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‘Why my roar, though?’ Nothing comes with the words, only the shape of them across my mouth, but Sentinel catches it immediately.

“He wants to know why his roar.”

Echo’s brow pulls tight. “I don’t think that’s the right question.”

Every eye at the table turns toward her, mine included.

She looks at me. “Not exactly.”

Raze leans forward. “Explain.”

“The roar is where Malgrave got access, but what I heard pulling wasn’t focused on the roar itself.” Echo glances toward Sentinel. “It was pulling on the place where Carnage’s hellfire and Sentinel’s Grace are still joined.”

Sentinel sits forward. “So, the roar is the doorway?”

“I think so.”

I look at the angel beside me, and Sentinel looks right back.

Raze’s expression hardens. “Then that’s our answer. The Devil doesn’t want Carnage’s voice.” His eyes move between Sentinel and me. “He wants what the two of you made.”

Nobody answers straightaway. Raze looks at me, then Sentinel, his brow pulling tight before his attention snaps back to Echo. “Because it shouldn’t exist,” he says slowly. “Every authority that’s come sniffing after it has said exactly that. Not that it’s dangerous, but that it shouldn’t be here.” He looks at me like he’s seeing the roar itself instead of the man carrying it. “You fused hellfire and Holy Light. Nobody’s supposed to be able to do that. Heaven and Hell don’t share, don’t blend, don’t touch. There’s a reason for that wall, and it isn’t politics.” His voice drops lower. “It’s because every time that wall’s come down before, the mortal world paid for it.”

Echo’s face goes pale in the low light. “What do you mean?”

Sentinel answers her, and something moves behind his eyes when he does. “It’s said that when supernaturals in history have tried to fuse Heaven and Hell, cities have been buried under ash. Islands blown apart. Oceans swallow coastlines whole. Years when summer never came at all.”

“Those were y-you?” Her voice cracks on it.

“Not us.” His jaw tightens. “Supernatural catastrophes humans were left to invent explanations for afterward.”

“Pompeii, Krakatoa, Tambora, Lisbon, The Great Fire of London. There are others history never got the chance to explain properly,” Sentinel states.

Echo’s fingers curl white-knuckled around the table’s edge. “How far back does this go?”

Sentinel goes quiet long enough that the silence becomes an answer. “Far enough that the first one didn’t survive as history,” he finally says. “It survived as legend instead.”

“Which legend?”

His expression tells her before his mouth does. “Atlantis.”

Echo stares at him. “That’s not real,” she breathes out. “I’m from the ocean. The stories of Atlantis are myths our ancestors told us when we were children.”

Sentinel’s eyes lock on hers. “It’s not real anymore.”

Echo’s face changes. “What does that even mean?”

Sentinel leans forward. “Atlantis wasn’t destroyed because somebody pissed off a god. That’s the version humans ended up with. But in reality, Heaven and Hell combined their power there.”

“Who?”

“Nobody knows anymore. Or if they do, they’ve done a damn good job making sure the rest of us don’t.” His mouth tightens. “But whoever did it lost control. The power tore through the island, split the ground underneath it, and opened the ocean floor.”

Echo slowly shakes her head. “No.”

Sentinel watches her. “What?”

“That’s not how our story goes.”