I said- Gale said. No, Maja. Or was it Greta? Henrik? Ambrose? Colin? One of the guards, trapped where two moments meet: shattered skull or torn throat or scrambled brain; some unknowing and others cognizant; all beholding the thing they used to serve tearing them apart.

Wait.

⬛ shivered. I know her. Kit. I shivered at the bottom. Kit shivered at the bottom. P⬛⬛⬛ed herself up. I took something from her. Couldn’t forget if I tried. Couldn’t forget anything if I tried.

That’s out of order.

I’m trying. I’m trying. I need a moment; just a moment.

I-

I turned… Vin turned. Orvi turned. Not him. Wil? Gast? Tully? Se⬛ras? Or even ⬛⬛⬛⬛, whoever he was before the speartree hoisted him above the crater like a flag of flesh. Even Drue, named for his toughness, who had stepped aside so long ago. Or the pieces my veins gaped around; those levers they tried to touch but found emptied.

I don’t have a moment. There’s no time. I’ll break. Please, god, just hold a moment longer.

Long enough for me to try once more.

----------------------------------------

The room was empty. A bed. A window. A corpse. Motes of dust caught in the dawn light. If my brother could open his eyes, he would be able to see them.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wanted…”

I had wanted to save him. Yet every treatment had failed. None of us truly understood what stole the strength from his muscles, forcing him into the slow, meticulous gait that he waddled around the Fort in. That caused my father to beat my mother for not disclosing the curse that wracked her family. That created a silence that no amount of bells would ever fill. We all understood what it meant. One day, the strength would seep from his heart. It would cease beating.

Despite my best efforts, I knew I couldn’t prevent him dying. All I could do was make his death mean something. The secrets I’d shared; the deals I’d made; the promises I would have to keep – all were in service to a plan thinner than Bite leaves on the forest floor, awaiting the crush of a boot. No boot ever fell. Miraculously, the plan had worked. Too late.

My eyes fell over my brother’s mummified corpse. I’d memories of seeing him as a child – the two of us begging for cakes – but this was the first time I – Gale – was seeing him. I wished the eyes had come sooner.

“I’m sorry.” They were the only words that meant anything. “I…”

I hadn’t failed. Not yet. Mael was gone, but I still had family that needed saving. The nomads that had raised me were dead. Sickness and old age had taken them decades ago. Whatever wound the news might have made was dulled by the decades between our parting and their death. Even so, the scar it left still ached, sometimes. The way we had parted had gotten stuck in my skin, and I had lost the chance to remove it.

Sash. Dash. Orvi. My children. They remained.

As long as they lived, I hadn’t failed.

“I’m sorry,” I said one final time. “I can’t save you. But I can still save my son.”

There was no response. There was nothing left in the room to hear me.

I clenched my teeth against the tears and left. The Jackal waited outside.

“You done?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Val pushed herself off the wall she leaned against. “And you’re serious?” Her eyes affixed mine.

I nodded. “It never had to be me.”

She grabbed a fistful of my tunic and shook me once. “I need you alive, Gale.”

With excessive care, I brought my hands to hers and removed them from my clothes. She allowed me. “The paperwork has been completed. You will inherit the Vane family.”

“Godsdamnit, Gale.” The scars on her face seemed to thin as she cast her eyes to the ceiling in disbelief. “Whatever you an’ th’ big lady cooked up: I want in. That was always th’ deal.”

“The deal still stands. But we each need to solve our own problems.”

“No help?” she drawled, then sighed. “Yeah. We each gotta deal with our own.”

“If I see her, I’ll send her outside. That’s all I can promise.”

Val spun on her heel and walked in the opposite direction to the outer courts.

I turned my head. “Where are you going?”

“Got some preparations t’make.” She sucked air between her teeth as she walked away. “Don’t you worry. I’ll be there.”

