Lucas no longer needed to sleep.
Instead, his nights were spent drifting between memories, not all of which were his own. He walked through moments stolen from the dead, through timelines that had never occurred.
The voice he heard most often now was hers.
"I tried to stop them. I summoned Malgros too."
Her name was Elara Thorne, and her soul had never moved on.
In her memories, Lucas saw the truth: she had not died in terror, but in defiance. Her summoning of Malgros had not failed—it had been *interrupted.* The Veil had used that interruption to redirect the demon's pact.
To Lucas.
"You weren't the first," Corin said. "But you might be the last."
The revelation changed something in him. He stopped seeking just vengeance.
He began to seek *balance*.
They returned to the surface to find the city changed. Eastbridge was warping—streets folding, signs repeating, time loops where people would live the same hour again and again. The Breach was no longer content to remain buried.
They followed the distortion to the center of the old theater district, where the Wound had opened wide—a bleeding tear in the world's fabric, through which stars peered back.
Those weren't stars.
They were *eyes.*
And behind them: Ephraal.
It didn't speak. It *observed.* Every motion Lucas made was reflected by something *larger,* as if he were being mirrored by a cosmic judge.
Lucas stepped closer to the Wound.
"Is this where you watch from?" he asked. "Is this where you fed on my pain?"
A flicker.
Then a ripple.
The Wound cracked wider, and a tendril of reality unraveled before him.
"You can't kill it," Corin said.
Lucas's hand burst into golden flame. "I don't have to kill it."
He stepped *into* the Wound.
"I just have to show it *me.*"