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Sentinel finally looks at me. “Yeah.”

Two seconds pass.

“Any idea what the fuck he meant?”

His eyes shift back to where the Devil stood. “I have a feeling we’re going to find out.”

So do I.

We got my power back, sealed Hell beneath our feet, and reclaimed the weapon the Devil went through all this trouble to steal. And somehow, looking at Sentinel, it doesn’t feel like the bastard walked away empty-handed.

He learned something.

Malgrave stares at the place where his master disappeared, waiting for something.

Rescue.

Acknowledgment.

Anything.

But nothing comes.

“He left you,” I state matter-of-factly.

Malgrave’s head turns toward the empty chasm, like he still expects it to open back up.

I spit blood onto the stone at his feet. “Guess you weren’t that fucking important.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

ECHO

The chasm is sealed by the time I finally get my breathing under control, but heat still pours off the broken stone in waves strong enough to make the chamber around us shimmer.

Smoke hangs over what’s left of the cavern, drifting through the wreckage and the bodies of infernal guardians scattered across the ground. Blackened strips of earth glow in places, lava cooling beneath a hard crust while the stink of sulfur and burned flesh sits thick in the back of my throat.

And underneath it all, I can still hear Carnage’s roar.

The last of it rolls back from somewhere beyond the mountains, quieter now but deep enough that my siren catches every fading vibration.

I close my eyes for a second.

His roar—he got it back.

Carnage stands a few feet away, chest still heaving, blood running from the corner of his mouth and cutting a dark line along his jaw. Then his lips move. “He left you.”

My heart fucking stops.

His voice.

I’ve never heard his voice.

It’s deep and rough, scraped raw from weeks of silence, and the roar he just ripped out of himself, but underneath that damage is this low gravel that catches somewhere deep in my stomach.

Jesus Christ.

That’s Carnage.