The hand closed around the edge of the broken floor.

Stone hissed beneath luminous fingers.

Kael shoved Lyra behind him.

The corrupted limb pulled.

The fissure widened.

Aren's entire prison lurched sideways as the remaining dragon-glass roots screamed against their sockets.

"Stations!" Elian shouted.

Mira, Darius, and Adrian moved first, each running toward one of the three shallow depressions already connected to their glowing channels.

Cassian stared at the new gold-white mark on his wrist.

His fourth channel blazed brighter.

Stone beside the central platform shifted with a grinding sound. A section of the previously smooth floor sank beneath the racing white-gold line, revealing a fourth shallow depression matching the other three.

"Cassian!" Lyra cried.

That broke whatever horror had frozen him.

He stepped into the newly revealed Vale station and pressed his marked palm against its carved center.

The moment all four witnesses made contact, white-gold light raced around the central platform.

The corrupted hand stopped climbing.

Not because it had weakened.

Because it noticed them.

Five luminous fingers slowly lifted from the floor.

The hand turned.

Lyra felt the impossible certainty of being watched.

There were no eyes.

No face.

Still, the thing beneath the chamber seemed to regard each witness in turn.

Then it pointed at Kael.

The bond between him and Lyra convulsed.

Kael dropped to one knee.

Pain tore through Lyra's chest an instant later.

It was not ordinary distance sickness. They stood only paces apart.

Something below was pulling directly on the connection between them.

"Kael!"

She reached him before he struck the floor.

His hand closed around hers so hard her bones protested.

Gold burned beneath his skin.

Silver erupted around Lyra's fingers.

The corrupted hand clenched.

Kael slid a foot toward the fissure.

Darius started to lift his palm from his station.

"Don't!" Aren shouted.

Darius flattened his hand again.

Aren was braced against the inside of his prison, both hands spread against the translucent wall.

"Break the circuit and it comes through."

"Then what do we do?" Adrian demanded.

"Hold it."

Another dragon-glass root cracked.

Aren's face twisted.

"Please."

That single word silenced everyone.

Kael snarled and drove his claws into the stone floor.

The corrupted force pulled again.

Grooves appeared beneath his fingers.

Lyra wrapped both arms around him.

"It wants your dragon heart."

Elian stood outside the witness circuit, staring at the currents beneath the floor.

"Not only his."

His gaze snapped to Lyra.

"It is pulling on both halves of the convergence."

Cold understanding spread through her.

The remainder had been created when one current was torn apart.

Kael carried one side of what had been divided.

She carried the other.

"It thinks we're pieces of itself," Lyra said.

"Perhaps," Elian answered. "Or it remembers what it was before anyone taught it the difference."

The hand jerked downward.

Kael slid another foot.

Lyra's knees struck the floor.

Their wrist-rings blazed in answer to the strain.

Before Stage Three could pull either of their own circulating memories to the surface, the four active witness channels flashed together.

White-gold light raced from Cassian, Mira, Adrian, and Darius into the central platform.

The broad silver current beneath the chamber surged upward through it.

The lower Covenant circuit caught Lyra and Kael inside its pulse.

The chamber vanished.

This was not one of Kael's memories passing through Stage Three.

It was colder, wider—the same heart-linked force that had carried Aren's earlier warnings through the vault.

Lyra stood inside something the Covenant itself had preserved.

Seven marked figures surrounded the same platform before Aren's prison existed.

Melian Arden stood among them.

The currents beneath the floor flowed together then—gold, silver, white, and something warmer that contained them all without becoming muddy or bruised.

An ancient priest stood beyond the marked witnesses, holding a blade above a carved channel.

"Once divided," he said, "the powers can never be permitted to reunite."

A woman wearing the branching mark of the Covenant seized his wrist.

"That is not what the compact says."

"The compact was written before we understood the danger."

"No. It was written by those who survived it."

Another witness stepped forward.

His words blurred as the lower circuit shuddered around Lyra.

"Seven shall stand when the—"

The preserved vision fractured.

Lyra clung to its last image.

The Covenant-marked woman looked toward the joined currents.

"The joining must be willing. That is the safeguard."

The priest's face hardened.

"Choice is an unreliable foundation for civilization."

The Covenant vision broke.

Lyra returned to agony.

Kael was still sliding toward the fissure.

But now she knew one thing.

Not enough.

Enough to act.

"Kael, look at me."

His eyes were molten gold.

"A difficult request while the floor is attempting to eat me."

Even now.

Even in pain.

The laugh that escaped her was half sob.

"Don't fight the bond."

His expression changed.

"Lyra—"

"Not complete it. Not anything we don't understand. Just stop pulling against me."

For three centuries, someone had answered instability by separation.

Perhaps every instinct to force the two currents apart was feeding the wound beneath them.

Kael understood what she meant.

Fear surged through the bond.

His fear, not hers.

He was afraid of hurting her.

"You are certain?"

"No."

His mouth almost curved.

"There is my Saintess."

Lyra pressed her glowing palm over his heart.

Kael placed his hand over hers.

He stopped resisting her magic.

Gold met silver.

The two colors did not merge.

They moved beside each other.

For one heartbeat, the pressure dragging them toward the fissure increased so violently that Lyra screamed.

Then the corrupted hand recoiled.

Not from power.

From recognition.

A sound rose beneath the chamber.

Thousands of sounds layered together.

A dragon roaring.

A woman praying.

Someone sobbing.

Someone laughing.

A child calling for her mother.

