Ayla was still screaming.
Not louder. Not softer.
Just… still there.
The sound had stopped behaving like memory. It didn't fade with time or get dulled by exhaustion. It didn't come in waves like grief usually did. It was a constant pressure under Qaritas's skin—an endless note held too long, until it became part of the air.
He tried to swallow it.
It stayed.
He tried to breathe around it.
It breathed with him.
Every time he blinked, the scream didn't replay. It waited—already in place—like something living had moved into his skull and refused to leave.
The Develdion released them at last.
Not with mercy—never mercy—just with the same indifferent finality as a blade being cleaned and put away. The arena's world dissolved in pieces, light draining, stone unbuilding itself into the void.
Qaritas dropped to one knee on the waking floor, lungs burning, throat raw, the taste of scorched blood filling his mouth even though his body was already repairing what Zcain had unmade.
Nez was there instantly, pressing into his side, violet eyes bright in the dim, tail lashing once like a warning to the shadows themselves.
Qaritas's shadow lagged behind him again.
Half a heartbeat late.
Wrong.
He hated that worse than the pain.
Zcain stepped out of the pod a moment later—calm as a cathedral, threads already folded away, expression unreadable except for the smallest tightness at the jaw. Even battered, even drained, he looked like someone who had been born in war and never found a reason to leave.
Qaritas pushed himself upright, hands shaking.
The scream sharpened.
"Still," Qaritas rasped.
Zcain didn't ask what he meant.
"I know," he said quietly.
Qaritas's eyes burned. "It's been a day."
"I know."
"She's—" Qaritas's voice cracked. The scream in his head tried to rise, tried to become his own. "He's hurting her."
Zcain finally looked at him.
His eyes didn't soften.
They didn't harden, either.
They just… carried weight.
"You're not the only one who worries about my mother," Zcain said.
That sentence hit Qaritas like a slap, because it dragged the world back into proportion. It reminded him Ayla wasn't only his—not only his first friendship, his first shelter, his first proof that kindness could exist in Taeterra.
She had raised Zcain.
And Ecayrous had once held her as his consort like a chain.
Qaritas's jaw clenched. "Then why aren't we moving? Why aren't we tearing that realm open and dragging her out?"
Zcain's breath left him slowly, like he was forcing himself not to snap.
"Because," he said, voice controlled, "the ferry doesn't bend to our panic."
Qaritas laughed—one sharp, ugly sound. "So we wait? While she—"
Zcain's gaze flared for the first time. "Don't."
The word hit like a command.
Qaritas's shadows twitched.
Nez growled low.
Zcain took a single step closer, and the air changed, as if the world remembered what he was.
"I know better than anyone what Ecayrous will do to her," Zcain said. "I've known since before you were born. I've known since the first time she came back from him with her eyes too calm and her hands too steady and her voice too gentle, like she'd decided softness was armor."
His throat worked.
For a second—just one—something like rage surfaced in him. Not theatrical. Not explosive. The kind of rage that doesn't waste energy because it has to last forever.
"And I still can't stop her," Zcain finished.
Qaritas's fists clenched until his palms bled. "Why did she go?"
Zcain's mouth curled, not quite a smile. More like a grim recognition.
"Because she chose to," he said. "And because she knows what it costs to be the only one who can walk into a monster's home without flinching."
Qaritas's voice dropped, shaking. "It shouldn't be her."
"It shouldn't," Zcain agreed.
Then his eyes sharpened.
"And it's still not me."
Qaritas flinched, anger roaring up again. "So you'll just let it—"
Zcain's hand moved.
A blade flashed.
The knife embedded itself into the stone beside Qaritas's head with such perfect control that it didn't chip the wall. It didn't tremble. It simply arrived, humming faintly with heat.
Qaritas froze.
Nez's ears flattened, body tense.
Zcain's voice stayed flat, but the words were poison-dipped.
"Don't blame me," Zcain said, "because you didn't make amends with her."
The scream in Qaritas's head spiked.
For a moment he couldn't tell if the sound was Ayla—
Or himself.
Qaritas's lips parted.
Nothing came out.
His chest rose too fast and his pulse didn't match it—stuttering, falling behind, then lunging forward like it was trying to catch up to a body that had stopped being fully his.
The shadow behind him moved late again.
Half a heartbeat.
Wrong.
Eon's presence stirred like a satisfied predator rolling onto its side.
Good, Eon murmured. Let guilt do what pain couldn't. It makes cleaner fractures.
Qaritas swallowed hard.
"I can't hear anything else," Qaritas said, voice ragged. "It won't stop."
Zcain didn't look away.
"It won't," he said. "Not until you accept what you are."
