Page 64 of The Baker’s Shadow

It pours through our joined hands, through the connection we’ve built over weeks of proximity and conversation and something deeper I haven’t let myself name. The baby’s power is raw and wild, undisciplined but vast, and Kaia channels it into me like she’s done this a thousand times before.

My reserves flood. The thread becomes a rope becomes a chain becomes something stronger than I’ve felt in centuries.

The glamour I’ve worn for so long, the human shape I’ve maintained to walk among them, begins to crack.

I try to hold it. Try to keep the form that doesn’t frighten, that can sit at a kitchen table and eat cinnamon rolls and pretend to be something I’m not.

“Let go,” Kaia whispers. “I’m not afraid. Let go.”

So I do.

The glamour shatters like glass.

My body expands, bones lengthening, muscles reforming. The human shape falls away and reveals what I really am, what I’ve always been. Twenty feet tall and made of living shadow, wings of pure night spreading from my back. My eyes open fully, all of them, and they burn like stars in the darkness.

This is what the old guardians looked like. This is what walked the earth when the world was young and humans were still learning to make fire.

Kaia stumbles back, and for a moment I think I’ve made a mistake. That showing her this will break whatever fragile thing we’ve built between us.

But she’s not running. She’s staring up at me with something like awe on her face.

“Do it,” she says. “Close it.”

I slam my hands into the earth and this time, the earth listens.

The shockwave that radiates out from the impact is massive enough to knock Kaia flat, to shatter trees in a hundred-foot radius, to send Preston flying backward. The ground buckles and heaves, and I pour everything into it. My magic, Kaia’s magic, the baby’s power, all of it channeled into a single purpose.

Close the breach. Seal the Hollow. Restore the barrier.

The earth responds like it’s been waiting for this. Like it remembers what it was supposed to be. The edges of the breach begin to pull together, mud and stone and ancient magic knitting back into place. The wards re-weave themselves, silver-black threads erupting from the ground and forming a lattice over the wound.

The Rot, still feeding on the van’s remains, suddenly realize what’s happening. They shriek and thrash, trying to escape back through the breach before it closes.

They’re too late.

The earth pulls tight like a drawstring, and everything still inside gets dragged down. Down into the darkness where they were imprisoned before, where they’ll stay until the end of time.

Preston screams. He’s too close to the edge, standing right where the mud is pulling back, and his feet slide out from under him. He claws at the ground, fingers digging furrows in the mud, but there’s nothing to hold onto.

“Help me!” His void-like eyes find mine, terrified and desperate. “Please, I didn’t mean—I was trying to⁠—”

The mud takes him. He slides down into the breach, still screaming, and then the earth closes over him with a sound like thunder.

Silence falls over the swamp.

The breach is gone. Where there was a massive wound in reality, now there’s just solid ground. Scarred and broken, but whole. The wards hum beneath the surface, stronger than before because they’re not just mine anymore. They’re woven from three different magics, three different lives, something new and impossible and unbreakable.

The storm breaks. The sickly green clouds dissipate like smoke, revealing clear sky and stars beyond. The rain stops. The wind dies.

I stand at the center of it all, still in my true form, and the silence is so complete I can hear Kaia breathing behind me.

Slowly, carefully, I turn to face her.

She’s sitting in the mud, one hand on her stomach, looking up at me with wide eyes. There’s mud in her hair and blood on her forehead from where she hit the car earlier, and she’s never looked more beautiful.

“Is it over?” she asks quietly.

I feel the Hollow through my restored connection. Feel the barrier holding strong, the wards settled and secure, the darkness contained where it belongs. Feel the town beyond, still standing, still safe.