Rand's hand touched the liquid light before Spencer could react.
The Dragon Reborn's golden thread exploded with brilliance — not the steady blaze Spencer had grown accustomed to, but a supernova of fate-energy that burned Thread Sight like staring into the sun. Spencer staggered back from the pool's edge, raising his arm instinctively, as if that could shield him from something that existed on a level beyond physical vision.
But Rand wasn't the only threat in the garden.
---
Aginor stood at the breach in the northern wall, and he was wrong in ways that made Mordeth look like a minor infection.
Through Thread Sight, the Forsaken's signature was a nightmare of ancient power. His thread wasn't the normal silver-blue of a channeler — it was massive, cable-thick, shot through with the Dark One's resurrection mechanism like veins of black iron in corrupted marble. Three thousand years of imprisonment in the Bore had twisted something that had once been human into something that was now a weapon wearing flesh.
[ALERT: High-power threat detected. Entity classification: Forsaken. Power level: Extreme. Recommend immediate evasion.]
[Skill Archive: Recording. Category: Supernatural Entity — Forsaken. Entry: Aginor Thread Signature. Comprehension: 0. +500 EXP.]
Spencer's mind catalogued the data even as his body screamed at him to run. The specific patterns of Shadow-connection. The density of corruption. The way Aginor's thread reached toward the Eye with hungry, deliberate intent — a channeler who'd been denied the Source for millennia, now presented with a pool of pure, untainted saidin.
Balthamel was worse.
The second Forsaken had been twisted by his imprisonment into something barely recognizable as human. His thread was the same corrupted black-silver, but more decayed, more unstable, more dangerous. Where Aginor radiated cold calculation, Balthamel radiated madness — the specific madness of someone who'd spent three thousand years screaming in the dark.
[Skill Archive: Recording. Category: Supernatural Entity — Forsaken. Entry: Balthamel Thread Signature. Comprehension: 0. +500 EXP.]
Two Forsaken. Two enemies who could unmake me with a thought.
I need to move.
---
The Green Man moved first.
Someshta's ancient thread blazed green-gold as he interposed himself between Balthamel and the group. The last Nym's body was expanding, growing, thorns and vines erupting from his form as he prepared to fight something that had been destroying worlds before humans built their first cities.
"Run," Someshta's voice echoed through the garden. "I will hold this one."
Balthamel laughed — a sound like dead leaves scraping stone — and raised his hand. Fire bloomed between them, channeled through corrupted saidin with the casual contempt of a being who had killed nations.
The Green Man caught the fire with his body.
---
Spencer watched through Thread Sight as Someshta's thread wrapped around Balthamel's.
The Nym wasn't trying to overpower the Forsaken — that was impossible, three thousand years of accumulated Power against one guardian who'd never been meant for combat. Instead, Someshta was absorbing, pulling Balthamel close, using his own life-energy as fuel for something catastrophic.
The Green Man's thread began to burn.
Not fire — something deeper. The Pattern itself responding to a sacrifice willingly offered. Green-gold energy flared around both figures, and Spencer's Thread Sight showed him the mechanism: Someshta was converting his own existence into a weapon, channeling the accumulated life-force of an Age into the destruction of a single enemy.
[Skill Archive: Recording. Category: Pattern Event — Willing Sacrifice. Entry: Nym Death Pattern. Comprehension: 0.]
Plants exploded from Someshta's body. Vines that grew faster than thought, flowers that bloomed with poisonous intensity, roots that pierced Balthamel's corrupted flesh and drank his essence like water. The Forsaken screamed — actually screamed, the first genuine emotion Spencer had seen from either monster — and his thread began to dissolve.
The Green Man was dying.
This is what it looks like when a Pattern entity gives its existence to destroy something evil.
This is what sacrifice actually costs.
---
Someshta's final words weren't audible.
Spencer watched the Nym's lips move — a blessing, maybe, or a farewell to the garden he'd tended for millennia. Then the green-gold thread collapsed inward, consuming itself and Balthamel both, and where two beings had stood there was only a twisted mass of vegetation growing over corrupted bone.
The garden's oldest guardian was gone.
Spencer didn't have time to mourn. Aginor was already moving, his attention fixed on Rand, his thread reaching toward the Eye's remaining light with the desperation of an addict who'd finally found his fix.
He's going to drain it. All of it. And then Rand dies, and we all die, and everything was for nothing.
Unless I move.
---
Spencer circled the battle's edge.
Warder Positioning (Comp 1) made his movement efficient — not invisible, but unimportant, the kind of motion that didn't draw attention from enemies focused on larger threats. Aginor's gaze was locked on Rand. Rand's golden thread was struggling against the Forsaken's corrupted pull. Moiraine was gathering Power, preparing something that would probably fail against an enemy this strong.
Nobody was watching Spencer.
He reached the pool's far side. His hands found the stone rim — cold, ancient, thrumming with the residual energy of three thousand years of preservation. Below him, the liquid light was diminishing. Aginor was drinking it through some mechanism of Power that Spencer couldn't fully perceive.
Now or never.
Everything I planned comes down to this.
The ground shook from channeled energy. Fire and lightning crackled through the air as Aginor casually deflected Moiraine's attack. Rand was shouting something — defiance, maybe, or fear — his golden thread blazing as he instinctively reached for a Power he didn't understand.
Spencer pressed his forehead against the stone and whispered to no one: "One shot. Don't screw this up."
Then he reached into the pool with his mind and felt the Codex respond.
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