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It’s like watching a door creak open across a canyon I didn’t know I could see. Something down there twitches toward the sound of her voice, and my entire chest lurches with it, a phantom ache blooming right where my roar used to sit before Malgrave hollowed it out of me.

Sentinel exhales hard beside me. “It’s not enough on its own,” he says, more to himself than to me. “Part of what’s down there is mine too.” He presses his palm flat against my ribs, right over the hollow, and lets his Grace rise. White-gold light floods out from beneath his hand and pours straight into me, not enough to fuse anything new, just enough to give what’s trapped in Hell something familiar to reach toward. Somewhere below us, buried under centuries of brimstone and screaming, something recognizes that light and strains toward it like a dog straining against a leash it’s finally allowed to break.

The connection locks into place with a force that punches the air out of my lungs.

Across the chamber, the Devil’s smile disappears. His red eyes move from the hellfire burning beneath my skin to Echo still singing beside me, then settle on the Grace pouring from Sentinel’s hands.

His jaw tightens, and that smug amusement finally vanishes.

“Enough!” It’s the first word out of his mouth that doesn’t carry that smug fucking amusement. He turns toward the chasm and thrusts one hand into the fire.

Every flame below surges toward him.

My stolen hellfire jerks with it.

So does Sentinel’s Grace.

The connection between us snaps tight, and my whole body jerks forward, bare knees slamming into stone as one hand catches me before I go down completely. Pain rips up my spine, vertebra by vertebra, while hellfire ignites beneath my skin so violently that glowing cracks spread across my arms and chest.

Son of a bitch.

The Devil closes his hand.

My roar tears away from me.

I can’t hear it, but I feel every inch of that missing piece being dragged back toward Hell while Echo’s song pulls from this side.

My jaws open.

Still nothing.

The Devil braces one polished shoe against the edge of the chasm and pulls harder.

Stone fractures beneath my fingertips, while my body stretches between the two forces, every muscle locking as the hollow place inside my chest suddenly fills with the faintest vibration.

My roar… it’s right there.

And the bastard is trying to take it from me again.

‘They told me you never learned when to submit.’ His voice arrives inside my skull like it’s always lived there, patient the way only something immortal can afford to be.

I know exactly what he is doing. He is reaching for the same lever Hell always reached for—pain first, submission second, and if that doesn’t work, more pain until it does.

I remember the chains.

The weeks underground with the cold stone eating into my knees.

The wardens circling, waiting for me to break, ordering me to take an innocent soul like it was nothing, like I was nothing, and my roar bringing half that holding level down around all of us instead.

Hell cast me out because they couldn’t make me kneel.

And now he is making the same mistake they did.

My palms grind against the stone as I force one bare foot beneath me, then the other, every muscle in my body straining against the pull trying to drag me forward. Somehow, I get myself upright and hold there, shaking with the effort as I look him dead in those red eyes.

‘Go fuck yourself.’ Then I pull.

Echo’s voice climbs higher behind me, Sentinel’s Grace flooding brighter through my ribs, and together the three of us pull against something that has spent eternity taking whatever the fuck it wants.