Nobody spoke.
Draven was on the ground and nobody spoke.
Lyra didn't scream. Didn't cry. She just stood staring at the body with wide open eyes, as if her mind had refused to process what her eyes had already seen. The staff slipped from her fingers and struck the marble. The sound was small. Ridiculously small for what had just happened.
Zareth took a step forward.
He stopped.
Not because anyone stopped him. He stopped because his feet ceased to obey. Because Draven was on the ground and that was impossible. Draven didn't fall. Draven was the one who got up when everyone else had already given up. He was the one who smiled with a broken jaw. He was the one who cracked a joke while the world burned around him.
Draven didn't fall.
But he was on the ground.
Aria drew the bow without thinking. Her fingers found the string on their own, from memory, because it was the only thing her body knew how to do when everything else collapsed. Kára raised Kazak'Thur. The hammer felt heavier than ever. Varkas clenched his jaw against the wall. His ribs burned with every breath. Darian tried to move and his leg gave out beneath him.
Aelthas wasn't looking at them.
He was looking at the scythe.
The black blade had absorbed Draven's blood without a trace. Aelthas studied it for a moment. Then he raised his eyes toward the group.
He said nothing.
He began to walk.
Zareth charged first.
Daggers in hand, body moving before the mind. The blue trail carried him straight to Aelthas's flank. He appeared to his right with the blades aimed at the neck and the side, two simultaneous lines of attack, precise, the kind of entry that left no time to block both at once.
The scythe turned.
A single flick of the wrist. Clean. Effortless.
Both daggers were deflected as if they had struck stone. Zareth felt the impact in his arms all the way to the shoulder and jumped back before the edge could reach him. He landed three meters away. His hands were shaking.
Aelthas hadn't even broken his stride.
Aria released three arrows in quick succession. Different trajectories, calculated angles, the third charged with wind magic, curved, coming from the blind flank where no eye could anticipate it.
The scythe rose.
All three arrows dissolved on contact with the blade. It didn't deflect them. It erased them. The wind magic scattered like smoke, the metal tips fell to the floor without force, the shafts splintered.
Kára drove Kazak'Thur into the ground.
The hammer's runes burned blue. An arc of lightning roared across the marble, wide, impossible to dodge by speed alone. Kára had seen it split stone, carbonize metal, bring down walls.
Aelthas stepped aside.
The arc passed beneath his feet and exploded against the column behind him. Stone and sparks. The echo of the impact filled the hall.
Kára gritted her teeth and raised the hammer again. Her legs were shaking. The mana burned in her chest like embers.
Aelthas kept walking.
Toward Lyra.
—We can't stop him, —said Lumine in Darian's mind.
Her voice was still calm. No fear. No doubt. Only a truth Darian already knew.
—Not yet, —Nox corrected.
The dark voice sounded lower than usual.
Darian gritted his teeth.
—Then what do we do?
There was a brief silence.
—You endure, —said Lumine.
—And you survive, —Nox added.
—Because if you fall now, everyone who died here will have died for nothing.
Darian gripped the long sword's hilt with his right hand. The short sword in his left. Both blades still, without pulse, without light. He tried to stand. His leg screamed. His side too.
He stood.
He lasted three steps.
His leg gave and he went back down. His palms struck the marble. He breathed once, twice. The room was spinning.
Lyra looked at him from where she was.
Her eyes found his for an instant.
She said nothing. She didn't ask for help. She just looked at him, and in that look there was something Darian didn't know how to hold.
Aelthas was already beside her.
First cut.
The scythe moved in a short stroke. The blade opened Lyra's shoulder, deeper than it looked from a distance. Lyra let out a smothered sound and brought her hand to the wound. Blood soaked her fingers.
On the black edge, something glowed. A dark pulse. Brief. Like a heart beating inside the metal.
First mark.
Aelthas watched her lower her blood-red hand. He studied her for a moment, as if weighing something. Then he turned his eyes to Zareth, who was already coming.
—Look at her, —said Aelthas.
Just that.
Zareth stopped for an instant without meaning to, his eyes going to Lyra by reflex. The blood. The trembling hand. The marks he didn't yet understand but that had already put his stomach on the floor.
That instant cost him dearly.
Aelthas didn't strike him. He simply waited. And when Zareth arrived with the daggers, the movement of the scythe was so precise, so inevitable, that Zareth's blades passed through where Aelthas no longer was. The butt of the scythe hit him in the side with a dry crack. The air left Zareth's lungs all at once. He staggered. Aelthas pushed him with one hand and the prince collided with a column, sliding down to the floor with his hand pressed to his chest.
Kára stepped in the way. Kazak'Thur raised. Runes lit.
—You have to go through me.
Aelthas went through her.
He didn't strike her. He tore the hammer from her hands with a pull that dragged her forward, sent her to her knees, and hurled it against the wall on the other side of the hall. The crash rang through the stone. Kára tried to stand. Palms on the floor. Head down. Her body with nothing left to give.
She stayed like that.
Second cut.
Lyra tried to drag herself toward the staff. Her fingers grazed it. Aelthas stepped on it and slid it out of reach without even looking at her. Then he looked at her.
He raised the scythe.
—No, —said Lyra.
Her voice wasn't a plea. It was all she had left.
The blade opened her side. Deep. Lyra screamed. Not the small sound from before. A real scream, short, cut off when she clenched her teeth and folded her body over itself. Her hand went to the wound. Blood ran between her fingers, dark, thicker than the first time.
The scythe absorbed it.
Second mark.
The pulse in the blade beat twice. Stronger.
Lyra was breathing with difficulty. Each breath cost her. She pressed one trembling arm against the floor, trying to stay upright, trying not to collapse entirely. Her eyes found Zareth.
