The air smelled like smoke and stardust.

Ra's breathing was shallow, her skin slick with sweat, blood, and the high-frequency sting of dark plasma still ricocheting through the ruins of the command outpost. The fractured stars overhead blinked in and out behind cracked glass as she staggered forward, knees weak.

"Don't move," Tyler barked through gritted teeth.

But she did. Of course, she did. She always did.

From behind the fallen steel beams, a rogue Void Wraith reared back, black talons glinting with poisonous intent.

Tyler didn’t think.

He moved.

Time warped. A gunshot sliced the atmosphere, fracturing it like glass, and in a single, devastating moment, he was in front of her, arms wide.

The plasma bolt meant for Ra slammed into his side.

Her scream fractured galaxies.

"TYLER!"

He collapsed into her arms, electric blue eyes still glowing like binary fire.

"You stubborn... brilliant... idiot," she whispered, holding him to her chest, her heart crashing like a tsunami against her ribs.

He chuckled, blood bubbling from his lips. "Yeah, but I got you... didn't I?"

Her fingers trembled as she cradled his face, the sorcery woven into his DNA sparking like a dying constellation. "You always do. And it's killing me."

He pulled her closer, breath ragged. His lips hovered just a breath away from hers. “Don’t let me die without kissing you.”

She didn’t.

The kiss was molten, seismic, the kind that destroyed timelines and rewrote destinies. She poured every ounce of her heart into it, every buried feeling, every memory of him saving her, teasing her, bleeding for her, being the only one who saw her—not as the Envoy, not as the weapon, but as Ra.

From behind a crumbling wall, Erik froze.

He’d just ripped the throat from an interdimensional parasite with his bare teeth. His jaw was still bloodstained, his mind still humming from the kill. But that kiss?

That gutted him.

The woman he would have died for, kissing the man who already had.

His fists clenched.

Era, the Commander, stepped beside him, hand pressed to her bleeding shoulder. She gave him a long look. "You okay?"

Erik didn’t answer.

He just nodded and walked off, vanishing into the smoke, dragging his heartbreak like chains behind him.