Twenty Eight
Rain falls sideways, needling every exposed patch of skin, but I barely feel it.
My face is pressed into Kael’s shirt, the cloth soaked and filthy but warm enough that I can’t make myself care.
His arm is clamped across my ribs, not gentle, just there, and I let myself lean into the pressure. It’s the only thing keeping me upright.
Sixteen.
The death counter is still burning in the sky, brighter than ever through the storm. The number doesn’t move, and I’ve stared at it so long my eyelids are burning.
Kael is shaking, but not from the cold or from fear. He laughs, short and breathless, like he doesn’t know how to stop. Every time I shift in his hold, he pulls me closer, as though he expects me to vanish if he doesn’t.
The beach feels empty—no bodies, no evidence, just the pitted sand where the Overseers’ feet never touched.
In the distance the Shard seems to lean a little to one side.
I must be imagining it. The crack throbs with the pulse of the Mother Shard.
She still weeps. I can hear it under the thunder, a broken whimpering that doesn’t belong to any human.
Kael wipes blood from his jaw with the back of his hand.
His fingers come away slick, the rain doing nothing to clean them.
He catches me watching and tries to hide it, but his hands won’t stop trembling.
He stares at the tower, as if he can see through the layers of crystal and rain, all the way to the Embrace.
“Do you think we’re going to die?” I ask, but I don’t want an answer.
He grins, all teeth and no comfort. “Maybe we’re already dead.”
He tips his head up to the sky. Rain beads in the hollows of his cheeks and on his lips. “You made her cry,” he says, quiet.
He says it with reverence, but there’s a bitter edge, like maybe he hoped it would be him.
I look down at my hands. They’re raw and bloody, the skin under my fingernails black with grit and sand. I want to feel proud, but all I feel is the relentless ache of having lost too much.
“Why did you come back?” I ask.
His face goes still, and he blinks, like he doesn’t remember making the choice. “I only gave you space to fight, little rabbit,” he says. “I was always coming back for you.”
His voice cracks on the last word. He tries to laugh, but it comes out wrong.
I want to touch him, to prove he is real, but my hands feel like they might break.
We sit in the rain until the world slows down, and the death counter above us dims just a little, as if it’s watching too.
The Mother Shard’s weeping quiets, becoming a tremor instead.
Lightning splits the sky and the colours in the tower shift, slowly bleeding from white-pink to deep violet. Inside, there is a woman-shaped blur, impossibly tall, her head tipped back as if howling, her outline pulsing.
Kael turns to face me, inches away. His hair is wet and plastered to his skull, shadow leaking from his eyelashes. He cups my chin in his hand, thumb careful along the line of my jaw.
He studies my face, the cuts and burns that won’t heal, the blood crusting at the corners of my mouth. He doesn’t say a word, just watches me with those black eyes, searching for proof I’m not a dream.
His hand slides down to my collarbone, past Atheron’s burning handprint, and finds the place where the Overseer’s fingers left marks. He winces for me.
“What are you?” he whispers, like it’s a joke only we share, but it isn’t.
I laugh, but the sound is brittle. “I don’t know,” I say. “Something that shouldn’t be touched.”
He laughs, for real this time. “That’s never stopped me.”
He pulls me close, pressing our foreheads together, and I let myself collapse into him, letting his body take my weight. His chest shudders with every breath, but it doesn’t feel like fear. It feels like victory. Or something near enough.
Above us, the death counter flickers, then steadies. The light from the crystal tower deepens.
Kael’s voice is muffled against my skin. “Don’t leave me.”
I close my eyes. “I’m still here.”
The storm picks up again, lightning arcing across the sky, not white but the deep purple of bruises blooming under the skin. The beach is alive with afterimages, and the air turns sharp as the hairs on my arms stand on end.
The sand in front of us bubbles and liquefies.
Not in a physical way, but in a way that feels wrong.
An absence forms, a blur my eyes refuse to focus on.
The air warps, the rain stuttering around the effect.
A presence gathers, not a shape but the implication of one.
It stands just a few metres away, flickering in and out of existence.
Every time it returns, it has a new size, a new configuration of limbs and face.
The storm recoils from it. Even the death counter dims in response.
Kael shoves me behind him, using his own body as a shield. I don’t think it will matter.
The thing turns its head, and for a moment I see a woman. Then a man. Then a child. Then all three at once.
My eyes refuse the sight.
The world around it cannot decide what shape it should be.
