In the Hall of Kings, Eren let the silence sit after those words.
Then he said, "There are nights when a man stops asking whether he believes."
Atum looked up at him.
Aru's voice came low. "Did you?"
Eren's gaze moved past them, toward Nam Lapi under moonlight.
"I believed the river had memory," he said. "I did not yet know whether it remembered me."
Then he went back to the terrace.
The sacred stones were shaking under three pressures at once.
Below, the buried defense turned in rings of blue-white script.
Above, the red iris in the warcraft was widening toward full strike.
Between them, the dark shape of Nam Lapi hung over the terrace like a hand that had found strength but not control.
And at the center of it stood a bleeding commander, a dying woman from Guoga, and the enemy who wanted both gone before the sky fired.
"Tell me how," young Eren said.
Ilya's chest rose sharply with pain. Silver light flickered beneath the torn ruin of her armor.
"Blood joins continuity," she said. "The line below remembers your people. The river is answering power, but not person. It needs one."
Eren's jaw tightened. "You want me to feed it."
"I want you to call it."
"With blood."
"With blood."
Vorun heard enough.
His face barely changed, but what little moved in it was worse than anger.
"Of course," he said softly. "This is what remains of you now. Ritual desperation."
Eren lifted the sword between them.
"You say that like desperation hasn't ruined your night."
Vorun moved.
Not alone.
At one gesture from him, two heavier elites broke from the lower ring and drove toward the center while the lesser ranks rushed the flanks to pin the surviving Lu Or away from the seal.
The Messenger captain on one knee near the center saw it and shouted, "Hold the line! Hold it if your bones split!"
A defender near the broken parapet shouted back, "They already have!"
"Then hold with what's left!"
Eren thrust the sword into Ilya's hand.
Her fingers closed around it at once, even with the tremor in them.
"Can you still do it?"
"I can still burn."
"That is not comforting."
"It was not meant to be."
He did not waste another breath.
Vorun reached the edge of the center ring just as Eren drew the short harvest blade from his belt and cut his own forearm from wrist to elbow.
In the Hall of Kings, Atum inhaled sharply.
Aru's face tightened.
Eren did not look at either of them.
Back on the terrace, blood ran hot and fast down his hand, over his fingers, onto the blazing stone at his feet.
The seal answered.
Not the way it had answered Ilya.
Not with silver.
Not with star-fire.
This answer came lower and darker.
The blue-white carvings beneath the center ring deepened toward river-black at the edges. The turning script did not dim. It broadened, as though making room for something older than writing.
The towering shape of Nam Lapi convulsed.
Vorun saw it and lunged straight for Eren's bleeding arm.
Ilya intercepted.
Not with her body.
She drove Eren's sword down and forced silver fire through the blade into the turning seal. Blue-white light tore up between Eren and Vorun, forcing the First Blade half a step off his line.
Half a step was enough.
Eren shifted. Vorun's strike cut air instead of tendon. Eren slapped his bloodied palm flat against the burning heart-mark of the center ring.
The stone took his blood like thirst.
The whole terrace answered.
Every crack in the landing stones flashed.
The broken obelisks roared.
The dark shape of Nam Lapi surged higher and then, for the first time, bent—not as collapsing force, but as will.
One of the remaining Lu Or shouted, "Lapi—"
The word broke in his throat when a lesser invader hit him from behind and dragged him down. Another defender buried a sword in that invader's back before it could feed, and the fight there became a knot of bodies on wet stone.
Near the lower stair, the Messenger captain dragged himself upright and roared, "Shield the center! No one through! For River and Light!"
Three voices answered him.
Then more.
Not because they thought they would live.
Because they had heard the river answer.
Vorun came again, faster now.
He struck for Eren's arm, throat, side—trying to cut blood from body before the calling could deepen. Eren met him with one arm half-dead, the other bleeding into the seal, and pain roaring through every torn place in him.
This was not swordplay now.
It was delay.
