The Wildspont surges higher inside me.
I can see it, how to thread the collapse. How to take the entire corrupted network and detonate it into cleansing rupture. It would destroy his trafficking lines, his root siphons, his market leverage.
It would destroy me.
Zeidan’s terror slams through the bond so violently it nearly knocks me sideways. He is moving before I finish forming the intention.
He crosses the chamber in a blur of shadow and blood, ignoring the void-fire still burning through his wing. Malrend attempts to intercept, but Ron slams into him from the side, tackling the Dark Elf hard enough to fracture the stone dais.
“NOW!” Ron roars.
Zeidan reaches me just as I begin to release. He grabs me. Not gently. He seizes my face in both hands, forcing me to look at him while the Wildspont roars through my veins.
“You do not get to leave me,” he says, voice breaking with fury and something deeper. “You do not get to decide that your life is expendable.”
The power howls, begging for direction.
“I can end it,” I whisper, tears burning my vision.
“And end yourself with it,” he snaps.
Behind him, the chamber collapses further. Purna mages hold crumbling wards. Vrakken warriors clash with summoned void-constructs tearing through the walls.
Malrend rises again, blood at the corner of his mouth but smiling.
“Love,” he says almost mockingly. “How inefficient.”
Zeidan turns his head slightly, and something changes in him. Not rage. Something colder. Ancient...
“You wanted bond magic dismantled,” he says quietly.
His shadow expands, not outward, but downward, into the stone itself. The Vrakken lineage sigils along his arms ignite fully, answering not just him but the bond.
“You miscalculated,” he continues.
Then he drives his hand into the fractured floor. Shadow and root collide. Instead of collapsing the Wildspont, we redirect it.
Together.
I understand instantly. He is not stopping me from releasing the power. He is anchoring it, like he always did with my magic. The bond becomes conduit instead of fuse.
Wildspont energy surges through us both, but instead of imploding, it lashes outward into Malrend’s siphon lines. The artifact channels beneath the chamber ignite in reverse polarity.
The trafficking conduits. The blight feeders. They burn. Malrend’s expression shifts for the first time. His composure cracks.
The siphon network destabilizes violently. Void-fire flickers erratically as the root-system rejects foreign control. The chamber ceiling splits open, daylight spearing down through ruptured stone.
“You will regret this,” Malrend snarls as the floor gives way beneath him.
Zeidan does not hesitate. He lunges. They collide mid-fall as the central dais collapses into the burning root-chasm below. The impact disappears into dust and shadow.
For a heartbeat, I cannot feel him. The bond goes quiet.
Then… It flares back to life, violent and alive.
Zeidan erupts upward from the collapsing pit, wings shredded but functional, dragging Malrend by the throat. Heslams the Dark Elf into a collapsing pillar and drives shadow through the sigils carved into his armor.
Malrend screams in fury. The siphon conduits detonate. The entire understructure caves. Ron grabs me just as the outer walls give way, hauling me toward the breach.