It laughs, but the sound is not a sound. It is the memory of one, like hearing your own laugh through a locked door.
“The winners,” it says, or at least that’s the closest translation my brain can manage. The words overlap, coming from every angle at once.
Kael stands his ground. “Who are you?”
The thing makes a motion like a shrug, and the movement sends a pulse through the air. The beach ripples in a line toward the sea, every droplet of rain bending inwards, pulled by gravity that doesn’t belong to this world.
It holds up a hand—five fingers, then seven, then none at all—and pinches the air. The death counter above us compresses between its fingers, shrinking from a blazing beacon to a red spark, then to nothing at all.
“There will be a cost,” the thing says, the words rattling my bones.
Kael glances at me. I can feel his questions, and I don't have any answers.
My fear is still there. It just isn't enough to stop me anymore. I step out from behind him as the thing watches, all of its attention fixed on me.
"What cost?" I ask.
The thing only smiles.
My stomach twists. Whatever it is, I already know the answer. "I'll pay it."
The thing laughs again, the noise bleeding into the sound of the storm. It points towards the crystal tower. Towards the sleeping figure suspended within. Then it points at me.
“Witness,” it says. “See what you have wrought.”
Fear coils through me, cold as a ghost.
I force my eyes open. I don’t blink.
Beside me, Kael reaches for my hand, and I hold on.
I will not look away.
Lightning stitches the clouds, carving the sky into shreds, and for a heartbeat the world holds still. The thing shivers in and out of existence.
Kael keeps his body slightly in front of mine, jaw set, hands up, even though he can’t seem to steady the shaking. I’m not sure if it’s rage or terror.
I look at the figure and, faced with the unknowable, repeat Kael’s question. “Who are you?”
I don’t expect an answer. Kael doesn’t even blink.
It laughs, its face blurring through a dozen iterations, each one worse than the last. Its voice comes out as a child’s.
“Not Mother. Not Father. Not Crown. Not Vein. Not God.”
It raises a hand, the shape shifting and warping as if proving its immateriality. “I am the edge between things,” it says.
The rain stops falling. Each droplet hangs, then slides away, refusing to obey.
“You may call me Ruin.”
The name shouldn’t mean anything, but somehow, it does. Not a thing, then. Not exactly. They smile with a face that cannot decide how to be.
Kael’s shoulders stiffen. He lets a shadow rise—not his precise threads, but a knife, jagged and hungry, extending from his fist. He hurls it at Ruin in a blur, the movement so fast I don’t register it until the blade is mid-flight.
Ruin catches it between two fingers. The shadows liquefy, running up their arm, and are gone. Not even a trace left on the air.
Ruin tilts their head, almost amused. “Not as you are now, Shadow.”
Kael stiffens. "What does that mean?"
Ruin ignores him.
Something in him folds as Ruin looks past him, at me.
“Do you want to know your place?” they say.
I don’t, but I nod anyway.
Ruin steps closer. Their legs don’t move right, joints bending forward, backwards, then correcting. Their eyes—when they have eyes—are never the same colour or shape.
"My sister orders."
Ruin points toward the tower. "My brother creates."
The sea crashes harder against the shore as Ruin smiles. "And I... transform."
They snap their fingers, and the death counter above reappears. The number runs backwards and forwards, settling at two before ticking down to one, then zero.
“With them sleeping, my time has come.”
I glance at the tower. The figure within is cocooned in its own limbs, eyes closed, resting.
A horrible thought occurs to me.
What if the Blood Rites were never feeding the world?
What if they were feeding her?
Keeping something else asleep?
I look at Kael, and he is staring at Ruin, face drawn, but there’s something else there—recognition, maybe. The way one predator recognises another.
I can’t think. All I can do is watch as Ruin lifts their hand, fingers spreading.
It doesn’t hurt. But something in me tears free. It’s not pain. Almost the opposite. My chest goes cold, then lighter, like I’ve shrugged off a burden I didn’t know I was carrying.
I look down and see Kael and me standing on the sand, but we’re not touching the world anymore. The beach is a memory, the air thin and fragile, like gossamer overlaying the real world.
I want to scream, but no sound comes out.
Kael is with me, just behind, his face a mask of panic. Ruin’s face flickers through a thousand expressions. None of them look at us.
We’re not dead, but we’re not alive either. We’re somewhere between. The rain continues to fall, but it slides straight through our skin.
On the edge of hearing, I catch Ruin’s laughter, and the distant crash of waves.
This storm is not for us anymore.