[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 96: In Which We Skip the Boring Parts

Six rifts in thirty hours.

We didn’t sleep. Ryota’s team lost two more hunters whose names I’d stopped learning after the third death because apparently my brain had decided that was the emotional cutoff point for new grief. The rest was a blur of portals and enforcers and anchor points that fought back harder each time.

It’s done now. Forty-nine rifts closed. Reality didn’t end.

Yet.

We were standing in what remained of the safehouse common area, which had seen better days. The map projection was still running, showing all forty-nine rift locations now marked as SEALED in pulsing green. Mara had been staring at it for the past ten minutes like she couldn’t quite believe it was real.

Coalition forces were assembled around us: Ryota and his Tokyo team looking like they’d aged a decade in two days, Mara with her ever-present scanner, Henrik who’d stopped trying to look calm about three crises ago, Kelvin lounging against the wall because apparently nothing made him tense, Serra and Kade checking weapons with the kind of focus that suggested they absolutely expected to use them soon.

Ten coalition hunters from various cells stood in a loose group, all of them exhausted but still standing. Seoul cell, Berlin cell, one from São Paulo who’d lost three teammates and kept showing up anyway.

The silence in the room was heavy, the kind that comes after you’ve been running on adrenaline for days and suddenly there’s nothing left to do but the one thing you’ve been building toward.

"Six rifts in thirty hours and now we’re supposed to walk through a door made by cosmic entities who’ve been playing puppet master with our lives," I said. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"Everything," Azryth said.

"That was rhetorical."

"I’m being accurate."

Mara cleared her throat from across the room. "If you two are done, the coalition is waiting."

I looked at the space where the portal would open. Nothing there yet, just air and possibility and the growing certainty that whatever happened next would be terrible.

"Let’s get this over with," I said.

Azryth’s hand found mine. "...When this is done—"

"We’re not doing the ’after this is over’ conversation," I said. "That’s how people die in badly written stories."

"This isn’t a story."

"It feels like one, with terrible pacing, escalating stakes, and the protagonists about to do something phenomenally stupid."

"You’re not the protagonist."

"Neither are you."

We both reached for the binding simultaneously.

The key activated like it had dozens of times before, golden-amber light blazing between us as the portal tore open. Same colors as our bond, same controlled precision, same ten-foot vertical shimmer we’d been using to hop between continents for weeks.

Difference was, this time I couldn’t see the destination through it. Just light and power and the assumption the arbiters weren’t about to dump us somewhere terrible.

Which, given their track record, felt optimistic.

"I can’t see through the portal this time," I said.

"Neither can I," Azryth confirmed.

Through the binding I felt his wariness mixing with mine. Every other portal we’d opened had shown the destination clearly, let us assess what we were walking into before committing. This one was just light and faith and the arbiters’ promise that it led to Veyrith’s throne room.

"That’s not concerning at all," I muttered.

"What, that’s it?" Mara asked, already scanning with three different devices. "Portal to another dimension just.. opens?"

"Apparently the arbiters don’t do instruction manuals," I said.

"Portal is stable," Mara confirmed, reading her scanner with the intensity of someone who really wanted the numbers to make sense. "Destination signature matches infernal realm energy but I can’t get more specific than that. Could be the throne room, could be a lava pit, could be Veyrith’s bathroom for all I know."

"If we end up in his bathroom I’m going to be very disappointed in cosmic entities," I said.

Ryota moved to stand beside us, blade already unsheathed in his hand. His team flanked him immediately, practiced and coordinated. "We go in at once, stay close and watch each other’s backs."

"And if it’s not the throne room?" one of the Seoul hunters asked.

"Then we fight our way in," Ryota said simply, like that was just standard operating procedure. Which, after the past two days, it kind of was.

Kelvin pushed off the wall, grinning like this was the most fun he’d had in weeks. "I’ve been waiting for this. Let’s go kill a fake demon lord."

"You’re not killing him," Azryth said, his voice calm but carrying an edge that suggested this wasn’t negotiable. "I am."

"I’ll help," I offered.

"You’ll close the nexus."

"I can multitask."

"Riven."

"Fine, you kill him, I’ll handle the cosmic horror. Fair division of labor."

Azryth looked at me, something complicated crossing his expression. Not worry exactly, but adjacent to it. Five hundred years he’d been planning to reclaim his throne from Veyrith, and now we were about to walk through a door into his brother’s territory with a coalition of exhausted hunters and the vague hope that cosmic entities hadn’t lied to us.

"Let’s be careful, alright?" he said quietly.

The fact that he was asking me to be careful, that he was worried despite everything we’d survived, made something in my chest tighten.

"Alright," I said.

We stepped toward the portal together.

The light was almost blinding up close, but I could feel the destination pulling at me through the binding. Somewhere on the other side, Veyrith was waiting. The nexus was pulsing. Reality was holding its breath and hoping we didn’t screw this up.

No pressure.

I looked back at the coalition assembled behind us, people who’d fought beside us for days that felt like months, who’d lost friends and kept going, who’d chosen to follow us into the infernal realm against a demon lord and a cosmic entity because apparently that was just what we did now.

Ryota met my eyes and nodded once, sharp and certain.

Mara gave me a look that clearly said "don’t die stupidly."

Henrik was double-checking something on his tablet because of course he was.

Kelvin’s grin hadn’t faltered.

Serra and Kade stood ready, weapons manifested, both of them looking like they’d been waiting their entire lives for this specific moment.

The ten coalition hunters from various cells stood in formation, exhausted but determined, every one of them here by choice.

"Are you ready?" Azryth asked quietly.

"No," I said honestly. "But I’m going anyway."

His hand tightened on mine.

We stepped through the portal.

The transition was smooth, almost gentle. One moment standing in the safehouse with the coalition behind us, the next stepping into light and heat and the certainty that whatever came next would change everything.

The coalition followed.

And reality held its breath.