I watched her disappear into the cogs of the Fort, to foul whatever machinery stood in the way of her schemes. Then I rolled my shoulders and-

----------------------------------------

-sh⬛ver⬛d at the b⬛ttom of the sheet-rope. The silent quakes only wracked my sword-hand – everything else I’d managed to bury underneath my skin. Yet the final piece that betrayed my stillness as a lie evaded capture. Despite clenching my other hand around its wrist, I couldn’t stop it.

My mouth was drier than bones. I needed to fix this before we fought Mother. She’d eat me alive. My shivers would only add spice to the meal.

“Kit?” Maddie called from above.

I’d thought pulling Ronnie into the observatory would take more time. “Yeah, I’m alright,” I drawled. “Jus’ gimme a moment.”

The brief pause before she responded was enough to set me cringing away. “Take all the time you need.” Rarely had more humiliating words been spoken.

I took a few deep, bracing breaths, then shook some rabid energy out of my limbs. A temporary solution, but there weren’t any permanent ones in my arsenal. I’d about three things I could do well, and calming myself’d never been one of them. When I hauled myself into the observatory, my hand was still shaking.

Vin gave me a terse nod as I entered. Scarcely minutes ago, he’d thrown the doors of his mind open to us; now, they were as tight as any vault. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought he was playing us. As it was, I reckoned he was, at the very least, hiding something. But I figured that if Vin didn’t have a few secrets to squat on like a hen with her egg, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

I gave a feeble chuckle at that image.

“Gale’s in the dining hall,” Vin stated. “Jackal’s waiting in the outer courts. Likely planning something.”

“That’s a given,” I croaked.

Though the conversation ended there, Vin remained still. After a few heartbeats, he unslung Whip’s crossbow from his shoulder and offered it to Maddie.

“Are you…” She blinked rapidly. “Are you sure?”

Vin’s eyes flickered towards Ronnie and I. We both nodded.

“You won’t need it?”

“Better that you have it than me,” he said. “I might get one shot off before I’m forced to ditch it. It’s not worth me having. Do you know how to use it?”

To my surprise, she nodded. “Rita showed me.”

Vin blinked. “Alright. Remember: be careful, you four. You’ll all make it if you are.”

“You know me.” I managed a bold smirk. “Careful-est girl this side o’ th’ Dolphin.”

He gave a startled snort, which sent a thin trickle of snot from his nose. When he seemed oblivious of its presence, Ronnie gently tapped their nose. Vin wiped at it, then stared at his hand with creased brows. The humour of the situation felt stilted. No one spoke.

Finally, the Ravenblood shot me a tight smile. “Okay, ‘careful-est girl’: I’ll take point, you take the rear. Should be nothing between here and the dining hall, but best to be careful.”

Vin was right. As we walked a winding route from hall to hall, we didn’t run into so much as dust. Within Fort Vane, only we moved. It was as if we walked through a set of paintings. Vistas of hall and stairs and storerooms cast beneath the low light of dawn in brightly frozen strokes. Mundane objects were replaced by alien twins – untouchable beneath the atmosphere that gripped the Fort. Despite their immutability, the walls seemed as substantial as air. And the air weightier than the walls.

A million years could pass, yet I was gripped by the cold certainty that nothing we walked through would change. Even so, the places we walked through leered at us. Across their stretch of canvas, we were the foreigners.

Vin navigated it easily. We sheltered in his wake.

Suddenly, the world around us tightened further. We’d arrived at the doors of the dining hall. On the other side was a presence my mind flinched away from. My hand shivered.

“We can still turn back,” Maddie said quietly.

“You can,” Vin said.

Then he braced his hands against the double doors and slowly pushed against them. The crack widened: first a chair and the small door to the kitchen that lay behind it, then a table. An abandoned meal lay atop it.

For a moment, Vin halted – his eyes trembling blindly. I dared to hope we might turn away. But a mute grimace twisted his face, and Vin shoved each door whirling into the walls beside them with a crash, ripping the doorway wide open and revealing the final stretch of the painting.

