Saleos’s face went rigid.
For a long moment, he did not speak. His eyes moved from one rune to the next, tracing their shapes again and again, as if he were waiting for them to change into something else if he stared long enough.
"...Infiltration runes," he said at last. "Anchors."
"Yes," I replied.
I did not add anything more. The truth was, I did not fully understand their deeper function either. I only knew what I had seen and felt. These runes were not normal runes. They were gateways of a sort. Not open portals, but seeds. Seeds that could be used to form pathways, to allow Phantoms to arrive, or for something far worse to reach through from the other side when the conditions were right.
Saleos’s fists clenched slowly at his sides.
"These don’t get implanted by accident," he said, his voice turning colder. "Only Eternals have the ability to create and implant something like this."
That sentence surprised me.
Only Eternals.
For a brief moment, my thoughts raced. I looked at the floating runes again, extending my perception, scanning every line and curve. Even with my grasp over space and my experience creating portals and pocket spaces, I could not understand how these had been embedded inside living bodies so cleanly, so deeply, without tearing them apart. What I did was crude in comparison. This was precise. Intimate. Invasive in a way that felt wrong.
"So... he met with that Eternal?" I asked.
Saleos took a slow breath, and his expression settled back into a controlled calm.
"Most likely," he said. "But I don’t understand when it could have happened."
That uncertainty made me pause as well. For nearly a thousand demons to be implanted with these runes, there had to be a method. A system. A way for contact to happen without raising alarms. That thought unsettled me more than the runes themselves.
"Now that I think about it," Saleos continued, his voice low, "many things are starting to make sense. This explains how they ambushed Rael so cleanly." He turned his gaze toward me. "How many such individuals have you noticed?"
"973," I answered.
Saleos closed his eyes for a brief moment, then let out a long, controlled exhale.
"I understand," he said. When he opened his eyes again, there was no hesitation left in them. "I’m ready to work with you. Not as a silent observer. I want active participation in this plan."
He straightened slightly.
"I will trust you," he continued. "But to cement that trust, I want the identities of all 973. And I want to meet every group within your organization."
He paused, then added in a quieter, sharper tone, "Dravon told me you want to make your name known through this rift. I will help you do that."
His gaze hardened.
"But in return, I want my revenge."
I let out a slow breath and allowed a small smile to form as I stepped forward and extended my hand.
"Then I look forward to working with you, Commander Saleos."
For a moment, he studied my hand as if weighing the decision one last time. Then he nodded and took it. His grip was firm, controlled, and heavy with intent.
******* [Saleos’s PoV] *******
I closed my fingers around his hand, and in that moment, the world seemed to recede.
The distant roar of the battlefield softened, the constant pressure of the rift faded into something far away, and even the weight of command loosened its grip on my thoughts. What filled the space instead was memory, sharp and unwelcome.
The first face that rose before me was my son’s.
He had been young. Too young. He had wanted to prove himself, eager to stand beside demons far older and stronger than him. I had not stopped him. I had told myself that this war demanded sacrifice, that courage was something to be respected. He had died in the early years of the rift, back when we still believed determination and numbers could force the Eternals back.
Then my brother followed. Cut down during a retreat that should have saved him. A miscalculation. A delayed order. A moment where the laws around us twisted without warning, and he was gone before I could even reach him.
After that came my friend. Someone who had fought beside me for decades, someone whose presence had been as constant as the rift itself. He vanished when the Eternal had intervened and the battlefield turned hostile in an instant, erasing him so completely that there was nothing left to recover.
Too many names.
Too many losses.
I had buried all of them beneath duty.
I had stayed. I had followed orders. I had held the line while watching the same cycle repeat itself over and over again. We pushed forward, lost people, pulled back, and called it balance. We called it a stalemate, as if giving it a name made it acceptable.
And then this human had appeared.
I did not trust him. I knew that much with certainty.
But I also could not ignore what I had experienced.
During the kidnapping, there had been a moment, a single, terrifying moment where my body had not responded to my will. I had not been overpowered. I had not been crushed by raw strength.
I had been controlled.
Time, space, movement, all of it had locked around me without a domain being released. That alone defied everything I knew. That alone marked him as something dangerous.
Then there were the runes.
I had seen Saints struggle just to identify infiltration anchors properly, let alone remove them without catastrophic consequences. And yet this human had found them inside my commander and torn them out as if removing rot from flesh. Cleanly. Precisely. Without hesitation.
But more than any of that, it was his presence that unsettled me.
Every instinct I possessed had screamed the same warning while standing in front of Billion Ironhart. He was restrained. He was choosing not to kill. And if that restraint ever disappeared, what remained would not be something we could contain.
That truth settled heavily in my chest.
I did not shake his hand because I trusted him.
I shook it because, for the first time in decades, someone stood before me who might actually change the outcome of this rift. Someone who could either shatter the Eternal’s grip on this rift or burn everything down in the attempt.
And if there was even a chance that this gamble could erase the Eternal, destroy the tower, and finally end this rift, then I was willing to take it.
Even if it destroyed me.
Even if this human turned out to be more dangerous than the enemy we were fighting.
At least then, the stalemate would end.
And after everything I had lost, that alone was worth the risk.