Seven days of silence.
The valley was a grave.
Havenfall's survivors—fewer than a hundred now—worked in mute shock, dragging charred bodies to pyres that never seemed to end. The wound in the sky had scarred over into a jagged violet seam, but the sun still refused to rise. Only a cold, bruised light leaked through.
Lucian had not spoken since the rite.
He sat on the same ridge where Zamiel burned, gauntlets clutched to his chest like a child with a broken toy. The violet ember rested in the hollow of his throat, cradled in the ruin of his breastplate. It pulsed once every few hours, slow, stubborn, alive.
Lyra hunted alone.
She brought back meat no one ate.
She sharpened claws that were already razored to bone.
She slept only when exhaustion dropped her where she stood.
Xavier did not sleep at all.
He walked the perimeter every night, barefoot, shirtless, the new four-rune mark over his heart glowing soft gold in the dark. The god inside was quiet now, curled like a sleeping dragon, but he could feel it dreaming. Planning. Waiting.
On the seventh night, the ember flared.
Lucian's head snapped up.
The ember rose from his hands, hovering, growing, unfolding into a figure of violet-white fire no taller than a child. Features flickered—violet eyes, silver hair, a crooked smile that broke Lucian's heart all over again.
Zamiel's voice came out thin as star-smoke.
"I'm not… entirely gone.
The rite took my body.
It left my soul tethered to the cage.
I'm the lock now, alpha.
And the key."
Lucian reached out, fingers passing through flame.
"Don't you dare fade," he snarled, voice raw from disuse.
"I won't," the ember-Zamiel promised. "But I can't stay like this.
I need an anchor.
A living one."
His burning gaze turned to Xavier.
Xavier felt the request like a blade between the ribs.
He walked over slowly, every step heavy.
"You want to live inside me too," he said. Not a question.
Zamiel's fire-form nodded.
"If I anchor in you, I can keep the god asleep longer.
Maybe years.
Maybe decades.
But every day I burn inside the cage, a little more of me will burn away.
One day there'll be nothing left to remember my name."
Lucian stood, fists clenched so hard blood ran from his palms.
"No," he said. "We find another way."
"There is no other way," Zamiel answered gently. "Not before the next wave comes.
And it is coming, Lucian.
I've seen it in the god's dreams.
Nine became six.
Six will become three.
Three will become one.
And the last one will be strong enough to tear the cage open from the outside."
Silence.
Lyra appeared beside them, silent as a shadow, covered in fresh blood from whatever she'd been killing in the dark.
She looked at the ember, then at Xavier, then at Lucian.
Then she did something no one expected.
She knelt.
Not to Xavier.
To Lucian.
"Alpha of the Eclipse Pack," she said formally, voice rough, "your mate saved us all.
Let him finish it."
Lucian stared at her, golden eyes wet and furious.
Then he looked at the ember that wore Zamiel's face.
And he broke.
He dropped to his knees in the ash, pressed his forehead to the fire, and whispered the words mates say only when everything else is lost.
"Come home."
The ember flared blinding white.
It shot forward—not into Xavier.
Into Lucian.
The alpha roared as violet-white fire poured into his chest, searing runes across his skin in the exact shape of Zamiel's old ward-glyphs. When it was done, Lucian collapsed forward, gasping, a new mark glowing over his heart: the same four interwoven runes, but now the one that had been Zamiel's burned brightest.
He looked up.
His eyes were no longer amber.
One was amber.
The other was violet, bright and alive and laughing.
Zamiel's voice came out of Lucian's mouth, layered over his own, soft and wondering.
"I'm here, alpha.
I'm not going anywhere."
Lucian laughed—half sob, half prayer—and crushed his arms around nothing, because there was no body to hold, only the fire now living under his ribs.
Lyra rose slowly.
She looked at Xavier.
For the first time in seven days, she spoke to him.
"They'll come again," she said. "Stronger. Smarter.
We need to be ready."
Xavier nodded.
The god inside him stirred, tasting the new lock, testing it, finding it iron.
For now.
He looked at Lucian cradling the ghost of his mate in his own skin.
He looked at Lyra, bleeding and unbroken.
He looked at the scarred sky.
Then he spoke the first words he had uttered since the rite.
"We leave at dawn.
We hunt the six before they become three.
We end this war on our terms."
He turned and walked down the ridge.
Lyra fell in at his left.
Lucian—eyes of fire and grief—fell in at his right.
Behind them, the survivors of Havenfall watched their three remaining leaders walk into the bruised light.
And for the first time in seven days, someone began to howl.
Others took it up.
A song of mourning.
A song of war.
The Eclipse Pack was wounded, bleeding, half mad with loss.
But it was still alive.
And it was done hiding.
Arc 3 was no longer about holding the god.
It was about hunting the pieces that wanted it back.
One by one.
Until none remained.