Corpses lay against the walls of the dining hall. Head to toe; toe to head – the broken bodies of the guards and diplomats I’d seen it passing formed a chain lining the perimeter of the room. I’d seen each face in passing before. In the shattered face of one robed corpse, I thought I saw the Baylarian who’d warned Maddie of the House’s plotting. Smears of brain, bone, and blood trailed from the entrance of the outer courts; the route someone had dragged the bodies. Chairs and tables were scattered around the room. Some were untouched. Fragments of bone studded others. Others were nothing but splinters of wood.

Taja’s eyes flickered to the corpses, then to Vin.

Towards the back of the room, the other Ravenblood sat. Black veins; sightless eyes; a grimace stretched across its face. Upon the sound of our entering, its head jerked towards us. It stood, and raised a single, eye-studded palm towards Vin.

The two stared at one another for several long moments.

Vin’s voice emerged frayed. “Ma?” he asked.

Its grimace deepened. Its blind eyes fell for a brief moment, then fought their way back to Vin’s. “Orvi,” the Ravenblood replied.

The quiet began to deepen. Until it was heavy enough to be tangible, where it waited in the air. With every heartbeat that passed, my ears anticipated a sound to break it – speech; stomp; scream – but when the next moment finally arrived only silence waited. As time stretched, I painstakingly turned my head to the man beside me.

Maybe a more eloquent person than I could describe the expression that passed over Vin’s face. I couldn’t. The thing that crashed through him was beyond my tongue’s ability to capture. All I could say was that behind Vin’s eyes, I saw something breaking.

He clenched his eyelids shut.

The thing that used to be Gale glanced at me. “Your mother is in the courtyard.” The rumbling words rode the contours of the silence; almost inaudible despite their depth.

I nodded. I took the first step, then the next. The others walked silently behind us.

When I reached the door, my throat finally managed to reopen. “Are you sure you’ll make it?”

Vin’s eyes were still closed. “I’ve got ideas,” he uttered.

“What about me?”

“I’ve got none for you.”

Feebly, I opened my mouth to protest.

“You don’t need any,” he continued quietly. “You’re better than her.”

My heart pounded in my ears. I felt light-headed.

“Just keep your head on straight. You’ll be fine.”

I nodded. “Good luck.”

He managed one feeble smile. I inhaled a breath, but couldn’t bring my arms up further.

“Kit,” Maddie gently said. “We’ll be with you.”

I took one, final breath, and h⬛ul⬛d ⬛he d⬛ors open. ⬛⬛-

----------------------------------------

-left the room. The door shut behind them.

I turned and opened my eyes.

Something had fallen upon me. Even the slightest sensation had become intolerable. The constant prodding pain from my arms and neck. The abyss of sensation in the middle of my spine. The scrape of stiff bandages against my flayed flesh. The runeslate cinched tight over the top of them. The dull ache that suffused my body. The twinge in my ankle. The brush of my hair against my neck. The sway of clothes upon my skin. The bloat of a tongue in my mouth. The air through my nose. The throbbing of a vein in my neck. All were amplified a hundredfold. But none more so than the sight in front of me.

The measured precision of the feet, setting the body as solid as a mountain. The deliberate flow of the upper torso, set in a slowness both predatory and reassuring. The terseness of the expression, revealing an uncertainty that belied everything else. The mournful set of the eyes when they found my own.

The mannerisms of my mother, worn by Gale.

The Ravenblood’s mouth opened. “Orvi- “

“Don’t.” I raised a hand. “Don’t.”

My stomach churned. The sight of it filled me with the urge to escape my skin. This thing was ghoulish. Utterly incomprehensible. A horror beyond what earth could offer, wrested from some deep, unimaginable nightmare. But I didn’t need imagination to see it anymore. The terrible truth was before my eyes.

Ma, both worn by and wearing what pulsed beneath her skin.

Resurrected from the bowels of my memory.

Something gave in me.

----------------------------------------

That was what started it, I think. Though in truth, it started long ago. Where the seed of that corpse flower were planted. And here, they finally began to bloom.

