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The glass veins at Caelith’s throat flared, and he did not trust himself to speak.

Safir continued. “But you have exactly one version of this where she survives. I’ll tell the ones in Eryssan to let her and the boy live, with the others who submitted. This is what I am offering you. Take it, or don’t, but decide now.”

Caelith didn’t look at Safir. He looked at Maia.

“So if she survives, she is your slave?”

“That is not what I said.”

“I need her and the boy given time to reach the lower path,” Caelith said to Safir. “Enough time that nothing follows them. That they may tell their families.”

“No,” Maia said, struggling at Safir’s arm. “Don’t you dare, Caelith.”

Safir didn’t even flinch at Maia’s struggle. “And you’ll walk into the Fracture yourself. Willingly. In front of everyone.”

“I— Yes. If you keep your word, I will. Willingly, and without a fight.”

“Caelith—” Maia’s voice broke at his name. “Do not—”

“It’s already decided,” he said to her. “Let me do this one thing exactly the way I need to.”

Safir released her arm but still held her back. Tears ran down Maia’s face as she sobbed.

“Just let me say my goodbyes,” Caelith said. “Address my unit. As I should have done from the very beginning.”

“Caelith, no—” Maia screamed. She twisted against Safir’s grip and got nowhere.

Safir considered it and agreed. And Maia understood, half a second before he did, that he had just given Caelith the only thing he had ever needed from him.

Caelith stood at the tear’s edge and looked at the others there. All of them. The ones who had followed him into tunnels centuries ago when he first spoke of justice. The ones who had joined later, drawn by the plan’s momentum rather than his words. The ones who had never wavered. The ones, she could see even from here, who were already wavering now.

He raised his voice.

She had heard him speak in the old language once before, in the chamber below, the words moving through stone and glass and bone. Here, in the open air of the glass plain with the Fracture blazing behind him, it was something else entirely. The language moved through the curtains of violet light, through the wardlines, through the ground beneath her feet. It reached the places ordinary sound could not find.

She didn’t understand a word of it, but she felt every one.

Around the plain’s edge, heads turned and hoods lowered. The faction Umbralyn listened in the way she had only seen Umbralyn listen: with their whole bodies, something beneath the skin responding to frequencies human ears couldn’t register.

“What is he saying?” Julen said quietly from behind her. He had dragged himself to the convergence point’s edge, one hand pressed to his injured side. She hadn’t told him to stay back. It wouldn’t have worked, anyway.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s like they understand him completely.”

“He is a fool,” Safir interrupted. “He’s—”

The first Umbralyn stepped forward.

Maia didn’t know him. He was older than most of the others, his armour worn in the way of someone who had been wearing it for a very long time. He walked to the tear’s edge and stood beside Caelith, and something in his posture said this was not surrender. This was a decision he had been waiting to make.

A murmur moved through the gathered faction. Then another Umbralyn stepped forward. And another.

The third she knew.

Nuada lowered his hood as he walked, his tight braid catching the violet light. She hadn’t known he was one of them. She thought of every silent hour at the stone table, every slate of instructions he slid to her. That wasn’t my idea. I want that understood.

He didn’t look at Caelith as he passed. He looked at her and lowered his head slightly in acknowledgment. It wasn’t an apology, exactly, but it was the nearest thing to one she would ever receive from anyone in that city. Maia nodded back.

He took his place at the tear’s edge and did not look back.