Jude watched the five of them, a strange feeling welling up inside him. He had devoted his whole life to the Seven Prophets. People he thought holier and more worthy than himself. Whose legacy he’d felt he’d never be able to uphold.

And now here he was. Here they were. The Seven Prophets. The new Prophets.

“We need to work quickly,” Anton said. “I don’t have time to give scrying lessons right now, so just do as I say. We all need to scry together—each of our Graces will emanate at a slightly different frequency. But when they’re combined, they’ll create the Sacred Word. Once it’s formed, one of us has to touch the god, and the Word will burn through the god’s esha, destroying it.”

“Meaning someone needs to get close to Beru,” Illya said. “That won’t be easy.”

Jude, Anton, and Illya all looked over at Ephyra and Hector.

“I can—” Hector began.

But Ephyra cut him off with a shake of her head. “It should be me. I’m the reason any of this is happening.”

“No,” Hector said forcefully. “Listen, I know what it’s like to lose your family. I can’t let you do this. I can’t let you be the one to end her life.”

Ephyra stared at him, her eyes filling with tears. She blinked them away, nodding. “Thank you.”

Jude’s stomach lurched at the thought of Hector putting himself in more danger—but they were all putting themselves in danger at this point.

“The rest of us will protect you as best we can until you can get close enough,” Jude said.

“How do we do this?” Hassan asked Anton.

“Close your eyes,” Anton said. “Focus on your Grace.”

Jude closed his eyes and let his Grace flow through him like he had once done with his koahs. His Grace echoed through the air around him, nudging up against that of the others. He could feel them all, bright and dark, low and high, swirling and crashing together.

“Let go!” Anton’s voice called above the cacophony.

Jude obeyed, trying to mimic the sensation of using his Grace to power a strike of his blade. At first it felt like too much, the wall of sound crashing over him, but slowly, it began to resolve, to strengthen.

It was working. He could feel the others’ Graces echoing off his own, suffusing him with a power he’d only ever glimpsed before, when he’d felt Anton scry in the Circle of Stones, when he’d unsheathed the Pinnacle Blade, when he’d felt the birth of the Last Prophet.

But this was the same feeling multiplied ten times over. His body tingled with it, and the very air rang with the call of their Graces.

He opened his eyes. His friends—the Prophets—glowed from the inside out.