----------------------------------------

Orvi clawed at the blackened bandages wrapped around his arms, cinching parts looser or winding them tighter in a disordered frenzy. Cloths ripped from his arms alongside the flakes of dried blood adhering them to his wounds. His fingernails moved upwards, tearing the sleeves of his shirt before falling upon the wrappings beneath. The cloth trapped beneath the runeslate tied to his arm refused to give. A series of pained grunts tore from his throat, yet he only pulled harder. Until finally, the last bandages tore with a sound like slicing meat, and he threw them to the floor.

I angled my palms towards the bandages. Attached to the blood was a large chunk of skin and flesh. For the first time, I saw the ruin I’d made of my son’s arms: muscle and sinew exposed to open air in a tangle of purpled meat, pus-ridden cavities, and onyx veins. And I saw how the decay stretched past the forearms it originally occupied to the biceps, then the shoulders – where Orvi had flayed himself by tearing the bandages away. The white of his collarbone peeked through the flesh.

The words were stuck in my throat. Nothing I had said the past weeks had reached him. It still felt as if I were shouting across some immense abyss. But if words were all I had, then I would use them. “Orvi- “

“What?” he barked. The capillaries in his eyes darkened them inexorably. “What do you want?”

“Stop,” I crooned gently, taking a step towards him. I splayed my arms passively to the side. “Hurting yourself will not help you.”

“At this point it won’t make a difference,” he snapped back. A strained note ran through his voice. “What are you doing, Ma?”

“I am here to help you.”

“You murdered these people.”

“Was I meant to allow them to do the same to me?”

“I don’t- “ He covered his forehead with a hand. “You ended Ravenblood. Executed hundreds of Ravenbloods – your own soldiers. All for the purpose of finishing the threat. Yet you’ll… You’ll protect it?”

I thought carefully on that. The answer was obvious – at least to me – but it needed to be told in a way he would respect. Yet I had no knowledge of what that was. The man I faced was four years’ more worn than the boy I had raised. That time was a gulf between us. Or perhaps it had always been there – from the moment I demanded he spear my subordinate in the throat to the instant I opened my own – and I had simply been blind to it. Either way, my voice seemed too shallow to bridge that gap. But I had to try.

In the end, my answer emerged unaltered. “I made a mistake.”

His face collapsed on itself. “No.” He turned away from me. “No, no, no.”

“Orvi,” I said, “you are a Ravenblood.”

Still facing away, he pressed two palms against his forehead. The skin across them was flaking; dead. He muttered something.

Another step brought my body fractionally closer. “What is it?” I asked.

His voice came louder. “You’re warped.” His statement echoed through the hall. “The Raven was mad – you knew that. You experienced it. Ending its blood was the right decision.”

“Orvi,” I said gently. “There is no space for someone like you in this world.”

My son looked at me.

“So I will make some.”

I-

----------------------------------------

-⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ a⬛⬛ st⬛p⬛ed int⬛ the ⬛uter courts. Dozens of footprints covered the mud between my group and the gatehouse, trailing through both the gardens lining the space’s edges – trampled between Siik-knows how many pairs of boots – and the fence ringing the central area – smashed in several places where someone had blundered through. Towards the back, the stables doors hung open; empty except for a lone mule staring disinterestedly towards us. Reminded me a bit of the Missus – our old donkey. We’d lost him a long time ago. The gatehouse itself gaped open into a vista of rolling plains and the brightening sky.

In the dawn shadows, it took a moment to find our quarry. Mother leaned over the top of the battlements, idly puffing a cigarillo. Upon sighting me, a grin spread across her face.

My legs seized.

Her smile widened. “There she is. My guest o’ honour, come to dance with this ol’ bag o’ bones.”

“We don’t have t’do this,” I said, smoothing the stutter that threatened to creep into my voice.

From the look on her face, she heard it anyway. “Alrighty then,” she drawled, still smiling. “You step aside. Lemme finish my business here.”

“What business?” I asked, forcing a threatening tone. “Makin’ you kill them guards inside. Why?”

