The final moment, when it came, arrived not through force but through something closer to consensus — every bond in that clearing, every connection stretched taut across two hundred fighters and two distant children and one exhausted, determined Luna, aligning at once around a single, unified refusal to let the tear remain open any longer. It felt, Jasmine would later try to describe, less like winning a battle and more like an entire world finally exhaling a breath it had been holding for months, every witness to that moment somehow aware they had just seen something history would remember.

The Hollowing's shriek rose to a pitch that shattered ice on...