The prayer didn't have words. It was a clenched jaw, salt at the back of her tongue, a soundless plea crushed between her ribs.
The Gate heard anyway.
The world stuttered, like a heartbeat forgetting itself, and the monster's shriek fractured into a jagged chorus. Naelii's knees gave. She caught herself with one palm in the dust. The ground wasn't ground anymore. It wasn't anything. It was a membrane stretching thin.
The hum inside her, quiet as a trapped moth until now, opened its eyes and howled.
Heat shot through her. Not skin-deep. Bone-deep, marrow-boiling, a furnace lighting in the hollow places of her. It reached for her spine, curled around it, laced through her nerves like a lover and a weapon.
"Runner, move!" someone shouted, dim through the storm in her skull.
The creature bore down, all blade-legs and wire-flesh. She saw her face reflected in its plating: dirt-streaked, bloodied, terrified. The image doubled. Tripled. Broke.
The hum spoke.
It wasn't a voice. It was a memory of one—ancient, broken, and impossibly close.
—Child.
The knife shook in her hand. She didn't know whether to drop it or drive it into the thing's eye. The decision wasn't hers anymore.
—You called. The Gate opened. I come where I am named.
"I didn't—" She didn't know if she said it aloud.
The monster struck.
Instinct wrenched her sideways. The leg-blade slammed down where her chest had been, shearing metal from the wreck beside her. She tried to run, but the hum anchored her. No—aligned her. There was a shape under her skin, unfolding.
"Move!" another voice barked, Kade's, harsh and far away. "Naelii!"
She looked up into the creature's open maw—wire, teeth, wet metal, hunger—and whispered the only word she had left.
"No."
The hum answered.
Something on her left forearm flared, no mark, no ink, and yet the air rippled as if heat-warped. It coiled, pulling shadow-like thread through a needle. The ripple gathered, taking form—a loop of blackness peeling from her skin. Not light. Not smoke. Something between.
It uncoiled over her—long and sinuous, a dragon carved from the absence of color. A head like a skull, eyes like twin voids. The Gate itself seemed to hesitate.
Then the dragon moved.
It met the monster mid-charge. Claws of outline tore through flesh of wire. Ink fire burst, burning without flame. The blast knocked her backward. She hit the dirt hard enough to taste blood, eyes wide as the world cracked apart in front of her.
The dragon didn't roar. It remembered how to roar, and the memory rolled through the valley like a storm.
The creature's legs buckled. The dragon lunged again, driving shadow-talons deep into its chest. When the monster's body split, light poured out instead of blood.
Naelii felt the dragon. Every motion vibrated in her bones. Every breath, every strike—it wasn't controlling her, and yet it was her.
—Anchor, the voice whispered. Give me your spine. Breathe when I breathe.
She didn't fight it.
The dragon drove forward, cleaving the beast in half. A scream tore through the Gate zone and ended. The creature fell in two molten halves that dissolved to steam.
Silence.
The black shape hovered, watching. Then it dipped its head once an acknowledgment, almost gentle, and dissolved. The smoke coiled back toward her like water poured backward through time.
Naelii gasped as it entered her. Her vision went white. The Gate pulsed once, twice, in time with her heartbeat.
When she blinked again, the battlefield was still. The team stood in stunned silence. The air smelled of ozone and ash.
Kade approached slowly, blade still lit. "What are you?"
Naelii looked down at her arm. Bare skin. Just a faint shimmer when she turned her wrist. "Alive," she whispered.
"Barely," someone muttered.
"You lied," Kade said.
"It was true when I said it."
He almost smiled. "That makes it worse."
He glanced toward the carcass. "Whatever that was, it dropped a Tier-Four. We move in five."
The others began gathering what was left of the heart stone. Naelii crouched, dizzy, bile rising in her throat. The thing inside her pulsed faintly, satisfied.
"Drink," it whispered. "You emptied the well to cross."
Kade came back with a canteen. "You can barely stand," he said. "You're coming with us."
"I don't have a Guild."
"Don't need one to bleed out on a street. If whatever that was happens again, I'd rather it happen under dampeners."
She stared at him. "They'll scan me. They'll know."
"Do you want to live?"
The question landed like a blade to the heart.
"Yes," she said.
"Then walk."
The team moved out, dragging their kills and silence behind them. Naelii followed, the Gate's wind cold against her back.
The world on the other side waited, bright and cruel and real.
She stepped through. The air collapsed around her. And the thing under her skin purred—like it had been here before.