“We’re over here, bully!” Emmett taunts the goddess as he jumps onto Boris and starts to zoom around.

Her lips tighten into a line and she makes her way toward us. Cosette glamours herself to look just like Auntie Okja, and for a second, the goddess stares at her mirror image with her mouth ajar, momentarily thrown. David takes a few vials from his pocket and tosses one to Jennie. As the goddess comes within arm’s reach, David and Jennie uncork the vials and throw the contents at her. Liquid splashes into her open mouth and she wobbles on her feet, trying to keep her balance.

“It’s a disorientation potion,” David explains. “It won’t hurt her, but it will disable her for a while.”

Noah takes the opportunity to push four wooden pews into a square around the weakened goddess, and she falls to her knees. Sora uses her magic to lattice some pews on top, forming a wooden cage.

“How dare you try to imprison me?!” she shrieks.

Having been healed by my parents, Areum flies above the cage, squawking and clawing at the goddess’s hands as they emerge through the gaps.

I let out a breath of relief. We’ve contained our enemy for now. Now we just need to figure out how to get the goddess out of my auntie’s body.

I look around to see that each of the six clans is represented here. The Gom, the Horangi, the Samjogo, the Tokki, the Gumiho, and the Miru. All the gifted clans are working together for the first time in over a decade, united in a common cause. And I’m at the center of it.

I’ve spent my whole life thinking of myself as an outsider. I always kept my head down because I was different and never fit in. But as I look around now, something stirs inside me.

Despite not having achieved my wish of becoming a healer, I have never felt more Gom in my life. At the same time, even without my Horangi elemental magic, I feel more like a scholar than I ever could have imagined. And though I no longer belong to either clan, I feel more gifted than I ever thought I’d be.

It’s just like Hattie said. It’s all about choice. I don’t have to feel conflicted about being Gom or Horangi, gifted or saram, adopted or born into a family. Because my choice isn’t either-or. I can choose to be all of those things. It’s my actions that define who I am, not who I was born to, or what blood flows through my veins, or even what magic I can wield. And the fact of the matter is that I chose all these people, and these people chose me.

Out of nowhere, the third line of the prophecy echoes in my ear.

In the one last divine, a weapon shall rise.