Elira didn't speak to him the next morning.
She didn't ask how the priest had entered. Didn't ask if the breach had been sealed or if Ravion had interrogated Lysandros, the demon who had killed the shadowbinder with surgical cruelty. She didn't ask how many more would come now that her name burned across both realms like a beacon.
She didn't ask about the mark on her palm either—still glowing faintly, still pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Even when the hellhounds howled beyond the wardline and Ravion came back from the perimeter, blood-misted and silent, she kept her distance.
Not from fear but to control herself.
Because if she opened her mouth, she'd say something she couldn't take back. And for the first time, she wasn't sure she'd win the next argument. Not against him. Not against herself.
So she passed him like he was smoke eyes forward, shoulders squared. As if she hadn't almost set the world on fire the night before. As if his silence didn't cut deeper than his rage.
He didn't stop her.
Let her walk. Let her pretend nothing had shifted.
But it had.
Something had cracked wide open between them, and she didn't know how to close it anymore.
She found an abandoned wing of the temple. Half-collapsed the walls here still bore scorch marks, old symbols, memories Ravion clearly avoided. Good. That meant he wouldn't come looking.
She needed space.
She trained hard, methodical, unrelenting.
No snide comments. No burning gazes. No heat curling around her skin like a promise.
Just silence.
And the quiet voice in the back of her mind that had grown sharper every day:
You trusted him. You summoned him. And now you don't even know who you are anymore.
She traced sigils in the air basic at first. Firebinding. Flame concentration. Shielding threads. It took effort then less then none.
Snap—her palm ignited, controlled heat, her own.
Still not enough.
She bit her thumb, traced blood into the next sigil. The power came instantly. Faster, hungrier. Red threads of magic coiled through the air and licked at the stones, marking them.
The magic didn't just obey her.
It recognized her.
That terrified her more than it thrilled.
Still, she pushed on. She carved another symbol, and another, until hours had passed and her bones should've been aching, but they weren't. Magic poured from her like water, eager and endless.
This wasn't just the bond.
It was her.
Something in her blood or in her soul. Something Ravion had seen before she even knew what to ask and he hadn't told her.
She didn't trust him.
Not anymore.
She waited until night.
Until Ravion left the inner sanctum to speak with Lysandros about wardlines and incursions. Until the realm's two moons dimmed and the hellfire sky turned bruised and quiet.
Then she ran.
She didn't take supplies. There was no point she knew this realm wasn't made for mortals. She wouldn't survive long—but that was the risk. A necessary one.
Because staying meant surrendering. Meant becoming whatever thing Ravion thought she already was.
And if she was going to lose herself, she'd rather do it on her terms.
The temple fell behind her, swallowed by steam and smoke. She crossed the outer paths, using shadow breaks and crumbling columns to stay hidden from watchers demon or otherwise. The terrain grew harsher, jagged and red-veined, the air thicker.
By the third hour, her legs began to shake. Not from fatigue—something worse.
The bond.
It flared hot, urgent and angry as if it sensed her leaving.
She pressed a hand to her ribs and kept moving.
"You're making a mistake," a voice whispered faint, not Ravion's. Her own thoughts echoing back in her head like ghosts.
She reached the edge of the scorched cliffs, where the gates into the upper rings of hell bent and shimmered like ripples on black water. This was where realm-summoners entered and sometimes and rarely escaped.
She raised her palm, focusing, summoning fire to cut a portal. Just like Ravion had done when he first arrived.
But nothing happened.
No spark. No shift. No response.
"Open," she hissed. "Let me through."
The mark on her palm flared, and her body jerked back, flung by a wave of invisible force.
She hit the ground hard, dust rose and her arms shook.
The gate didn't recognize her as foreign anymore.
Because she wasn't.
Not fully.
The bond had taken root too deep. She wasn't a guest in this realm now she was part of it.
That realization broke something inside her.
"You really thought you could leave?" Ravion's voice came from behind her.
She didn't turn didn't speak.
He approached, boots crunching on black stone. "I told you, the bond doesn't let you run."
"I wasn't running," she said quietly.
He stopped beside her. "You weren't staying, either."
She rose to her feet, spine rigid. "You knew I'd try."
"I hoped you wouldn't." His voice was low.
"Why? Because I'd die?"
"No," he said. "Because if you did get through whatever's hunting you out there… it wouldn't be priests next time. It would be something worse."
She stared at him. "Then tell me what I am."
"I told you: the bond chose you."
"That's not an answer!"
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then, softly, "You weren't the first to call something like me."
She blinked. "What?"
"You're part of a pattern, Elira. But you broke it. The others they died. Burned out. Consumed. You didn't."
"Why?"
"I don't know yet. But I think…" He met her eyes. "I think something ancient is inside you not demonic not human. Old magic something sleeping."
She shook her head. "You should've told me that days ago."
"You weren't ready."
"I'm still not."
"But you will be."
They stood in silence beneath the cracking sky.
"You can't leave," he said. "Not just because of the bond but because they're coming, Elira. And you're the only one they want alive."
She closed her eyes.
She wanted to scream.
To rage.
But all she said was, "Then I guess we fight."