Dawn never came to Havenfall.
The violet wound in the sky had swallowed the sun.
Only the burning valley gave light now: rivers of molten stone, forests of bone-white flame, the screaming dead.
The Eclipse Pack stood on the shattered ridge that had once been their home.
Lucian carried Zamiel in his arms.
The omega's gauntlets were cracked husks; violet blood dripped from his mouth in a steady stream. His heartbeat was a candle in a hurricane.
Lyra's left arm hung useless, flayed to the bone by sound-blades.
Silver fire still leaked from her claws, but it guttered like a dying torch.
Xavier was worst.
The eight-pointed star over his heart had become a hole.
Through it, the unbound god looked out with one violet eye that was not Xavier's.
His left arm and half his face were pure void now—living darkness wearing his skin.
Roshan trembled in his right hand, blade split down the middle: half dawn, half eclipse.
Six Harbingers remained, circling like carrion gods.
The woman with the shifting face—Veyra—spoke, voice gentle, almost kind.
"Enough, enigma.
You are tired.
Let go.
We will make it quick for them."
She gestured, and every surviving wolf in the valley—two hundred, maybe less—dropped to their knees, choking as invisible hands crushed their throats.
Lyra snarled, took a step forward.
Xavier's void-hand snapped out and locked around her wrist.
The grip was ice and annihilation.
His gold eye found hers.
Apology. Terror. Love.
Lyra did not flinch.
She turned her hand in his grip until their blood-oath scars kissed.
Then she spoke the words no one else could hear.
"I'm not asking you to hold it forever.
I'm asking you to hold it one more heartbeat.
Just one."
The void-hand loosened a fraction.
Lucian laid Zamiel gently on the stone.
The omega's eyes were nearly black now, pupils blown wide with void-poison, but he managed a cracked smile.
"Alpha," he whispered, "do the thing we swore we never would."
Lucian's face twisted.
He knew exactly what Zamiel meant.
The Blood Anchor Rite.
A forbidden ritual from the first war against the unbound god.
It bound four souls into a single living cage.
The price: the weakest link would burn out first—body, soul, everything—feeding the cage until the god was starved into slumber.
Zamiel had always been the weakest link.
He had known it for centuries.
Lucian roared—a sound of pure grief—and slammed Wrath's End point-down into the ridge.
White runes exploded outward, carving a perfect circle of molten sigils around the four of them.
The Harbingers hissed and recoiled.
They knew the rite.
They had lost brothers to it before.
Veyra raised both hands.
Reality began to fold inward, trying to crush the circle before it could finish.
Xavier moved.
He released Lyra, turned, and drove Roshan straight through his own chest—through the violet hole, into the god's stolen heart.
The unbound god screamed.
Xavier screamed with it.
Violet and gold fire erupted in a pillar that punched a hole through the bleeding sky.
Lyra dropped to her knees inside the rune-circle, sliced both palms deep, and slammed them to the stone.
Lucian bit his own wrist to the bone and poured alpha blood across the sigils.
Zamiel, dying, smiled.
He reached up with trembling fingers and pressed them to the wound in Xavier's chest—directly into the violet fire.
Four blood-oath scars flared as one.
The Blood Anchor Rite ignited.
White chains of living rune-light exploded from the circle, wrapping Xavier's torso, Lyra's arms, Lucian's throat, Zamiel's heart.
The chains sank into flesh.
The god inside Xavier howled as it was dragged downward, deeper than bone, deeper than soul—into the cage forged by four hearts that refused to break.
Zamiel's body arched.
Light poured out of his eyes, his mouth, his wounds.
He looked at Lucian one last time.
"I love you," he said, voice clear as winter bells.
Then he burned.
The omega's body dissolved into pure violet-white fire that flowed along the chains and slammed into Xavier's chest.
The violet eye in Xavier's face went dark.
The void-hand crumbled to ash.
The hole over his heart sealed with a sound like a star collapsing.
Silence fell.
The six Harbingers stared, stunned.
Veyra's shifting face finally settled—into something almost human.
Fear.
Xavier straightened slowly.
The scar was gone.
In its place: a new mark, four interwoven runes glowing soft gold.
Lyra's rune.
Lucian's rune.
Zamiel's rune.
His own.
Four hearts.
One cage.
He looked at the Harbingers.
His voice was his own again, low and terrible.
"Leave."
Veyra opened her mouth—then thought better.
The six remaining fragments of the unbound god turned and fled into the wound-sky, dragging their terror behind them like broken wings.
The valley was ash and blood and silence.
Lucian knelt where Zamiel had been.
Nothing remained but the cracked gauntlets and a single violet ember that refused to die.
He picked it up with shaking fingers.
Lyra stood beside Xavier, shoulder to shoulder, covered in blood that was not all hers.
Xavier looked at the place Zamiel had burned.
Then at the ember in Lucian's hand.
Then at the sky, where the wound was slowly, slowly closing.
He spoke three words, quiet enough that only the wind heard.
"This isn't over."
Far away, in the deepest dark between stars, the unbound god—diminished, furious, but very much alive—curled tighter inside its new cage and began to plan.