“Guard your soul,” she whispers, ghosting through the smoke and rubble, voice trembling. She doesn’t pray, not for gods. She prays for love. For us. Then she fires. Magic thrums through the bullet—her sorrow, her rage, her hope.
Time fractures. Glass-sword meets bone-wound meets spitting bullet. I hear the high scream of metal against skull, the wet thud that means final. My lungs go slack. I’m suspended in black ache.
Laertiez collapses, shoulders buckling to stone. His armor clinks mute against the shattered ground. The battlefield – its gasps, its smoke, its clamoring horror – fades into silence as the magic in that bullet burns him from the inside out.
Skeela steps forward—bare hands slick with fresh blood—and hammers her blade through his throat. One, final whisper of steel. He gurgles. He’s dead. I don’t hear the smack. I feel the shudder of his collapse against my broken ribs, through my heart. And then the quiet falls like snow.
It’s not peace. It’s… something else.
Silence.
The knights of the night deploy wings, claws, scaled bodies, all shifting and tense. I’m still standing—or crouching—as the city’s heartbeat fades behind us. The fires sputter, reflect in battle-worn eyes.
I feel River’s hand on my bloody chest—cold against the ichor and iron. She gasps. I taste salt, sweat, and the taste of victory that almost doesn’t feel like one.
Skeela stands proud and savage, eyes glinting like war played in tight gold. She reaches out, voice low, fierce. “Together.”
Her knife still hovers over Laertiez's body—a slash of finality marking a wound that won’t heal.
We all feel the gravity. The city trembles. The dead hush their wails inside stone walls. Silence settles over Kyrdonis the way breath might settle on a grave.
My chest is open. My lungs ache. My heart roars. The world shudders.
But I’m alive.
I don’t know how I arrive at soil, only that I’m—somehow—cupped by Earth’s cold face, boots sinking into ash and broken stone. The world spins with every heartbeat; the taste of victory is bitter, metallic, and heavy. My blood blooms between River’s fingers, black-red and warm, painting her hands the color of twilight.
“Stay with me,” she cries, voice ragged and soaked with tears. I want to tell her I don’t plan on leaving her—not ever—but the words drown in wet lungs.
I feel her weight. She collapses on me, arms wrapped around my bleeding chest, dress torn, smeared with soot and freshly flowing ichor. She presses with desperate fingers, light as petals, hoping to staunch a storm from spilling. I don’t deserve this gentleness, but I take it anyway.
“Don’t die,” River whispers, forehead pressed against my shoulder, voice cracked. “I can’t lose you.”
I choke on blood, black and scent-rich. But I smirk—pain etched deep in every line. I cup her face with one trembling hand, fingertips cool and trembling on her cheek.
“Still think I’m not gonna eat you?” I rasp, voice rough as gravel and filled with heat.
She blinks, stunned, then laughter breaks from her—fractured but honest, leaking through sobs. It fills the battlefield air, a fragile defiance against the collapsing world.
I close my eyes, breath ragged. I taste her salty tears. I hear her heartbeat, steady in the ribs. The forest seems to exhale around us, as if holding its breath too.
And then—darkness finds me. My hand falls from her cheek. My body curls inwards. One last gasp, and I pass out.
I don’t knowhow long I’m in blackness.
When I come back, I’m barely here—skin like alchemy, chest tight, mind fractured. River’s voice crackles over me, urgent and broken.
“Shh—just wake. Please.”
Air is fire in my lungs. Everything around me tastes like spent gunpowder and woodsmoke turned atonement. I open one eye. River is above me, her eyes red and shining, hands trembling as they press cloth to my wound.
I want to mouth the words—I love you, I'm still here, just come home—but instead a groan escapes, wet and ragged.
“Finally,” she hisses, smiling through tears.
The monsters form a ring of quiet vigil—Harriet’s heads drooped, Bruce dozing, Veeto pacing with something like tears in his eyes, Charen flitting dead air. They’re tattered, bleeding, but damned proud.
The battlefield around us is a skeleton of history, fires guttering like old regrets. But the living around me... I let myself feel it.
