(Nova POV)
The altar stone was colder than I remembered.
Iron cuffs bit into my wrists and ankles, not shadow this time—solid, rune-etched, Elara's final gift before Damien snapped her neck. The crimson sigils carved into the metal pulsed in time with my heartbeat, each throb pulling a thin silver thread from my chest. The light drained in slow, deliberate sips. Not violent. Methodical. Like someone drawing water from a well until the bucket came up empty.
I could feel it leaving me.
Every breath shallower. Every heartbeat heavier. The child's small pulse still answered mine—faint now, but stubborn—but even that was dimming under the rite's hunger. The basin at the altar's foot glowed deeper red with every drop of my power it drank. When it filled, the merge would complete. The curse would swallow the light. The child would be born bound—part demon, part weapon, part nothing that had ever been mine or Damien's.
I kept my eyes on the arched doorway.
He would come.
