Kalender almost broke into a run, but Jyn caught him by the arm, turning him around. “Do you even know where you’re going?” she asked.

“Sherry’s about to die. We need to get to the gate” —

“I know where Minimine’s people are. They’ll get you to where you need to be.”

The two held gazes.

“Trust me,” Jyn said. He nodded.

Jyn led the way at a light jog. They reached the stairs, making their way to the lobby of the ground floor. It used to be a grand and serene place, but oscillating waves of people now spanned the entire width. Knights, Maids, and Clerics all worked together, hastily forming parties which then got given a card with a small map and a labeled arrow that pointed at a certain section of wall, saying “your assignment here.”

It was so hectic that they couldn’t just run through it. They scanned the place from the top of the stairs looking for anyone holy. Jyn grabbed his arm. “There!” she said, pointing at a particular group standing around a table to the side of the hall.

They saw Lilia there, and she saw them, too. “Jyn!” she called with a wave. Behind her were Minimine’s Clerics and a Priestess; whatever happened to the other Priestesses, Kalender hoped they were only busy, not dead.

“Kalender!” Lilia called again when she saw everyone else was there. “Urgent message from Minimine!”

Sherry was in trouble, but if it was from Minimine, it must’ve been something really big, and they’d end up getting swallowed in it if they ignored it.

The timing couldn’t be worse, but he swallowed his impatient desires.

He and the others hurried to the table. Along the way, he caught sight of a familiar wooden mask gasping and waving towards Jyn. He watched the two make momentary eye contact, but the momentum of the crowd behind them pushed them along before they could make any other exchange.

He tried to turn back and get Jyn to say goodbye, but she pushed him onwards. “She’s alive. That’s all I need,” she said.

Kalender gulped. If it hadn’t been her wish, he wouldn’t have let himself be pushed along.

They arrived at the table, and the Priestess spoke with haste. “The true enemy has been sighted. It’s a Class-B Cursed.”

So he’s the root, Kalender thought. Violence stirred in him at the mere mention of the man, but he calmed himself with a deep breath. There wasn’t any reason for him to have the honor of taking the guy out. Someone else could do it better and faster.

“He and the Princess Knight are engaged in close fighting,” the Priestess continued. Kalender gasped.

“Arpeggio?” he blurted. “Is she” —

“The enemy seems to be drawing more power the more he spreads the curse,” the Priestess interrupted. Kalender shut his own mouth; this was a time for action, not concern. “Our Goddess is throwing rocks at him, but she is destroying more and more of Harmony by it. She requests you make it easier for her and the Princess Knight.”

Kalender balled his hands into fists, and the Clerics and everyone saw this. Everyone here knew what Minimine had meant, and even with the inevitable fallout, they all tacitly agreed that this was their only way out.

“Got it,” Kalender said. The eyes of the people around him glittered with hope. Weren’t these people afraid of getting caught up in my range? The situation must have been worse than he thought if they didn’t care about becoming collateral damage.

“Lilia, can you come with us?” Jyn said. “Do you have your cuffs?”

Lilia nodded. Seeing this, the Priestess spoke up. “We will be in support” —

Kalender wasn’t so sure they wanted that. He raised his arm, and his sleeve fell away to reveal all his cuffs. “If you don’t have these, you can’t be beside me. Not when mine come off.”

The Priestess gulped. “Class-A…” she muttered. Her shock made it obvious that she’d far underestimated the power of Kalender’s curse. If she had been thinking along the lines of fighting from afar, now she had to think: how far is far, exactly?

He didn’t wait for her to make up her mind. He looked to Jyn, Lilia, then Page.

“Page,” he said, “you don’t have to go.”

She was the weakest of the group. He didn’t want to see her die.

She scowled. “That’s not fair,” she said. “I’m coming with.”

He wanted to stop her, but he’d already tried that twice by now; he didn’t want to count to three. Any more, and it’d be like him saying she should just be a caged bird again—beloved, but only at a distance, and in ways that she would never be able to understand.

It wasn’t just him having these thoughts. Jyn wanted to stop her too, but she knew it’d be a mistake. Page wasn’t her sister, and no matter what, she didn’t want to commit the error of deciding for someone what they should want…not again.

Choice was the blood of life. Ridding her of that choice would just be them killing her in a different way.

Lilia patted Page’s shoulder. Sparing only a second of silence, they all left together.

They negotiated their way through the frantic floor. Squadrons were forming up, heading out, and coming back with wounds. Even as they reached the large doors at the end of the lobby, refugees and militia were streaming in and out in an unending torrent of stretchers and human bodies. The best they could do was get swept up along with everyone else heading the same way.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Finally outside, the first thing Kalender heard were the overlapping moans of the ravenous hordes climbing over each other to get into the castle; some of them were spilling over the ramparts already, and squads rushed in to contain those sections. It wasn’t just the hordes, but the air was constantly lit up by fireballs aimed at the defenders on the walls, and he could hear gunfire—honest-to-god gunpowder weapons, the first time he’d encountered them in this world. It hadn’t been this bad when they’d first arrived.

Amid the chaos, someone called out from behind them: “Sir Champion Kalender, sir!” He turned around and caught sight of a Maid-turned-messenger, huffing as she slowed to a stop in front of him.

“Lord Shal-yen wishes that you wait!” —she huffed, stopped herself, and took a deep breath— “The forces need to be ready before opening the gate! That’s all!” She ran off to find the next person she had a message for, picking up two more messages for four more people along the way.

Waiting wasn’t good for Kalender’s impatience, but he did so anyway. His heart continued to race, and the stress of so many people around him made it worse. Sherry and the people she’d gone off to save might have been killed by now—or charmed.

