My next breath escaped in a defeated manner. “She was way more resentful of those mists than the ether. The mists who spat out the royals.” Royals who had taken her creatures and fucked up the realm. “I bet she’ll find it fitting that they’ll form part of her Nexus, which she’ll completely control.”

“She’s missing the entire point of balance,” Angel stated, and no one was going to argue with truth.

“Has the true Nexus been destroyed?” Alistair asked, sounding less serene than usual. “Was that her first step? I swore I felt it in The Depths, but… can there be two Nexuses?”

“One cannot be destroyed until the other is born,” Shadow said without hesitation. “Otherwise, there’d be no realm left for us to stand upon.”

“He’s right,” I said quickly. “I feel the other Nexus still thrumming within my power, but it’s weakened. Its power is bleeding out of the cracks Dannie left within it.”

We were moving slower now, the fortress nearing completion. When we finally made it to the side of the castle with the chasm, the red of the lava came into view, and… What the fuck?

There had been no real warning about what we were going to see, and to my shame, I found myself captivated in a way I never remembered being before. Not even with Shadow.

“How did we miss that from above?” I choked out.

Stunning ribbons of gold and red had shattered across the sky, filling it with the sort of beauty that could make grown men cry. Wherever I looked was another pattern and shape, sparkling in the low light of the new realm sky. The one true illumination left in this world.

“She hid it from us,” Shadow said, emotion finally threading his tone.

The “she” became apparent as we got closer, her body in the center of the kaleidoscope of power and light that had fragmented across the chasm. Dannie. Only it wasn’t the Dannie I’d known from Torma. Or the phoenix hybrid Dannie who had stolen our memories and changed the course of the realm and all the worlds.

She had changed again. Evolved one last time.

It was hard to truly understand this evolution while she was covered in swirling tendrils of power, the red and gold shooting off her body in a thousand swirling arcs and beams. So bright and mesmerizing. I wasn’t the only one staring like we’d just found the first oasis.

“She’s literally becoming a Nexus,” Angel breathed. “The metamorphosis is almost complete.”

Like a damn caterpillar, Dannie was about to become the Nexus butterfly, and if that happened, it would be too late. We couldn’t defeat the power of creation.