Rowan's POV
I ran after Ember and grabbed her before she reached Lyanna.
"No!" I pulled my daughter against my chest, turning my back to the tainted Queen. "You're not sacrificing yourself. Not while I'm living."
"But Mama—" Ember's voice was so small. So scared. "All those people will die."
"Then we find another way." I looked at the families running in fear around the settlement. Parents clutching children. Old people who couldn't run fast. All about to be torn apart by Lyanna's hive-mind Ferals. "There's always another way."
Lyanna's perverted laugh made my skin crawl. "How brave. The nurse playing hero. But you can't save them, Rowan. You couldn't even save yourself four years ago."
Those words hit like a punch to the gut. She was right. Four years ago, I'd been useless. Pregnant and alone, running from the only home I'd known. I'd almost died in the Borderlands. Would have died if Dante hadn't found me.
I'd been weak then. A victim.
But I wasn't that girl anymore.
"You want my daughter?" I set Ember down gently behind me and stepped forward. My hands started shining with healing light—but I shaped it differently this time. Sharper. Deadlier. "You'll have to go through me first."
Thaddeus appeared at my side in wolf form, growling. Dante appeared on my other side, shadows swirling. Commander Sienna and her Borderland warriors made a protective circle around us.
"Together," Thaddeus's voice repeated in my mind through the Eclipse binding. "We fight together."
The hive-mind Ferals charged as one synchronized wave.
I threw my healing light like darts, each one piercing through corrupted flesh. But these Ferals didn't fall like normal ones. Lyanna's Eclipse power knitted them back together almost instantly.
"Your healing is useless against me," Lyanna called out. "I can regenerate them faster than you can kill them."
She was right. For every Feral we dropped, two more took its place. We were losing ground fast.
A Feral broke through our defensive line, going straight for Ember. I spun and blasted it with concentrated healing light—so pure and focused that it burned the corruption right out of its body. The Feral fell, truly dead this time.
"That's it!" Dante shouted. "Pure healing energy destroys the corruption forever. But Rowan, you can't make enough power alone to—" "The Eclipse binding," Thaddeus interrupted. "We're joined now. All three of us. What if we channel our power through Rowan?"
I felt the bond pulse in my chest. "I don't know how—"
"Trust us," Dante said, putting his hand to my shoulder. His shadow magic flowed into me, cool and steady.
Thaddeus shifted back to human and put his hand on my other shoulder. His warrior strength poured through the bond, hot and fierce.
Combined power—three life forces merged into one—exploded through my body. My healing light blazed brighter than ever before, changing from golden to pure white.
I thrust my hands forward and launched a wave of purifying light that swept across the battlefield. Every Feral it touched screamed as the evil burned away, leaving only ashes.
Twenty Ferals. Fifty. A hundred. My power kept growing, fed by the Eclipse binding.
"NO!" Lyanna shrieked. "You can't do this! Those Ferals are mine!"
But I could. We could. The three of us together were stronger than her corrupted power.
Then Ember's small hand touched my leg.
Instantly, the power tripled. My four-year-old daughter was feeding her Eclipse powers into the binding too, making us even stronger.
"Four threads, not three," Ember whispered. "We're a family."
The purifying light exploded outward in a dome that covered the entire town. Every single Feral inside it turned to ash—except one.
Lyanna stood at the center, her corrupted Eclipse magic fighting against our united power. But she was alone. One person against four.
"You think you've won?" Lyanna's voice was desperate now. "You think this is over?"
She pulled something from her armor—a black gem that pulsed with sick energy. I recognized it from old healer books.
"That's a Feral Core," Dante said, fear in his voice. "The concentrated rot from a thousand dead Ferals. Where did she—"
"I've been collecting them for years," Lyanna said, breaking the crystal in her hand. "Planning for this moment. And now—"
She swallowed the black powder.
Lyanna's body convulsed. Her screams turned inhuman as corruption rushed through her—not just any corruption, but the concentrated essence of a thousand Feral deaths.