Jyn saw the creases on his face. She faced him squarely, patting his shoulders with both her hands. “We’re going out soon,” she said.

“I’m terrified,” he replied.

“As am I,” Jyn said. She smiled. She rarely did. Kalender burned that sight into his eyes. “It’s wonderful I’ve met you,” she said.

His heart sank. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s wonderful. It’s so so wonderful, and I will never give an inch of ground if that means letting go of this feeling.”

Each of her words hammered home the shit of the situation. It was just the four of them up against hordes of the charmed. There was no rational way they would get through this, and with fate not being theirs to dictate, by all accounts … they were about to die.

She hugged him so tightly, it squeezed the air out of him. Her strength had always given him peace of mind.

He patted her on the back before he died from it.

“M-my apologies,” she loosened her hold, though not letting go entirely. It was a fatal move on her part, because he found an opening to hug her back.

She squeaked in a way he’d never heard before. ‘Adorable’ and ‘Jyn’ weren’t words that normally went together, but Kalender found this time to be an exception. It was a reminder, too, that behind her sword and shield, she was a mosaic of things he was yet to discover.

Wasn’t that unfair? They had already spent so much time together, yet he was still discovering new things about her — at this point when death hung over their heads. Why hadn’t he spent more time with her? Had he appreciated her enough? Had he shown enough gratitude? Care? In what manner would he grieve to lose her: with lifelong regret, or with bittersweet acceptance?

“Heeeey!” Page complained. “What’s this sap? Why’s there so much sap!” She wanted to escape the trench warfare-like hopelessness around them, too, damn it!

“But what bread do you bring to the table, Page?” Jyn asked, peeking at her with one eye.

Page raised an arm in shock and jumped back. “Since when did you learn to talk like that?”

“Come here,” Kalender said with a smile. Page inched closer, but she wasn’t sure where she’d fit into this hug puzzle.

Kalender took Jyn’s hand and placed it on Page’s head. “Huh,” Page blurted. His own hand followed suit, and now there were two hands patting her on the head.

I-it w-w-was like getting a massa~ge to the bra~in—crap, that’s dangerous! Page jumped back out of range as if evading a drop spider. She narrowed her eyes at them. “Please, never do that again.”

Jyn and Kalender chuckled, but Kalender’s chuckle was wrong. It had wavered a little, and Page saw his color was a mix of blue and purple—sadness and fear, trying to mix but only to fail, instead creating a mosaic of emotion.

She approached him without any other word, returning the favor and patting him on the head. “There, there,” she said.

He wiped a tear that had fallen down his cheek without permission. “I’m afraid you’d die,” he said, and Page’s hand stopped. He wasn’t just talking to her, but to the both of them.

“The goddesses are kind,” Jyn replied. “Death isn’t the end. If not in this world, we can find each other again in another, and I’ll be glad to know you again.”

Page’s hand got moving again, but even with a smile, she sniffled. “I feel like my heart’s about to explode,” she said. Kalender chuckled.

There was another ugly sniffle. Jyn was crying, too, and when everyone saw that, they all chuckled together. It was a little embarrassing.

As for Lilia… Well, third-wheeling a beautiful scene wasn’t what she had in mind for the moments leading up to her probable death. It was alright, though. Even if the proof could only be found behind castle walls, huddled together in a few square feet of space, it was enough proof to think the world wasn’t all bad.

“Clear the gates!” the guards on the wall shouted, and the four wiped their faces and got ready for the charge of a lifetime. The guards echoed the same command several times, up and down the walls, and all the while, the people around the grounds retreated deeper into the castle.

Soon, they were all gone. The people in the yard, the guards on the walls, and even the grand hall behind the group was abandoned. It was eerie how fast they managed to do it.

“Sir Champion Kalender, sir!” a familiar voice shouted from…where? The Maid-messenger’s voice echoed confusingly, but they eventually caught sight of a frilly dot about two-hundred meters away, obscured by the last untrampled flower bed.

She waved at them. “We’re ready to open the gate!”

It took an odd second to click with Kalender that they were staying away from him. The maximum range of his unshackled power had never been determined, after all.

He unslung his air rifle from his back, but he couldn’t hold it properly. His hands were shaking, and when he tried to calm himself down, telling himself he’d just check his weapon, he couldn’t even unlatch the magazine. His hands shook that much.

“Everyone! We did not come here to die!” Jyn screamed above the ruckus of the horde. Her voice had bounced off the walls and the gate, reflecting back stronger than they’d left her mouth.

It shook Kalender. It spooked him, even, but it was a voice he was attached to, and that spook turned into power. He looked to her, the source of the booming voice, with awe and a gasp. We did not come here to die—the words echoed in his mind. Irrational as it may be, the more it echoed, the more it seemed to become true.

“We did not come here for obligation!”

Page shook her head and readied her staff, pushing spell dominoes into their slots for quick casting.

“We did not come here for country!”

Lilia rushed to the front to be their vanguard, wielding a dagger in one hand and a sword in the other.

“We did not come here for the justice of our own ideals!”

Jyn swiped a bloodstained buckler from the ground and unsheathed her sword, standing beside Kalender.

“Remember who you stand beside! Remember who is still fighting for us outside! Every person who has touched our lives—every moment, every bond, and every promise made! It will all disappear if evil has its way!”

Kalender squeezed the cuff on his left arm.

“It knocks on our door!”

What he was about to do would make him owe thousands of apologies.

“Ready your weapons! Raise your voices!”

But he’d rather suffer that than every other alternative.

“The ###### God’s snake loses its fangs today—and we will be the ones to blame!”

The gate creaked. A line of light split it down the middle, and the moans of the horde spilled through the gap. There was no more time to think, no more time to say prayers or make amends.

Eternity says hello.