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I stop in front of him and press my palm flat over his heart. “Let me listen,” I tell him, and his jaw works once before he nods, like he already knows what he’s handing me might come back changed.

I close my eyes, and the first layer is hellfire, rolling under his ribs the way it always has, familiar enough now that I could pick it out of a hundred other supernatural signatures without trying. Underneath that, thinner and brighter, strands of something holy thread through the heat like gold wire through coal, and I’ve heard this before, too, in the clearing, in his skin the night his hellhound settled instead of tore. Two forces that were never meant to share a body, wound together anyway, beautiful in their contradiction.

Except now something has hold of them.

Hellfire and Holy Light are still tangled together, but they’re moving, being dragged deeper through Carnage by a force I can’t see. I follow the pull as far as I can, feeling both powers fight against it, twisting tighter around each other instead of breaking apart as whatever has them keeps hauling them down.

Down where… I have no fucking idea.

But something is waiting at the other end.

Every instinct tells me not to reach for it. I do anyway…

And then I feel it.

Something buried beneath Malgrave’s power.

I focus harder, pushing past the heat coming off the Hellwarden until I reach whatever is pulling at Carnage from underneath it.

And suddenly I know.

This isn’t Malgrave.

The power inside Carnage is older than anything I’ve ever touched, and so fucking strong my body reacts before I can pull away. My heart kicks hard, my breath catches, and every instinct I have starts screaming at me to get my hand off Carnage’s chest.

But I keep it there.

Because now that I’ve found the bastard, I can feel what it’s doing.

Malgrave might have put the binding inside Carnage, but he isn’t the one pulling at the roar.

This thing is.

The realization hits just as that power pulls again, harder this time, and Carnage’s entire body jerks beneath my palm.

Jesus-fucking-Christ.

Whatever is buried inside him isn’t some leftover piece of magic or another Hellwarden trick. There’s intent behind it, and enough power that Malgrave suddenly feels like the smaller presence when I compare the two.

My knees buckle.

Carnage catches me before I hit the floor, both arms locking around me, and the sudden loss of contact with his skin should cut off whatever I found inside him.

It doesn’t.

I can still hear it.

Fainter now, but there, humming somewhere inside my chest with a depth that makes my stomach turn.

“Echo.” Sentinel comes closer while Carnage still has both arms around me, his eyes moving over my face before his hand settles on my shoulder.

Grace flares beneath his palm.

Black-red heat answers from somewhere behind my shoulder so fucking fast I barely have time to suck in a breath before it surges into his touch. The two powers collide beneath his hand, gold blazing through the dark for one brilliant second before they twist together, white-gold streaking through black-red flame as it erupts around his fingers.

“Fuck!” Sentinel tears his hand away, but the fused flame comes with him, curling over his knuckles as he stumbles back and clamps his other hand around his wrist. His wings rip free on instinct, spreading hard enough to slam into the edge of the table. For a second, the fire keeps burning around his hand, black-red threaded with streaks of white-gold.

Then it dies.