The district became a battlefield of threads.
Every surface — street, building, even the air — was lined with violet and white veins, colliding in bursts of energy that shattered windows and cracked the ground. Arielle stood at the center, the city's pulse wrapped around her spine like a second skeleton, amplifying every movement she made.
Kerys didn't falter. Her white-thread sigils spread wider, detaching from her entirely, forming a spinning halo that sliced through Arielle's constructs like paper. "You're an echo, not a core. You can't outlast me."
Selene staggered to Arielle's side, silver stitches binding their arms. "She's right — she can outlast us. Unless…" They hesitated, their silver glow trembling. "Unless we overload the tether."
Draven's head snapped toward them, his voice a low growl. "That would burn her alive. You'd turn her into the very thing she refused to become — a living core."
Arielle grit her teeth as another of Kerys's sigils shattered her defenses, the hum inside her stuttering with the impact. "Then we find a third way."
The hum responded — not as a roar, but as a whisper. A suggestion.
She dropped to one knee, pressing her palm to the cracked pavement. Instead of channeling the tether through herself, she let it spread outward, diffusing into every street, every wall, every shattered lamppost. The city didn't just answer. It awoke.
Windows glowed violet. Pavement rippled like water. The buildings themselves shifted, angles warping to redirect Kerys's sigils into empty alleys. The city had become a body, and Arielle was no longer its sole pulse but its nerve.
Kerys's calm finally cracked. "You… made it move."
The streets answered with a pulse so deep the air itself vibrated. Arielle rose, her voice steady, carried by the hum itself.
"This city doesn't need a Spire. And it doesn't need a Severer. It has me — and itself."
Kerys's sigils shattered as the streets surged, threads of violet and silver weaving into a tidal wave that swallowed her in light.