The spire cracked with a thunderous groan, the sound resonating through the very bones of the cavern like the tolling of some ancient bell not of warning, but of reckoning.
Cambria stood at the center of it all, her hand still pressed to the burning seal, her body pulsing with blinding energy. The sigils that had erupted across her skin glowed brighter, alive with power that seemed both foreign and deeply hers.
Evelyn's smirk began to wilt at the edges.
"What did you do?" she hissed, her voice trembling beneath the steel.
Cambria lifted her eyes white-hot with the essence of Seraphine, of every sealed truth, every unspoken sacrifice embedded in Project Pandora. Her voice came low but clear, slicing through the thick, smoke-laced air.
"I reclaimed what was mine."
With a surge of blinding light, the control seal beneath her flared and split. The spire trembled violently and so did the weapons Evelyn had summoned.
They froze.
All twenty of them.
