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I open my jaws and let it out.

Sound tears out of me, carrying Hell and Heaven in the same breath, hellfire blazing through the center while Sentinel’s Grace burns around it. The first shockwave punches dirt away from my knees in a widening ring. The next slams into the trees hard enough to bend trunks and rip branches loose, sending birds exploding from somewhere deeper in the mountain.

Behind us, what’s left of the depot groans under the hit. Glass blows from the remaining windows. Rusted sheets of metal buckle against their bolts while the ground beneath my claws shudders hard enough to send cracks racing through the dirt.

The kids drop low, hands clamped over their ears, mouths open against screams I can’t hear because my roar has swallowed every other fucking sound in the world.

But it doesn’t stop at the clearing.

I feel that.

The sound keeps going.

Through the trees, across the mountain, and down into the split earth beneath me, then outward through something I can’t see, name, or even understand.

Sentinel’s Grace flares colder.

My hellfire answers.

The two powers twist tighter inside the roar until a pulse rips through the bond so violently my vision whites out, and for one unthinkable heartbeat, I feel something on the other end.

Vast.

Still.

Listening.

Sentinel’s wings snap wide. One stretches toward the kids, white feathers flaring between them and me as celestial light rolls across the clearing, taking the edge off the blast before it can hit them full force. His other wing braces behind me while his hand stays locked around my neck, refusing to break the connection even as my roar pounds through both of us.

The sound climbs higher.

Hellfire surges with it, white-gold light blazing through the red until I can’t see my hands anymore, can’t see the tear beneath them, and can barely see anything beyond the violent glow pouring out of me.

My throat feels like it’s ripping apart.

Still I fucking roar.

The ground bucks beneath my palms as the sound drives down into the opening, dirt spraying outward while the two edges of the rift begin dragging toward each other.

Sentinel’s fingers dig harder into my neck, and more celestial power slams through the bond.

I give it everything I have left.

The roar fucking booms, and a shockwave tears across the clearing, flattening grass, blasting dust away from the depot, and bending the closest trees beneath the force of it as Heaven and Hell erupt through me together.

White-gold fire flashes bright enough to turn the world blank.

Through the glare, the two sides of the split earth grind toward each other. Dirt buckles, rocks tumble into the glowing dark below as roots rip free and drag across the gap, the opening fighting us every-fucking-inch while hellfire and Grace burn along both edges. Something deep beneath us pushes back, sending another violent shudder through the ground, but my roar only digs deeper.

The gap narrows.

Ten feet.

Five.

One.

The last strip of darkness disappears beneath a violent collision of earth and white-gold fire, stone slamming together hard enough to crack the clearing. The force tears my hands from the ground and launches me backward. My shoulder hits dirt hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Sentinel crashes down beside me as his grip is ripped from my neck, and the flood of his Grace cuts off.