Kairn lasted almost a full day before Yselle dragged him back to the Stone.
He'd spent most of it horizontal.
Sleeping in fits.
Waking with his heart racing, convinced chains were around his throat again, only to find Lysa's hand there, warm and solid.
"Still here," she'd say.
"Still loud," he'd answer.
By evening, the worst shaking had stopped.
His ribs hurt less when he breathed.
The hole Null had chewed in his thoughts no longer felt like an open wound, more like a bruise around something that had knitted wrong and was now just part of him.
That was when Yselle turned up with the ward-mage and Barra and said, "Up. Stone room. Now."
"I'm very fragile," Kairn protested as Lysa hauled him to his feet.
"You bit a god on a mountaintop," Yselle said. "You can shuffle to a different room."
The Hall Stone hummed as they entered.
It felt different now—less like a single rooted node, more like the center of a web of its own.
Small.
Local.
Stubborn.
Cale stood with a fresh map spread out, scribbles all over the margins.
The kids were there too, off to one side.
Sia leaned on her staff.
Tam clutched a slate and piece of chalk.
Mar stood with his back to the wall, eyes half-closed, listening to the Stone's song.
"Touch," Yselle said, nodding at the Stone.
Kairn hesitated.
"What if I drag us all sideways by accident?" he said.
"Then I get to say 'I told you so' while we fall into god hell," Fen said from the arch.
"That's not comforting," Kairn muttered.
Lysa squeezed his hand.
"You won't," she said. "You're too tired to break anything that big yet. Now touch the rock."
He put his palm on the Stone.
The familiar rush came—roads, wards, hum of this sky.
Emberwatch.
Greenfold.
Mornspire.
All three scars now.
No King-thread anchored in any.
Beyond them, farther, faint tugs where his influence still seeped through old prayers and broken promises.
But weaker.
The King didn't have a *hand* here anymore.
Kairn breathed out.
Then he felt it.
The new line.
It didn't go down, into this world.
It went… out.
Above.
Sideways.
A thin, bright filament that snagged on something far distant.
The crack.
The path to the web-core.
It pulsed faintly when his thoughts brushed it.
It existed whether he looked or not.
The King had made it when he tried to push his Gate through.
Null had widened it when it bit.
Now it was just… there.
Waiting.
He pulled his hand back.
The Stone's glow faded.
"What did you see?" Yselle asked.
He swallowed.
"You remember that line you said wasn't on your maps?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Still there," he said. "It runs from here to where he really is. To the web-core. It's thin. Raw. I can pull on it."
"Pull what?" Tam asked softly.
"Me," Kairn said. "Maybe other things tied to me. It's a road. A bad one."
Silence.
Cale's pen scratched on the map, adding a line that went off the page.
"Can you see what's on the other end?" the ward-mage asked.
"Flashes," Kairn said. "Light. Chains. The place I bit him last time. He's patching it. But there's a weakness now. He didn't have to worry about attacks from outside before. Now he does."
"Can he come back in along that line?" Yselle asked.
Kairn shook his head.
"Not like he wants," he said. "It's too narrow. He needs more structure on this side to push through. We broke his last big attempt. He'll need time. And other skies."
"Other skies," Lysa repeated.
Her voice was very calm.
"Like this one," Fen said. "With other people living on them."
"Probably," Kairn said.
The idea had been sitting in his chest since the peak.
Saying it out loud made it heavier.
"He'll adapt," Kairn said. "He always does. He'll try again somewhere else, maybe in a year, ten years, a hundred. Maybe he's already started. We cut his fingers here. He still has hands."
"Which is why you want to go for the throat," Yselle said.
He nodded.
"Yes," he said.
"Can he see you if you look down that line?" Mar asked suddenly.
They all glanced at him.
His eyes were still on the Stone.
"Yes," Kairn said. "If I stare long enough, he'll feel the stare. That's why I'm not doing it more than I have to."
"So if you walk it, he'll know," Mar said.
"Yes," Kairn said.
"Good," Mar said quietly.
Tam turned to him.
"How is that good?" he asked.
"Because he'll be looking at Kairn," Mar said. "Not at us."
The yard outside was noisy with drills and chatter.
The Stone room felt like a held breath.
Yselle tapped the map.
"All right," she said. "Let's say we accept that line exists. Let's say we agree that he's going to keep using lines like it to reach more skies if we don't do something. What happens if we *don't* follow it?"
"He rebuilds," Kairn said. "Slower, because we broke his tools here. But he has time. He's big. This is just one world. Eventually, something else falls into his web. Or he reaches for somewhere else that can't fight back like this one could."
"Does he know how you did this?" Sia asked.
Kairn considered.
"He knows I used things he didn't expect," he said. "Forest. Null. Whatever I am. He doesn't know all the steps. He doesn't understand 'no' the way we do. But he learns fast."
"And if you go?" Yselle pressed.
"I have a shot at hitting him where he actually lives," Kairn said. "Not just fingers. Bone. If I break enough there, he can't use this web anymore. Not just here. Anywhere."
"Or you get eaten," Fen said.
"Or I get eaten," Kairn agreed.
"Or he turns you into something worse," Lysa added quietly. "A piece of himself that knows how to say 'no' but works for 'yes' anyway."
Kairn's stomach turned.
"I won't let him," he said.
"That's not how being remade works," she said.
He met her gaze.
"I know," he said.
They looked at each other a long moment.
The ward-mage cleared his throat.
"Let's talk practical," he said. "You tug that line. Best case, you arrive where? The same place you escaped from before?"
