Emma screamed so loud that windows cracked across three dimensions.

She was still falling through the tear in reality when the family bond suddenly went cold. Not quiet. Not distant. Completely empty where Kael used to be.

"DADDY!"

The word ripped from her throat as golden light exploded from her body. The light was so bright that Shadow Emma, who had been reaching for her with dark claws, stumbled backward.

"What’s happening?" Shadow Emma hissed. "This isn’t possible!"

But Emma wasn’t listening. She was drowning in pain so deep it felt like someone had torn out half her heart.

The golden light around her started to change. It turned silver, then white, then something beyond color. Something that made the space between dimensions shake.

Emma stopped falling. She was floating now, held up by power she didn’t know she had.

"Daddy’s gone," she whispered. Tears ran down her face, but each tear turned to light before it could fall. "He’s really gone."

Through the family bond, she could feel her siblings’ shock and grief hitting them in waves. Jake howled so loudly that mountains cracked. Lily’s healing magic went wild, bringing dead flowers back to life for miles around her. Darian stopped running and fell to his knees in the snow.

Even her parents felt it. Deep underwater, Elara and Ronan’s wolf forms glowed with silver light as they realized their son was dead.

But Emma’s power was different from theirs. Bigger. Scarier.

"No, no, no," Shadow Emma said, backing away further. "You’re supposed to be weak without your family. You’re supposed to need them!"

Emma looked up at her shadow self. When she spoke, her voice echoed like thunder.

"I do need them. That’s why I’m going to bring him back."

She reached out with her new power, searching for any trace of Kael’s soul. What she found made her gasp.

He wasn’t completely gone.

Inside the Void that had swallowed him, Kael was still alive. But he was trapped with hundreds of other people, and they were all slowly being digested by the hungry darkness.

Worse, Emma could see what Shadow Emma’s real plan was. Every person the Void swallowed made Shadow Emma stronger. She was feeding off their trapped souls, using their life force to take over the real Emma’s body.

"You killed my daddy to steal my life," Emma said. Her power flared brighter. "That was a really bad idea."

"I didn’t kill him!" Shadow Emma snapped. "He chose to sacrifice himself. I just used his stupidity to my advantage."

"Same thing."

Emma raised her hand and something impossible happened. She reached across dimensions and grabbed the Void that had swallowed Kael.

It felt like holding a giant ball of angry, hungry darkness. The Void writhed in her grip, trying to escape.

"Let go of me!" the Void screamed with a thousand voices - all the people trapped inside it.

But Emma could hear one voice above all the others. Kael’s voice.

"Emma? How are you doing this?"

"I don’t know, Daddy. But I’m getting you out."

She squeezed the Void in her mental grip. It was like trying to crush a balloon full of poison, but slowly, she began to tear holes in its surface.

Light poured through the cracks.

One by one, the trapped souls started to escape. The daycare teacher Emma had never met. The mother who had begged Kael to save her baby. Random people from Portland who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They floated out of the Void like glowing butterflies, their souls finally free.

But Kael’s soul was stuck deeper inside. The Void had wrapped extra darkness around him because his sacrifice had fed it so much power.

"I can’t reach him," Emma said through gritted teeth. The effort of holding the Void was making her nose bleed.

That’s when she heard teenage Marcus’s voice again, but this time it was coming from inside her own mind.

"Emma, listen to me. The only way to free Dad is to trade places with him."

"What?"

"Someone has to stay inside the Void to keep it from collapsing completely. If it collapses while people are still escaping, they’ll be lost forever."

Emma’s heart sank. "So I have to sacrifice myself too?"

"No," Marcus said gently. "You have to trust me. I’m already inside the biggest piece of Void, remember? Fighting the Devourer. If you can connect all the Void pieces together, I can control them from the inside. But only for a few minutes."

"What happens to you after a few minutes?"

Marcus was quiet for too long.

"Marcus, what happens to you?"

"It doesn’t matter. Just do it, little sister. Save Dad."

Emma wiped the blood from her nose. She looked at Shadow Emma, who was watching everything with growing panic.

"You want to know what makes me different from you?" Emma asked her shadow.

"What?"

"You only care about yourself. I care about everyone."

Emma spread her arms wide and reached out with her power, not just to the Void holding Kael, but to all seven original Void pieces scattered across dimensions.

She felt Jake’s piece in the mountains. Lily’s piece near the city. The pieces her parents were fighting underwater. Darian’s piece in the frozen wasteland. The pieces being fought by the dragon and the witches.

And she connected them all.

The space between dimensions lit up like a Christmas tree as streams of white light linked every Void piece across multiple worlds.

"Now, Marcus!" Emma shouted.

Suddenly, all the Void pieces stopped moving. Stopped eating. Stopped growing.

Marcus’s voice echoed from inside all of them at once: "Everyone out! You have two minutes before I can’t hold them anymore!"

Chaos erupted across seven dimensions as everyone trapped inside the Voids began to escape.

Emma felt her family’s confusion through the bond as people they’d been fighting to save suddenly started pouring out of the darkness like water from a broken dam.

But she only had eyes for one person.

Kael’s soul finally broke free from the deepest part of his Void prison. He looked confused and translucent, like a ghost.

"Emma? What did you do?"

"I saved you, Daddy." She was crying again, but these were happy tears. "I saved everyone."

"But the cost-"

"EMMA, LOOK OUT!"

Shadow Emma had been waiting for exactly this moment. While Emma was distracted with the rescue, her shadow self lunged forward with claws made of pure darkness.

Emma spun around, but she was too tired from connecting all the Voids. Her new power flickered and went out.

Shadow Emma’s claws sliced through the air toward Emma’s heart.

But instead of hitting Emma, they hit Kael.

He had thrown his ghostly body between them, taking the blow meant for his daughter.

"DADDY, NO!"

This time, when Kael’s soul started to dissolve, Emma felt something snap inside her mind.

The space between dimensions went completely silent.

Then Emma opened her eyes, and they weren’t brown anymore.

They were silver. And when she looked at Shadow Emma, her shadow self burst into flames.

"You hurt my daddy twice," Emma said in a voice that didn’t sound twelve years old anymore. "Now you die forever."

But as Shadow Emma screamed and burned, she laughed.

"Too late! While you were playing hero, I already planted pieces of myself in all your family members. When they use their powers to fight the remaining Void pieces, I’ll take them over one by one!"

Emma felt it then - tiny seeds of shadow corruption in Jake, Lily, Darian, even her parents.

Shadow Emma hadn’t just been trying to take over her body.

She had been planning to possess her entire family.

And now, with Emma’s power exhausted from the rescue, there was no way to stop it from happening.