Chapter Seven. Three-Step Plan

Walden and Marshal Kenning enter the critical incursion enveloping School House, effectively stepping into an overlap with the demonic plane. Kenning erects a precise, multilayered shield while Walden assesses the warped interior and suppresses her impulse to quarrel. They find Will Daubery unconscious in the kitchen—and a seventh-order archdemon manifest, its oppressive aura battering the space.

Kenning takes point against the archdemon, casting through movement and brief syllables, turning ambient demonic power into traps and force. Walden shields and checks Will, noting a head injury from the table rather than the demon and that the entity is poised between possession and predation.

When the archdemon disarms Kenning, she shifts seamlessly to fighting barehanded and with kicks, channeling light into strikes. She breaks the demon’s hold on physicality and pulverizes its exposed core, dispersing it to mist. Walden, impressed, levitates Will and prepares extraction.

At the blocked threshold, Walden forgoes summoning and wrenches open a planar portal herself. Kenning urges a retreat, warning there’s no time to save Nikki and Mathias. Walden refuses, accepts blame, and commits to reaching the tower. She apologizes to Kenning, shoves her and Will through the portal with a wind spell, and lets it snap shut.

Alone amid thickening shadow and wild magic, Walden registers no sign of Old Faithful and infers the entity is focused elsewhere. Choosing belief in Nikki and Mathias’s survival, Walden turns deeper into the incursion and heads for the tower.