Alex's jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed with the precise, controlled focus of someone pressing back against a conclusion they are not ready to accept.
"Ahrimon would not do that," he said. "He needs me alive and complete, at the absolute peak of my strength. Activating the mark would undermine everything he has spent decades engineering."
"He would not activate it while he believes he can win," Enigma said. "He would fight you fully, without it, for exactly as long as he is winning or believes he can still win." Her voice carried the quiet certainty of someone who has traced this particular thread to its end and does not like where it goes.
"But the moment he finds himself with no way out, with defeat becoming the only visible outcome, the Devourer Mark becomes his bridge back from the edge."
"He would rather consume the broken remnants of what you are after it activates than face a death that leaves him no future, however grim and however diminished that future might be."
