Outside the combined portal Aaron felt the pull in his arm the moment the Demon Lord's shadow engaged.
The mark burned dark purple then faded.
He looked down at his forearm. A thin line of dark was running from the mark down toward his wrist. Not blood. Something else. Something that came from pushing the connection harder than it was built to be pushed.
He wiped it with his sleeve and said nothing and pushed harder anyway.
He stood at the barrier line next to the Director and said nothing.
The Director hadn't looked at him. But he hadn't told him to leave either.
*He knows something*, Aaron thought, watching the combined portal pulse slowly in front of them. *Eighteen years of something. And right now whatever is happening inside that portal is the thing he has been building toward this whole time and he is standing here next to me instead of going in himself.*
*Why.*
Inside the chamber the Demon Lord's shadow and the Being faced each other.
The Being spoke first.
"You were destroyed," it said. The voice of something stating a fact it had been certain of for a very long time.
The shadow said nothing.
"The one who extracted you." The Being looked at the shadow the way something looked when a certainty it had held for years suddenly had a crack in it. "Where is he."
The shadow said nothing.
Then it moved.
BOOOOOOM.
The impact shook the chamber walls and Zxara felt it through the floor and lifted her head.
The Demon Lord's shadow was fighting the Being that had just put all seven of them on the ground. Holding its own. Hitting back. Moving with everything it had been when it was alive and everything it had become from being bound to Aaron.
But it wasn't easy.
The Being hit it hard and it flickered. For half a second the shadow lost shape at the edges and outside Aaron felt the mark burn cold all the way to the bone and the thin dark line on his forearm spread another inch and he set his jaw and pushed everything he had back through the connection.
The shadow steadied.
Kept going.
Chief Leo Park lifted his head from the ground and watched.
The healer opened his eyes slowly. Looked at the shadow. Looked at the Being.
"Leo," he said.
"I see it," Chief Leo Park said.
"What is that thing."
"Someone sent it in for us," Chief Leo Park said quietly. "Before we even went through the portal."
The healer watched the shadow fight. At the way it moved with a purpose that didn't belong to something acting alone.
"Who sends a shadow army to protect people they've never met," the healer said.
"Someone who knew we were going to need it before we did," Chief Leo Park said. "I have been trying to find out who for three days."
Zxara watched all of it from the wall.
*The dungeon boss*, she thought. *That is the dungeon boss from the S tier dungeon. The one Aaron fought alone. Defeated alone. Extracted and bound to himself.* She watched it hold its ground against something that had beaten all seven of them without slowing down. *He sent it in. He knew. He always knows before anyone else does.*
*What are you Aaron.*
*What are you.*
The shadow drove the Being back toward the far wall. The Being hit back with everything and the shadow flickered again and outside the dark line on Aaron's forearm spread to his wrist and he wiped it again and planted his feet harder and pushed more through the connection than he had left to push with.
The shadow steadied. Kept going.
The Being stopped.
Looked at the shadow. Then at the hunters on the ground around the chamber. Then back at the shadow standing between it and all of them.
Something moved through its face that hadn't been there before.
"Tell your master," it said. Each word deliberate. Weighted. "We are coming. All of us. Every one of us that exists on the other side." A pause with genuine weight in it. "What he carries will not be enough."
The shadow said nothing.
The Being stepped back into its own shadow.
Gone.
The chamber went quiet.
Zxara stared at the space where it had been. Then at the Demon Lord's shadow standing patient and enormous in the center of the room waiting.
She laughed once. Short and involuntary. The laugh that came out when a person's body didn't know what else to do with what just happened.
"Aaron," she said quietly. Just out loud. Because it needed to go somewhere outside her head. "What are you."
Outside the Director stood next to Aaron and watched the portal shift from black back toward dark red.
He was quiet for a long time.
"You sent something in," he said.
"Yes," Aaron said.
"Through a combined portal that has never existed before in recorded history."
"Yes."
The Director was quiet again. Then said "How did you know they would need help" in the voice of someone who already suspected the answer and needed to hear it out loud anyway.
Aaron looked at the portal.
"I didn't," he said. "I just knew they would."
The Director turned and looked at him. Not the way people usually looked at Aaron. Not trying to classify him or find where he fit. The look of someone who already knew what they were looking at and had spent eighteen years waiting to stand next to it.
"Who are you," the Director said quietly.
Aaron looked at him.
"You already know," Aaron said. "Don't you."
The Director said nothing.
The portal opened and the team came through. Some walking. Some carried. All alive.
Zxara came out last.
She found Aaron across the barrier line immediately. Looked at him with everything she wanted to say sitting right there on her face and nowhere to put it.
He looked back.
She opened her mouth.
He activated Stealth and was gone.
Zxara stood at the portal exit and looked at the empty space where he had been.
The Director stood at the barrier line and looked at the same empty space.
"Eighteen years," he said quietly. To nobody. To himself. To the decision he had made eighteen years ago that had brought him to standing here right now. "I have been looking for eighteen years."
He looked at where Aaron had been standing one second ago.
"And he has been here the whole time."