Qaritas's eyes widened. "What I am?"
Zcain's gaze flicked to Nez—then to the shadows that kept adjusting to Qaritas's breathing like eager servants.
"Close," Zcain said. "And getting closer."
The word struck like a bell.
Close to awakening.
Close to losing himself.
Close to becoming something that didn't have room for mercy.
Qaritas's throat tightened. "Then help me."
Zcain's face didn't change.
"I am helping you," he said, and it sounded like a curse.
Before Qaritas could answer, footsteps hammered down the corridor—fast, urgent, wrong for this place.
Rykhan appeared like time had spit him out.
He looked shaken, and for an Ascendant of Time, that was its own kind of alarm.
"Zcain!" Rykhan barked.
Zcain straightened instantly. The air tightened around him.
"What."
Rykhan's mouth worked like he hated being the messenger.
"Ecayrous sent a message," Rykhan said. "A banquet. And a masquerade ball. Tonight."
Qaritas went still.
Zcain didn't blink.
"Who's invited," Zcain asked, voice too calm.
Rykhan swallowed. "The Hellbound combatants for tomorrow. And all seven of us."
A pause, and Rykhan's eyes flicked to Qaritas, then away.
"He says he has a surprise."
The scream inside Qaritas sharpened into something colder.
Not fear.
Certainty.
Eon's voice slid through Qaritas's mind, amused and ugly.
Ah. The predator sets the table. How polite.
Zcain's jaw tightened, and his tone snapped into command—war-language, old and practiced.
"Where is Rivax?"
"Medical ward," Rykhan answered instantly.
"Tell him to bring the weapons to the port," Zcain said. "We leave for Mrajeareim in one hour."
Rykhan nodded.
Zcain's eyes cut toward him like a blade.
"Tell Tavran. Tell Dheas. They're coming too. Standby. We may need them the moment we arrive."
Rykhan didn't ask questions. He vanished.
Zcain turned back to Qaritas.
"Now," he said quietly, "we go."
Qaritas's voice shook. "To save her?"
Zcain's gaze held him in place.
"To survive what comes next," Zcain corrected. "If she's alive when we arrive, that will be a blessing."
That sentence should have been unbearable.
It was.
Qaritas felt something inside him grind—a plate shifting out of alignment, reality and him no longer fitting perfectly together.
Nez leaned harder into his leg.
And Qaritas realized his hand had dropped to Nez's fur without him noticing, fingers sinking into warmth like it could keep him from drifting into the void again.
"Move," Zcain said.
So they moved.
The port was not a port in any mortal sense.
It was a hanging threshold—an open wound in Taeterra where distances folded and ferries slid across rivers that weren't made of water.
The ferry waited like a beast carved into obedience: pale stone ribs, dark bone frame, oars curved like skeletal wings. Lanterns hung from its sides, each flame too steady to be natural.
Qaritas arrived with Komus at his side.
Komus's face had that tight set it got when he was trying not to fall apart and failing quietly. He kept glancing at Qaritas like he was checking whether Qaritas was still himself—or something else.
"Tell me you're not going to do anything stupid," Komus said under his breath.
Qaritas didn't look at him. "Define stupid."
Komus snorted without humor. "Cool. Love that for us."
Nez padded beside Qaritas, silent as shadow. More than once, the cat's violet eyes cut toward the ferry as if it could already smell Mrajeareim.
Cree and Hydeius were there.
They stood close enough that their shoulders touched, hands linked—parental unity drawn tight like armor. Cree's glow was dimmer than usual, like she'd turned her own light inward to keep it from shaking.
Daviyi hovered near them, face pale, hands stained with ink and old magic. Niraí stood beside her, jaw set, posture steady.
And then the others arrived in quiet sequence—like veterans taking their places.
Ación walked up with dawn in his hair, expression set in the calm focus of someone who had burned worlds and learned when not to waste flame.
Nyqomi's living armor shifted around her like restless beasts, eyes flicking across everyone with tactical precision.
Xasna moved like half-shadow, half-moonlight, barely audible even on stone.
Laxiae's skin held storms beneath it, her gaze distant, listening to currents no one else could hear.
Shanian arrived last.
Entropy didn't announce him.
It erased space around him.
Color thinned near his feet. Sound softened, as if embarrassed to exist too close.
Qaritas felt the scream in his head recoil slightly at Shanian's presence—like even agony didn't want to stand too close to endings.
Eon's voice came, low and pleased:
Now this looks like a proper gathering.
Zcain stepped onto the ferry first.
Not as a leader who wanted it.
As a leader who couldn't put it down.
He scanned the gathering once, then looked at Qaritas.
