Chapter 42 · The Last Reset

"Don't you dare." Kael's voice cut through the countdown alarm, raw and wrecked.

I didn't slow down. Five seconds left and I was still ten feet from him, the blue portal shrieking behind me like it knew I was making the wrong call.

"Nora, go back!"

"Shut up." I hit him full speed, grabbed his jacket with both hands. "I'm not leaving you."

His hands came up, locked around my wrists. "You have to. The core's choosing Earth. You go home, I stay here, everyone lives."

"Everyone but you."

"I'm dead anyway." Blood was still leaking from his mouth, his eyes blown wide with whatever the ritual had burned through him. "The reset won't fix this. I'm done, Nora."

Two seconds.

I yanked him toward me, our foreheads nearly touching. "Then I'm done too."

"That's not—"

The countdown hit zero.

The sound that came out of the core wasn't a boom. It was a rip, like the world's fabric tearing down the middle. The ground under us lurched, split, and I was falling, still holding onto Kael, his weight pulling us both sideways into the blast.

Then the light hit.

Not the white flash I'd seen forty-one times before.