Helios leapt from Rourke’s broken form as the light spears embedded in his monstrous body pulsed one final time, then cracked into motes, dissolving with a sound like shattering gss. The Heartless-Atntean fusion that had defied reason was now little more than a scorched husk. Its glow had vanished. The red-hot veins that once pulsed with unstable energy were now brittle lines etched in cooling obsidian.

  With casual efficiency, Helios knelt beside the body, extracted the final vial from his inventory pouch, and watched it fill with the glowing remnant essence. Faint embers of darkness and light swirled inside—the product of a miracle that should not have existed. Twenty vials. Twenty pieces of something new.

  He slid it into pce with a soft click.

  Then he vanished, a bright orb of compressed light streaking through the air in a fluid arc before reconstituting beside Kurai. He reformed without a sound, standing as if he had been there all along. His jacket fluttered softly in the breeze stirred by colpsing energy fields and volcanic tremors.

  He smiled sidelong at her.

  “He’s all yours,” Helios said, voice smooth as a knife’s edge. “Have fun.”

  Kurai didn’t respond—not at first. Her gaze remained fixed on the downed Rourke, a thing stripped of power, barely more than an armored corpse. But something in her still readied for violence. Her shadows twisted at her heels, coiling with hunger.

  Helios looked beyond her to where Skuld stood, gncing between Kida—still trapped in her metal cage, glowing blue with the Heart of Atntis’ power—and the magical barrier separating them from Milo and the others.

  “Skuld,” Helios called, “free Kida and take her back to the others. They’ll need her to activate the Heart and stop the volcano that will erupt soon, and your keybde glider speed should get you back quickly.”

  Skuld hesitated, then nodded. Her keybde spun in the air as she threw it, morphing into its glider configuration with a mechanical flourish. She mounted it in a swift, practiced motion.

  “What about you two?” she asked.

  “We’ll catch up,” Helios replied. “If you can get any more tears from Kida along the way, collect them. We’ll regroup in Atntis.”

  The nescience that was Skuld zipped into the air and vanished in a streak of light. The moment she was gone, the air changed.

  Kurai moved.

  No hesitation. No mercy.

  Her keybde tore across the ground, carving shadow into the very air that bled into one another, forming a twisting helix of darkness. The battlefield trembled beneath her feet.

  “Void Dominion.”

  The world darkened—not with absence, but with overwhelming presence. Shadows rolled out like a storm tide, enveloping the colpsed Rourke. Then came the rest—Dusk’s Crescendo, Shadow Fre Storm, and the full fury of a Sovereign unshackled.

  Kurai unleashed a ballet of destruction, the artistry of annihition performed with surgical rage. Her strikes fell faster than thought. A hundred bsts, a thousand cuts. She didn’t hold back. She didn’t savor it. She obliterated him.

  And when the Rourke, who was beneath the volcano, gave his death rattle—

  The old volcano finally awakened—

  She smiled.

  Molten pressure surged from beneath. Lava cracked the stone like a spiderweb of fme. Atntis shook, and its sky turned red.

  Helios opened a dark corridor with a simple gesture. The swirling portal of darkness formed beside him, cool and silent.

  He turned to her, extended his hand, and with a performative bow asked, “My dy?”

  Kurai looked down at him, bck smoke curling from the bde in her hand. Her eyes were calm, unreadable.

  “Why,” she asked, voice low and cold, “do you always joke at times like this?”

  Helios smiled, still holding his hand out even as magma thundered toward them.

  “You’re a Princess of Darkness,” he said. “Even you deserve royal treatment once in a while.”

  Kurai narrowed her eyes at him. Then, with a soft sigh, she released the keybde in her hand, causing it to fade in a gleam of bck electrified light, and took his hand.

  They stepped through the corridor together.

  A heartbeat ter, the river of va surged over where they had stood.

  The portal snapped shut, leaving only fiery magma in their wake.

  Skuld’s keybde glider cut through the rising smoke and volcanic ash. Cradled against her front, Kida’s crystallized form shimmered like a fallen star, light pulsating faintly from her core. Skuld leaned forward, urging more speed from the glider as tremors rolled beneath her and magma fissures snaked outward across the ocean floor.

  Behind her, she could see the glint of metal and fme as Milo’s team—on the flying atntean fish vehicles—followed the path she'd cleared. The volcano’s wrath had awakened, belching fire and fury as if to erase the sins carved into its bedrock. But Skuld was faster. She would not let this city fall and all those people die.

  As they crested the final ridge and soared back into view of the Atntean pza, the ancient structures lit with a grim red hue, Skuld felt the crystal in Kida stir. A pulse, like a heartbeat amplified, rippled through the air.

  Kida floated from her arms, rising unaided into the sky above Atntis.

  The glow intensified, bnketing the sky in silver-blue light.

  Then the Stone Guardians moved.

  From their slumbering perches across the city—within towers, beneath fountains, even embedded in cliff walls—massive figures stirred. Their eyes lit with the same glow that poured from Kida’s body. Ancient mechanisms groaned as the titans stepped forward in synchronized purpose.

  One by one, they converged at the city’s perimeter.

  Skuld hovered in the air, watching in awe.

  Without a word, the Guardians raised their hands—and a translucent, crystalline barrier surged into existence, ringing the city in a dome of refracted light. Just as the va flow reached the outskirts, it smashed against the shield, hissing and spshing like molten rain against gss.

  Atntis had been saved.

  Kida, still floating, gave a final pulse of radiance—then the crystal within her chest separated, lifting free like a spirit departing a vessel. It hovered mid-air, suspended over the city as though held by unseen threads of magic and the stone faces of the deceased kings.

  With a gasp, Kida blinked, then sagged into Skuld’s waiting arms as the younger girl nded.

  Later, as the dust settled and the panic calmed, Skuld sat near the edge of the pza. She wore a tired smile. Around her, survivors regrouped. Milo knelt beside Kida, checking her vitals with a trembling hand. Audrey and Vinny guarded the edge of the dome, watching for aftershocks. Atntean citizens murmured in confusion and awe, too exhausted to cheer.

  Skuld pulled her pouch from her belt and opened it. Inside were six freshly filled vials, shimmering with that strange blue energy she’d been instructed to collect. It wasn’t as much as she’d hoped, but it brought her total to sixteen—not bad for a desperate sprint through an active volcano.

  She gnced skyward, where the suspended crystal of Atntis now floated like a second moon.

  Her thoughts drifted toward Helios and Kurai. Wherever they were now, she hoped they’d made it clear. She hoped their work was done.

  And she hoped she wouldn't have to do this again anytime soon.

  Because being a hero, as it turned out, was exhausting.