Zareth was on his feet. His broken hand against his chest. He had only one dagger left. He moved forward.
Aelthas turned the scythe in his hand, slowly, without urgency.
—Again, —he said.
Not a question. Almost an invitation.
Zareth attacked. The dagger went for the throat. Aelthas deflected it with the shaft. Zareth turned and attacked from the side. Aelthas stepped back and the blade passed within centimeters. Zareth attacked again. And again. And again. Each blow more desperate, more open, further from the precision with which he had always fought.
Aelthas caught Zareth's wrist.
He squeezed.
The bone of the good hand cracked. Zareth dropped the dagger. Aelthas held him like that, by the arm, looking into his eyes from close.
—You have nothing left, —he said.
He let go. Zareth dropped to his knees.
Third cut.
Lyra saw it coming. This time she saw it coming and couldn't do anything. The scythe opened her thigh with a long, deliberate stroke that was slower than the ones before. As if Aelthas had decided he no longer needed to be fast.
Lyra screamed.
It was a scream that filled the hall. A scream with nothing heroic or resigned in it, that was only pure pain and the fury of someone who doesn't want to die like this, lying on the floor of a burning castle, watching the man killing her not even look at her with hatred. Only indifference.
All three marks burned at once across her skin. Dark lines pulsing beneath her clothes, visible like lit veins. Lyra looked at them. Saw them glowing on her own body.
And then something in her gaze changed.
It wasn't peace. It wasn't acceptance. It was something else. The kind of look someone has when they understand something they didn't want to understand and can't put it back where it was.
—Zareth, —she said. Her voice was shaking. Not from fear. From effort. Each word cost more than the last—. Zareth, look at me.
Zareth was on the floor, both hands broken, eyes on her. He was looking at her. He couldn't look away.
—Don't stay alone, —said Lyra—. Promise me.
—No. —Zareth's voice came out broken—. Don't ask me that. Don't ask me that because it means you've already...
—Promise me.
Zareth closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, he had blood on his lips from biting the inside of his cheek.
—I promise.
Lyra let out the air.
Aelthas raised the scythe.
The fourth cut went to the chest.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't deliberate. It was direct, without ceremony, without pause. The blade entered her left side with a sound that no one in that hall wanted to hear and that none of them were going to forget.
Lyra didn't scream.
Not because it didn't hurt. But because the sound got trapped somewhere inside her that no longer responded. Her eyes opened wider. Her hands went to her chest by instinct. The blood was immediate, dark, too much.
The four marks erupted at the same time.
A black light connected them across her skin, tracing lines from one wound to the next, pulsing faster and faster and then slower and slower. Lyra looked at her own hands. Looked at the blood between her fingers. She raised her eyes to Zareth.
She looked at him.
Just looked at him.
And then the marks went dark.
Lyra fell.
Zareth didn't reach her in time.
His knees struck the marble beside her. His broken hands held her anyway, clumsy, useless, with the kind of desperation that doesn't understand it's already too late. He shook her once. Just once.
No response.
Zareth didn't scream.
It was worse than if he had.
He stayed silent, holding Lyra, his forehead resting against hers. Still. The only sound was his own breathing, which was too rigid, too controlled, the breathing of someone using every last gram of will they had left to not break apart in front of the man who killed her.
Darian watched them from the floor.
—We can't stop him, —said Lumine.
Her voice was still calm. No fear. No doubt. Only a truth Darian already knew.
—Not yet, —Nox corrected.
The dark voice sounded lower than usual.
Darian gritted his teeth.
—Then what do we do?
There was a brief silence.
—You endure, —said Lumine.
—And you survive, —Nox added.
—Because if you fall now, everyone who died here will have died for nothing.
Aelthas stepped back. He stood in the center of the hall, scythe in hand, surrounded by broken columns and stained marble. He looked at what remained of the group. Darian on the floor. Kára with her palms on the stone. Varkas leaning against the wall. Aria with the bow in her hand and no arrows that could reach. Zareth holding Lyra.
He said nothing.
He only waited.
As if what remained was simply a formality.
Then Vael moved.
It wasn't a leap. It wasn't a shriek. It was a sound that had never come from him before, deep and cavernous, born from somewhere inside his chest that hadn't existed until that moment.
Darian turned his head.
Vael was standing.
He wasn't the same dragon.
The golden eyes were the same, but they no longer looked with a hatchling's curiosity. His body had changed. The legs were longer, thicker, the claws sunk into the marble as if the stone were nothing but soft earth. The wings spread slowly and grazed the columns on both sides of the hall, scale against stone, a sound that filled the silence of the room. The blue scales had shifted in color, deep blue along the back, golden edges at the borders, as if something from within were pushing outward. In his chest a faint golden light pulsed, rhythmic, growing with each breath.
Vael looked at all of them.
He looked at Draven on the floor.
He looked at Lyra.
He looked at Zareth kneeling with his forehead resting against hers.
And then he looked at Aelthas.
The roar that came from his throat made the marble shudder. It wasn't the shriek from before. It was something that silenced for an instant the noise of the castle burning in the distance, that reached the bones and didn't fully leave. His wings opened to their full span, enormous, covering him like a wall between Darian and the king.
Aelthas lowered the scythe.
Very slowly.
For the first time since he had entered that hall, something crossed his face that wasn't calm.
Darian was watching Vael.
Vael looked at him.
And in those golden eyes, there was no longer a hatchling's curiosity. There was something Darian knew well. The same thing he had felt himself the first time Aelthas hurt the dragon. The same thing that had woken Nox in his darkest moment.
It wasn't fear.
It was the exact moment when love becomes something with teeth.