in front of me.

Not shielding.

Anchoring.