Kael went rigid.

Lyra felt nausea twist through him.

"Those are the dead," Cassian whispered.

Elian's answer was immediate.

"No."

Everyone looked at him.

His golden-ringed eyes were wet.

"Do not grant me that comfort. Saintess essence preserves impressions. Dragon blood preserves memory in its own ways. Three centuries of harvested power went into that wound. It may carry echoes, habits, pain. That does not mean the people themselves remain trapped there."

Cassian's marked hand trembled against his station.

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then what I did was worse than I believed."

The corrupted hand struck upward.

All four witness channels flared.

Mira cried out but kept her palm planted.

"I would appreciate," she gasped, "a solution involving fewer ancient abominations and significantly more wine."

Adrian gritted his teeth.

"After this, I'll open the royal cellar personally."

"Witnessed," Mira said.

Another blow came.

This time the four channels held.

Aren lifted his head.

"Again."

"Again what?" Darius demanded.

"Feed the circuit. Not magic. Intent."

Darius stared at him.

Aren's breathing was ragged.

"The Covenant wasn't built to take power from witnesses. It was built to make them agree."

Lyra remembered the preserved Covenant vision.

The joining must be willing.

Choice is the safeguard.

Cassian understood at the same moment.

"We choose to hold the lower current," he said.

His channel brightened.

Mira swallowed.

"I choose to hold it."

White-gold light strengthened beneath her.

Adrian followed.

"I choose to hold it."

Darius looked at the luminous hand, then at Aren trapped inside the prison his ancestors had helped preserve.

"I choose to hold it."

The circuit ignited.

Four arcs of white-gold light struck the broken edge of the central platform.

The corrupted hand shuddered.

Its fingers began sinking through the fissure.

The sound beneath them changed.

Not a scream.

A word.

Lyra could not understand the language, but the silver current beneath the chamber stirred.

Modern letters appeared across the floor beneath the ancient markings.

NOT ENOUGH.

Then another line formed.

FOUR CANNOT SEAL WHAT SEVEN DIVIDED.

The hand vanished below the stone.

The fissure remained open.

For several breaths no one moved.

The countdown above Aren's prison still read:

CONVERGENCE REMAINING: TWENTY-ONE DAYS.

Lyra almost collapsed with relief.

They had stopped another day from being consumed.

For now.

Kael immediately rose and moved as close to Aren's prison as the active circuit allowed without crossing the glowing channels around the platform.

"Tell me how to get you out."

Aren laughed weakly.

It sounded painfully like Kael.

"Still terrible at greetings."

Kael's face broke.

For the first time since Lyra had known him, he looked neither king nor monster nor prisoner.

Only an uncle who had arrived three centuries late.

"Hello, Aren."

Aren pressed his palm to the glass.

Kael raised his own but stopped before touching the prison.

"Hello, Uncle."

The remaining roots creaked around Aren.

Lyra let them have the moment.

Then she looked at the translated warning.

"Four cannot seal what seven divided. We need the other three witnesses."

Elian shook his head slowly.

"Perhaps. But that message troubles me."

Adrian glanced toward him. "Why?"

"Because the histories say priests divided the current. The Covenant records I found describe seven witnesses opposing the severing."

Silence.

Mira's eyes narrowed.

"Then whoever preserved that sentence remembers the seven differently."

"Or," Cassian said quietly, "our records reversed who did what."

Kael looked at him.

Cassian did not flinch.

Lyra thought of Melian saying the severing was the danger.

Of the Covenant woman insisting the joining must be willing.

Of centuries of Temple commentary built upon interpretations no one was permitted to question.

"We need the original Covenant text," she said.

Elian's face became guarded.

Cassian noticed.

"You have seen it."

Elian said nothing.

"Brother."

Elian looked toward the chamber entrance.

"Not here."

Kael's voice dropped dangerously.

"You have exhausted my tolerance for dramatic withholding."

"The original is not here," Elian snapped. "It is at the Seventh Light. Or it was when I left."

Mira shifted her weight and her palm rose a fraction from her depression.

Her mark immediately burned brighter.

Aren shouted, "Don't move!"

She flattened her hand again.

The channel steadied.

Darius swore.

"So the four of us cannot leave."

Elian looked around the circuit.

"Not simultaneously. Not until the lower current settles enough for the hold to be transferred."

"Transferred to whom?" Adrian asked.

Before Elian could answer, the single royal guard standing near the chamber entrance made a strangled sound.

Everyone turned.

The guard had been pale since the hand emerged, but now he stared down at his chest.

Something beneath his uniform was glowing.

He fumbled at his collar and pulled out a small iron pendant on a cord.

Lyra had seen dozens like it worn by soldiers as family keepsakes.

This one split open along a hidden seam.

Inside was a sliver of ancient white stone engraved with a branching symbol.

Mira stared.

"Where did you get that?"

The guard looked terrified.

"My mother. She said it belonged to her mother's family."

Aren's silver eyes widened.

One of the three remaining dark witness channels flickered.

Once.

Twice.

White-gold light traced partway along it and stopped at the guard's boots.

Unlike Cassian's awakening, no light climbed his body and no branching mark appeared on his wrist.

Instead, the chamber's translated inscription changed.

WITNESS LINE DETECTED.

The guard whispered, "What does that mean?"

Aren pressed both hands against the glass.

His expression was no longer relief.

It was shock.

"It means," he said, "they never found all of us."

The dormant channel answered with a steady white-gold glow—not yet a full witness station, but no longer dark.