Malgrath moved on the world before they were ready.
They were two days from a position Omen had identified as the optimal approach to Arkenmere when the sky over the eastern horizon turned red. Not the orange of structural fires — this was deeper, brighter, a red that had no natural origin, the color of something being consumed from the inside.
The first stage of the World-Ender Gate's activation.
"He doesn't have the complete Core," Kael said. He was running full scans. "What's he doing?"
"A partial activation," Omen said, and the gravity in his voice was total. "Without the Engine bonded, the Gate cannot complete. But it can begin. And the beginning—" He paused. "He is drawing energy from the dark towers. Every tower he has built for five centuries. He is feeding them into the Gate like a battery system."
"To what end?"
"To demonstrate," Omen said. "To make everyone in Eldara understand what is coming. To force your hand." A pause. "He knows you have the complete Core. He knows what you will have to do to stop him. He is making the world watch so that you cannot wait, cannot plan, cannot find alternatives. He is taking away your time."
The red sky spread. Within an hour it had reached the western horizon. Across Eldara, the ambient magic wavered — mana-wells flickering, enchantments losing stability, the background hum of a world built on magical infrastructure going intermittent and wrong.
Through the long-range scanner, Kael could see the effects rippling outward from Arkenmere. Dark towers pulsing in synchrony. The Gate, even from this distance, visible on the scanner as a consuming vortex — not the gentle dormant presence he'd mapped two weeks ago but something fully awake, hungry, feeding.
"How long?" Lyra asked.
"To full activation, without the Engine? Three days, at this draw rate. The dark-tower network will be depleted and the Gate will stall." Omen paused. "The damage to Eldara's magical infrastructure will be catastrophic regardless. The stall is not a recovery. It is a pause before the same attempt, next time with the Engine."
"He's going to keep doing this until we come to him," Kael said.
"Yes."
"Or until he acquires the Core by force."
"Also yes."
Kael looked at the red sky and made the calculation. The world watching. No more time. No alternative route to the Voice — they had it. No alternative approach to the Gate — they'd mapped it. Omen's seventeen percent solution required full proximity, required the Gate to be active, required all three components.
Thirty-seven hours until optimal approach window. Twenty hours until the Gate's first-stage draw destabilized Ashenveil's ward-architecture beyond recovery. Fifteen cities in Malgrath's direct suppression radius, each one losing magical infrastructure by the hour.
He looked at Lyra. She was already looking back.
"I have a plan," he said.
"Of course you do," she said.
"You're not going to like all of it."
"I never like all of it."
He spread out the maps, pulled the Core's tactical schematics to full display, and started building.
The Core hummed against his sternum — warm, alive, certain. All three components in perfect alignment, the most powerful device ever made, waiting for the moment it was built for.
In the red sky above them, a shape moved between the clouds — too large for a bird, too still for a flying creature. Seraph Zero, doing aerial reconnaissance on corrupted dark-energy flight systems, mapping the terrain for Malgrath's ground forces.
But as it passed overhead, its trajectory shifted — just slightly, just barely — carrying it away from the camp's position. Not toward it.
Kael noticed. He always noticed.
"He's giving us time," he said quietly.
"I know," Lyra said. She was watching the shape in the sky. "Then let's not waste it."
They planned through the night while the sky burned red, and at dawn they began their final approach to Arkenmere.