"You will not run ahead," Zcain said.
Qaritas barked a laugh. "You're giving me rules?"
"I'm giving you survival," Zcain replied. "If Ecayrous wants a surprise, it means he's already positioned it."
Komus muttered, "Translation: he's baiting us."
Zcain didn't correct him.
Qaritas's throat tightened. "And if his surprise is her?"
Zcain's eyes hardened.
"Then you will not lose yourself before you even see her," Zcain said.
Qaritas's shadow twitched behind him, half a heartbeat late.
Nez hissed softly at the air, like the darkness itself had shifted wrong.
Qaritas breathed in and felt the pressure in his bones again—the Awakening pain that had been quiet for hours now stirring, waking, crawling back into sharpness.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow he'd wake.
Not as a nearly-Ascendant.
As a full one.
And he didn't know if he would still be Qaritas when it happened.
Komus's elbow nudged him. "Hey," Komus said quietly. "You're doing that thing again."
"What thing."
"You look like you're about to bite the universe," Komus said. "Try not to. It's a big universe. Bad for the jaw."
Qaritas almost smiled.
It didn't stick.
Footsteps finally arrived—fast, uneven.
Rivax appeared first, hauling a heavy wooden box with reinforced corners and glyphs burned into it. Dheas walked beside him, hands supporting the other side. Tavran followed, shoulders tight, eyes red-rimmed like he'd been crying and refusing to admit it.
Rivax panted, dropping the box with a thud. "Sorry—we were—"
"Late," Zcain cut in. "What's inside."
Rivax wiped his brow. "Weapons. New ones."
Komus leaned closer, squinting. "New as in… shiny? Or new as in 'break the laws of reality'?"
Dheas gave a tired smile. "Both."
Tavran's gaze flicked to Qaritas—lingering for a breath longer than normal, as if assessing the darkness that clung to him more openly now.
"We're going," Tavran said, voice flat.
Zcain nodded once. "Yes."
Tavran swallowed hard. "If Ecayrous has her at that banquet… if he—"
He stopped. His jaw clenched until his teeth creaked.
Qaritas felt the scream in his head flare.
Tavran's fist tightened.
Then he forced the words through like broken glass. "We're not arriving to negotiate."
Zcain's eyes flashed. "No."
Shanian's voice drifted, soft as ash settling.
"Negotiation is what you do with equals," he said. "Ecayrous is not your equal. He is your plague."
No one argued.
Zcain stepped to the gangway and looked across them all.
"Two hours," he said. "We depart now. Prepare in silence. Save your words. You'll need your breath later."
Eon's voice curled in Qaritas's skull, warm with anticipation.
Yes, Eon murmured. Now it starts.
Qaritas stared at the ferry's pale bone ribs, then down at Nez.
The cat's violet eyes reflected lanternlight like cut gems.
"You're coming," Qaritas whispered.
Nez pressed into his shin.
The shadows around Qaritas shifted, adjusting to Nez too—instinctively making room, like the dark understood the cat wasn't prey.
That scared Qaritas more than it comforted him.
Because it meant the darkness was learning what mattered to him.
And hunger always learns fastest.
Komus nudged him again, lower this time. "When we get there," Komus said, voice rough, "if you feel yourself slipping… tell me."
Qaritas's eyes stayed forward. "What are you going to do? Hug me back into sanity?"
Komus huffed. "No."
A beat.
"I'll punch you," Komus said simply. "A lot. With love."
Qaritas exhaled through his nose. "That's the dumbest plan I've ever heard."
"Yeah," Komus said. "But it's mine."
Zcain's voice cut across the port.
"On."
They stepped onto the ferry.
The bone-oars dipped into the light-river.
The vessel shuddered once, like it resented being used for war again.
Then it moved.
Taeterra slid away behind them.
Deepcrest fell into distance.
Ahead—Mrajeareim waited.
A realm built on torment.
A realm where Ecayrous held court.
A realm where Ayla's scream had become a leash in Qaritas's skull.
As the ferry crossed the shining current, Qaritas felt the Awakening pressure surge again—stronger now, unavoidable, like the world inside him was tearing at its seams.
He clenched his fists.
His shadow lagged.
Half a heartbeat late.
Nez stared into the darkness ahead, unmoving.
Inside Qaritas, Eon's voice turned almost gentle.
Tomorrow, Eon murmured. You will stop pretending you're a guest in your own body.
Qaritas swallowed, throat tight.
He didn't pray.
There was no point.
He just held onto Nez's warmth at his leg and watched the lanterns ahead.
Because the dark wasn't listening anymore.
It was waiting for him to let go