"She's going to explode," Sienna shouted. "Everyone RUN!"
But there was nowhere to run. If Lyanna burst with that much Feral corruption inside her, it would spread for miles. Everyone in Ashenvale—everyone in the entire Borderlands region—would be infected. Turned Feral.
Thousands of people. All becoming dumb monsters.
"We have to contain her," Thaddeus said. "Build a barrier that—"
"There's no time!" Dante stopped. "She's seconds away from detonation."
I looked at my daughter. At Thaddeus. At Dante. At all the innocent families around us.
And I knew what I had to do.
"Rowan, no," Thaddeus said, reading my meaning through the Eclipse binding. "Don't even think about it."
"I'm a healer," I said quietly. "Healing isn't just about saving people. Sometimes it's about taking the poison so others don't have to."
I broke away from them and ran toward Lyanna.
"ROWAN!" Three voices screamed my name—Thaddeus, Dante, and Ember.
But I was already there, pressing my hands against Lyanna's convulsing body. My healing magic reached inside her, not to fix the corruption, but to pull it into myself.
All of it.
A thousand Feral deaths' worth of rot flooded into my body.
The pain was beyond anything I'd ever imagined. It felt like my insides were being torn by claws. Like acid was burning through my blood. Like darkness was eating my soul.
I screamed.
Through the Eclipse bond, I felt Thaddeus and Dante and Ember all screaming too—feeling my pain as their own.
Lyanna fell, the corruption drained from her body. She looked almost normal again, her eyes clear for the first time in years.
"Why?" she whispered. "After everything I did to you—why would you save me?"
"Because I'm a healer," I gasped, falling to my knees. "It's what I do."
The corruption inside me was fighting my healing power. Fighting to take control. Fighting to turn me Feral.
And it was winning.
"Mama!" Ember ran to me, her small hands glowing gold. "Hold on! I can help!"
"No, baby." I pushed her away with the last of my strength. "Stay back. If I turn Feral, I might hurt you."
Black lines were already spreading up my arms. My vision started going red around the edges. I could feel my mind slipping, the rot whispering dark thoughts.
Kill them all. Tear them apart. Feast on their flesh.
"Fight it, Rowan!" Thaddeus grabbed my shoulders. "You're stronger than this!"
But I wasn't. The rot was too strong. Too much. I'd absorbed a thousand Feral deaths, and now all that evil was consuming me from the inside.
My hands started changing to claws. My teeth sharpened to fangs.
"Dante," I whispered, my voice already changing. "If I turn—promise me you'll kill me before I hurt anyone."
"Rowan, don't—"
"PROMISE ME!"
Dante's face was wet with tears. "I promise."
I felt my humanity slipping away. Felt the Feral madness take over. In seconds, I would be gone—just another twisted monster.
Then Ember pressed her small hand to my chest, right over my heart.
"The Eclipse binding saved Papa-Thaddeus from the bad lady's magic," she said in her small, determined voice. "Maybe it can save you from the bad corruption."
Golden light poured from her hand into my chest. But not just her light—through the Eclipse bond, Thaddeus and Dante's power flowed too.
Warrior strength. Shadow power. Eclipse purity. And beneath it all, something else. Something the binding had made when it connected our four life forces.
Love.
Not sexual love or family love or any single kind of love. Just pure, total connection. The kind that said I will not let you fall into darkness because you are part of me.
The united power slammed into the corruption inside me like a tidal wave of light.
I felt the darkness burning away. Felt my humanity returning. Felt the black veins fading.
But then something went wrong.
The Eclipse bond started pulling too much power—not just from Thaddeus and Dante, but from Ember too. My four-year-old daughter's life force was being drained to fuel my healing.
"Stop!" I tried to pull away, but the binding wouldn't let go. "You're killing her!"
Ember's face went pale. Her golden glow flickered and faded.
And I realized the horrible truth: saving me was going to cost my daughter's life.