We were back in Eryndor before midnight.
I didn't stop at the gate. I walked through it and went directly to the communication stone.
Two taps.
Frostina answered before the second tap finished.
"I felt the portal fluctuate." She said. "Four hours ago. Then again two hours ago. You were in Winterly."
"Yes." I said.
"The loop broke." She said. "I could feel the south portal lose something. It's running differently now."
"Reduced intake." I said. "The loop with Medalline is disrupted. The south portal is compensating but it's working harder than it was and producing less."
A pause.
"You're going to close them." She said.
"Expand your patrol." I said. "Push south from Branklore's northern border into Winterly's southern territory. Any demon unit you encounter, push it back. Don't destroy them. Push them north, back into Winterly's interior."
Another pause. Shorter.
"You're herding them." She said.
"Yes." I said.
"Into Winterly." She said.
"Yes." I said.
"And then." She said.
"When they're all inside, I close the border." I said. "Then we go in."
The particular quality of Frostina's silence when she had understood something and was deciding what she thought about it.
"When do I start." She said.
"Now." I said.
The stone went quiet.
I pressed it again. Different signal. Flame's pattern.
He answered in two seconds, which meant he had been awake and waiting.
"Western border of Winterly." I said. "Same task as Frostina from the south. Push demon units north and east. Toward the interior. Don't destroy, don't engage beyond what's necessary to direct them. Coordinate with Frostina so the movements don't cross."
"What's the boundary." He said.
"Winterly's western edge to the central territory." I said. "Frostina takes south to central. You take west to central. I take east."
"When." He said.
"You leave in an hour." I said. "Frostina is already moving. Be at the western border by dawn."
"Understood." He said. The stone went quiet.
Aldren was standing at the gate where I had left him.
He had been quiet the entire return journey. Processing, or deciding, or simply carrying the weight of what he had watched in the nexus chamber and not yet finding somewhere to put it.
He looked at me when I finished with the stones.
"The eastern border." He said. "That's you."
"Yes." I said.
"Alone." He said.
"Yes." I said.
He looked at the gate. At Eryndor behind me.
"I know Winterly's eastern territory." He said. "The patrol routes the occupation has established. The demon units stationed at the border positions. I watched them set it up from the outskirts when I was trying to get out."
I looked at him.
"The barrier I cast in the nexus chamber." He said. "It held. I wasn't a liability."
He wasn't wrong about either of those things.
"You follow my direction." I said. "Exactly. No improvisation."
"Yes." He said.
"If I tell you to stop, you stop." I said. "If I cast a barrier around you, you stay inside it."
"Yes." He said.
I looked at him for a moment.
"One hour." I said. "Get something to eat first."
He went.
••••••••••
Dawn came gray over Winterly's eastern border.
I had brought Aldren in the same way as before, distance first, on foot from the edge. He moved through the terrain with the same certainty he had moved through the capital's catacombs, reading the landscape the way someone read something they had grown up in.
He was useful. I noted this without making more of it than it was.
The eastern border demon units were positioned the way occupation forces always positioned, at the natural chokepoints, the passes and the river crossings and the high ground that controlled visibility. Standard placement. Nothing that suggested they had any awareness of what had happened in the nexus chamber twelve hours ago.
The loop disruption hadn't reached the field units yet. Or the demon lord hadn't communicated it. Either way, the eastern border was operating on the assumption that nothing had changed.
I worked the border from south to north, moving through each position in sequence, the approach quiet enough that the first unit at each position didn't know I was there until the push was already happening.
Not destroying. Redirecting.
Mana pressure, directed, pushing the units back from the border line toward the interior. Not comfortable enough to resist, not violent enough to provoke a response that would scatter them in the wrong direction. The precise middle of the range that said move without saying fight.
They moved.
Aldren stayed back at each position until the units had cleared, then moved up to the next one with me. He read the terrain for the next position before I asked, pointing out the approach line that avoided the sight lines of the unit ahead.
The border ran clean by midmorning.
I contacted Frostina.
"South to central." She said. "Done. They're consolidated in the Winterly interior. Some resistance but nothing that slowed the push significantly."
"Western border." I pressed Flame's signal.
"Clear." He said. "Met Frostina at the central line two hours ago. The western units are in the interior with the rest."
I looked at the eastern border behind me.
"Move to the central zone." I said to both of them. "Hold the perimeter. Don't go in yet."
I raised both hands.
The barrier came down across the entirety of Winterly's borders in a single working.
Not the settlement-scale barrier I had built for Eryndor. This one covered a kingdom's worth of territory, anchored to the natural border markers, the mountain ranges and rivers and forest edges that had defined Winterly's geography for generations. The monster cores I had pulled from the Abyssal reserves over the past week went in as the power source, the charging equation running automatically.
The border sealed.
Nothing inside Winterly was getting out.
Aldren watched the barrier settle across the horizon from where we were standing.
"They can't leave." He said.
"No." I said.
"And we're going in." He said.
"Yes." I said.
I pressed Frostina's stone.
"Move." I said.