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Isolde releases my hand only to unfold the map against her chest, shielding it with her body from the rain. “How long before breach?”

Rhazek’s eyes narrow. “Minutes if the anchors remain intact. Less if Vaerith feeds the reservoirs directly.”

“He will,” she says.

“Cheerful,” I mutter.

She glances at me, and the bond warms despite the storm. “Accurate.”

The civic anchor beneath my palm pulses again, and this time I see the ritual’s structure more clearly. Vaerith has woven the district like a net and placed his estate at the center, using public wardlines as veins to push stolen soul-energy into the courtyard. The summoning circle below ground is not merely opening. It is inhaling through the infrastructure, dragging power toward the thing pressing at the veil.

The hunger inside me surges in answer.

It does not scatter toward the fleeing crowd. It fixes on the estate with brutal clarity, every part of me tightening around the shape below. Recognition rolls through me, older than thought and uglier than fear. Rivalry. Threat. The certainty of one predator hearing another move in the dark and understanding that if it rises, every smaller life nearby becomes meat.

My glamour tears apart.

Horns cut through the rain.

Gold floods my vision until the street becomes veins of heat and pulse.

Isolde steps in front of me so I have to see her face.

“Corin.”

Her voice is clear despite the wind.

I drag my eyes down to hers.

She is soaked through, hair plastered to her temples, gray dress dark with rain and ash dust, folio clutched under one arm like she means to out-document the apocalypse. Her expression is frightened, furious, and completely steady.

“You are with me,” she says.

“Beside you,” I answer.

“Then breathe like it.”

I pull air through my nose, tasting sulfur, rain, and the iron edge of my own hunger. The breath shudders once before it obeys. Isolde nods sharply, satisfied enough to step back into place beside me.

The estate gates open.

Vaerith walks into the courtyard as if he is receiving guests instead of ending a district.

He stands beneath the archway in dark robes that whip behind him in the infernal wind, hair bright as bone under the red glow, face composed enough to make the chaos look like another accessory he selected for effect. Behind him, his remaining guards form a strained line near the estate entrance. Some look frightened. Some look fanatical. The difference matters less than I would like.

Several nobles have gathered at the trade hall steps behind us, kept back by Syrenya’s people and Sable’s increasingly creative threats. Syrenya herself stands beneath a broken awning with her cloak lashing around her, eyes bright and eager.

Vaerith lifts one hand.

The amplification runes around the courtyard flare.

“Witnesses of this district,” he calls, voice ringing through storm and stone, “you now see the consequence of unchecked infernal destabilization. The hybrid has corrupted civic wards, ruptured containment lines, and drawn a devourer-class presence toward populated ground.”

Murmurs break out behind me, frightened and confused.

There it is.

He is building the story while the ground cracks.