"Near it," Kairn said. "The core. The center of his web. It's big. It hurts to look at even in flashes. It's also… brittle, now, where the bit I took out used to be."
"Can you bring anyone?" Yselle asked.
"I think anything deeply tied to me will get dragged along," he said. "That means Systems. Forest-root. Maybe the Hall Stone. Definitely Lysa if she insists on holding my hand."
"I do," Lysa said.
"Thought so," he said.
Fen raised a hand.
"What about me?" he asked. "I'd like to not be left behind with only angry captains and bored children as company."
"You're better at moving in places that don't make sense than most," Kairn said. "The web doesn't obey normal distance. You might be useful. You might also get lost forever in god-math."
"Story of my life," Fen said. "I'm in."
Yselle glared at him.
"This is not a joke," she said.
"It is," he said. "A very bad one. We can either laugh or scream. I prefer laughing."
She turned back to Kairn.
"Can you go and come back," she asked, "or is this a one-way road?"
He hesitated.
"I don't know," he said. "Last time, I fell out by accident. This time… if I go in with intent, I might be able to follow the same line back. If it's not broken. If I'm not broken."
"That's a lot of ifs," Sia said.
"Yes," he said.
Yselle rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"The stakes," she said slowly, "are that if you *don't* go, he keeps existing and we spend the rest of our lives—and our children's lives—cutting fingers off whatever hand he sticks into this world. If you *do* go and fail, he might get a better grip than he ever had on anything, with you as the handle."
"Correct," Kairn said.
"If you do go and succeed," she went on, "the web collapses."
"Yes," he said.
"And if it collapses," she said, "what happens to the people on all the roads it's holding up?"
He thought of towers built with web-lift.
Of ships that flew by borrowed rules.
Of prayers answered by chains.
"I don't know," he said. "Some will fall. Some will be free. Some will die because their world built itself on his scaffolding. I can't see all the consequences. I just know that as long as he exists, more worlds get eaten."
"This is what you call rising stakes," Fen muttered.
"Shut up," Lysa said.
Yselle drummed her fingers on the table.
Her gaze moved over the map.
Over Emberwatch's cross.
Greenfold's note.
Mornspire's mark.
Off the edge, where Cale had drawn a line that trailed into blank paper.
"You said before," she said to Kairn, "that command is picking the bad road that lets the most people walk home. This isn't that. There is no home road here. Just… less catastrophe."
"Yes," he said.
"Do you want my blessing?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Do you need it?" she asked.
"No," he said.
She snorted.
"At least you're honest," she said.
She straightened.
"All right," she said. "Here's what we're going to do."
Everyone went still.
"We don't rush," she said. "You are held together with spite and Greenfold sap. That's not enough to walk into a god's heart. You rest. You let my healers and mage poke you until they run out of new curses." She nodded at the ward-mage. "You study that line without touching it. Figure out how much of the Stone is hooked into it."
He grimaced.
"I'll try," he said.
"You train," she told Lysa and Fen. "Not just your tricks. Your control. If we're sending you into a place where distance isn't real and thought is weapon, I want you both to know what happens when your own heads turn against you."
Lysa's mouth thinned.
"Already got a taste," she said.
"Get another," Yselle said. "On purpose this time. Where we can pull you out if it goes wrong."
She looked at the kids.
"You do nothing," she told them.
Three mouths opened.
She raised a hand.
"You do nothing *without telling me first*," she amended. "You will be my hall's ears. Mar, you listen to the Stone. If that line tugs when Kairn pulls it, I want to know. Tam, you learn every bell and code we have. Sia, you drill until you can break my men's ankles with your staff and still have breath left to shout."
Sia's chin came up.
"Yes, Captain," she said.
Tam nodded, eyes enormous.
Mar just said, "Okay."
Yselle turned back to Kairn.
"When you go," she said, "you don't go alone. You go with Lysa and Fen because I can't physically stop them. Maybe with one other if we're convinced it helps. You do not take my whole hall. You do not take my Stone unless my mage tells me he knows what that means. You do not take the kids. You do not leave without letting me write down everything you know about his core so if you die, we're not blind."
Kairn managed a ghost of a smile.
"You're very bossy," he said.
"That's my job," she said. "You want to go pull the nose of a monster that eats realities? That's yours. We both get to be good at something."
He sobered.
"You're… okay with this?" he asked.
"No," she said. "I hate it. I hate that this is on my map now. I hate that my hall is tied by one stone to a fight that spans skies. I hate that if you succeed, the world will break in ways we can't predict. I hate that if you fail, it might break worse. But I like my roads. I like my forests. I like my people. I like the idea that somewhere, there might be other halls that never got the chance to tell him 'no' because he ate them too fast."
Her eyes met his.
"So we go," she said. "Because someone has to. And because you're here. And because I'd rather walk you to the door and throw rocks at your back than pretend the door isn't there."
Silence.
Then Fen said, very softly, "Well. That's settled then."
"Nothing is settled," Lysa said.
"Semantics," he replied.
Kairn looked at the line Cale had drawn off the page.
It wasn't a road anyone sane would mark.
It led into something too big, too bright, too hungry.
It led where all of this had begun.
It was also the only path that pointed toward an ending.
His heart beat once, slow and heavy.
"Yes," he said. "We go."
Not now.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
But soon.
The stakes had stopped being "this hall" a while ago.
This was the moment everyone in the room admitted it.
The Stone hummed.
Greenfold rustled distantly.
Somewhere beyond any map, a god felt a tug on a line he hadn't meant to expose and turned his attention, very slowly, toward the small, stubborn noise at the other end.