He blocked high, took a glancing cut to the thigh, drove a shoulder into Vorun to spoil the next angle, caught claws across the ribs, and still kept his bloodied hand on the heart-mark long enough for another dark pulse to travel through the turning script.
Ilya shouted over the clash, "Do not pull away!"
"That was not the plan!"
"Then stay with it!"
One of the heavy elites broke through the captain's reduced line and thundered toward the center.
The captain threw himself sideways and wrapped both arms around its weapon arm, hanging from it like a dying man clinging to falling timber.
The elite smashed him into the stones once.
Twice.
On the third hit, the captain's body went slack—but his weight still dragged the blow off line long enough for a younger guard to drive a blade up under the creature's chin seam.
Both fell.
Neither rose.
Eren saw it and did not let himself feel it yet.
Vorun changed his angle.
Instead of pressing into Eren's guard, he drove his blade into the seal beside the blood-marked center.
Red-black force burst through the carvings, trying to poison the line before the river could fully take shape.
Ilya cried out.
Silver light tore outward from her like something ripped open. She staggered, nearly losing Eren's sword.
The corruption ran to the outer ring—
—and stopped.
Not because she blocked it.
Because the river did.
A dark band moved through the carvings under the center like deep current through stone. Blue-white script and river-black pressure locked together, and the red-black poison stalled where they met.
Vorun froze for one beat.
So did Eren.
Ilya looked at the seal with something close to stunned relief.
"It knows you."
Eren bared his teeth through blood and pain. "It has awful judgment."
Then the warcraft above screamed.
Not in sound.
In pressure.
The red iris fully opened, and a spear of crimson formed at its heart, thin at first, then thickening as it drank light from cloud, river, armor, eye.
The breach-lance was ready.
Everything on the terrace felt it.
Some defenders looked up in horror.
Some invaders did too.
Even Vorun glanced skyward, measuring time.
Ilya's face changed.
"We are too late."
Eren did not believe that.
Not because reason helped him.
Because he had already cut himself open for the river and had nothing left to spend on despair.
"What happens if it hits now?"
"The seal scatters the force," she said. "The city lives. The terrace dies. Everyone on it dies."
Eren looked once across the stones.
At the defenders still holding broken lines.
At the wounded dragged by men too stubborn to leave them.
At the half-collapsed stair.
At the bodies already beyond saving.
At Vorun Kael.
Then back to Ilya.
"Can the river take it?"
Her silence lasted too long.
"Can it?" he demanded.
"Not cleanly."
"Can it take enough?"
She looked at the dark shape of Nam Lapi, at the blood-fed seal, at the lance thickening overhead, then back at him.
"Yes," she said. "If it has a hand."
Eren almost laughed despite the blood in his mouth.
"We are still saying impossible things."
"That is what kind of night this is."
Vorun came again, sensing the edge.
This time Eren did not turn fully to meet him.
He ripped his bloodied hand off the seal, seized the sword hilt beneath Ilya's hand, and said, "Tell me where."
Her answer came at once.
"Give the river a strike."
Understanding hit like pain.
Eren turned.
Not toward Vorun.
Toward the sky.
He drove the sword upward with both hands, Ilya's silver force still running through it, his own blood still slick on the hilt and edge.
The seal answered.
The river answered harder.
The dark towering shape of Nam Lapi clenched.
What had been a hand became a fist of black living water the size of a tower.
For the first time that night, Vorun's voice sharpened.
"No."
The breach-lance fired.
A spear of crimson tore downward from the warcraft.
And the river struck it in mid-descent.
The collision split the night.
Red and black exploded into each other above the landing stones. Steam became storm. Pressure slammed every body on the terrace downward. The sacred obelisks burst apart. The center ring vanished under boiling dark water and scarlet fire.
Eren heard someone scream.
He never knew if it had been himself.
The last thing he saw before the blast tore the world apart was Vorun throwing up one arm against the exploding river-light—
—and Ilya's hand closing over his wrist so he would not be taken alone.