Chapter 7 · The Anchor

"On your knees. Now." Dax's hand locked around my wrist and the red from his sigil lit his throat blood-red.

"You don't get to do that anymore," I hissed. My palm was on fire where the thirteenth route had burned in. Leo's voice was still crackling through it. "You hear him? That's my brother. He's alive in there."

"I hear an order," he said. Flat. Wrong. Like someone else was talking through his teeth. "Immediate execution. Mara Venn."

His fingers tightened. Not Dax. The Judge.

"Let go," I snapped. "That's not you."

The sigil crawled up his forearm, hot and bright. The lock on my wrist answered it, searing. The chain between us pulled taut. If he pulled that trigger, we'd both cook.

"Dax," I said, quieter. "Look at me. Not the light. Me."

His eyes dropped. For a second they were his again. Gray and pissed and scared.

"I don't know you," he said. But his hand didn't let go. "Why do I know you?"

"Because you keep forgetting me," I said. "Every reset. Every goddamn hour. And your body remembers anyway. So fight it."

He slammed me back against the archive shelf. Hard. Close.