“Come on, Kit.” She adopted an exaggerated look of disappointment. “You know what this’s about. Same as always.”

“…Th’ business o’ power.”

She snapped her fingers. “Business o’ power, an’ those with th’ grit t’grab it. There’s chaff, and there’s more worthy grain. Like you an’ I.”

The others shuffled behind me, yet allowed the exchange to continue.

I snorted. “You’re sayin’ it’s for me?”

Mother laughed. “I wouldn’t lie to you. We all do what we want to do, an’ no one’s free from that.” She paused. “Besides: anythin’ worth doin’s worth doin’ fer yerself.”

I swallowed. “You’re twisted.”

“If I am twisted, it was by somethin’ long ago.” The scarred old woman took another long drag of her cigarillo, then watched the smoke drift apart thoughtfully. “I’ll be me, no matter what. An’ I s’pose you’ll be you.”

I tried one last time. “If you leave, I’ll let you go.”

The scarred old woman scoffed. “Would th’ woman that raised you leave?”

I knew the answer. “…No.”

“Maybe I changed. Jus’ fer you.”

We both weighed that line between us. The morning air was still cold, but warming rapidly.

“So much fer not lyin’,” I said.

She gave an amused huff. “Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t buy that. I ain’t never changed, Kit.” Without breaking eye contact, she plucked the cigarillo from her mouth and ground it beneath her feet. “You’re the one that has.”

“I guess so,” I replied.

Mother sneered. “Thanks t’them damn rats behind you.” She gestured towards Ronnie, Taja, and Maddie. “Y’know, they won’t care about you like I do. They ain’t raised you. An’ they sure as th’ gods themselves don’t love you.”

Maddie’s voice snapped out. “Kit doesn’t have- “

“By the blood, shut yer face.” The Jackal’s voice was like the crack of a whip. “I’m talkin’ to my godsdamned daughter!”

Maddie flinched. Suddenly, with our roles defined, my legs moved easier.

“Yeah,” I said, stepping forward. “I guess you don’t change.”

“Eyup,” she drawled. “Blood, maybe you didn’t change. Maybe you was always like this, an’ it’s only showin’ now. Or maybe th’ rest o’ the world jus’ rubbed off on you. I guess it don’t matter.

“We are what we are. You know what you’re in for. I do too.” She sighed. “Spent th’ better part o’ two decades tryin’ to avoid this,” she muttered, “but I guess blood don’t lie. Speakin’ o’ blood…”

When the Jackal bent behind the battlements, I immediately realised what she was doing. I veered left, then juked right, so that when she reemerged and fired a crossbow shining with purple runes towards me, the bolt – fast enough that it was only visible when it embedded in the mud beside me – missed entirely. I knew her well enough to predict that.

What I failed to predict was her bending down and producing a second crossbow. I moved, but my boots skidded beneath me and I fell into a crouch. My knees were coiled to bounce back upright, but I was already within her sights.

Then there was a wall of flesh accompanied by a spray of blood as Ronnie spun to the ground with an immense thud. I stared for a moment as the giant’s feeble arm pawed for the bloody hole that pierced through its mighty counterpart. An improbable feather – a piece of the quarrel – protruded from the cavity. Their mouth lay open in a silent howl. All I could think of was tiny Whip, dying of the bolt in her gut as I made music for her.

But a shout sent my eyes upwards, where I found a third crossbow being pulled from behind the battlements. The Jackal’s face returned with a vicious sneer, only for her eyes to widen as Maddie raised Whip’s crossbow in her direction. She ducked beneath, making space for me to sprint across the dirt of the outer courts to leap onto the ladder and shoot upwards. I scrambled onto its peak to find Mother crouched with a loaded crossbow in hand.

Her eyes widened into huge orbs. The crossbow shivered upwards, fired, and all I felt was a gust of wind racing past my ear. My eyes fixed on the cause immediately. Her hands were shaking.

I took several steps forward as my blade hissed from its sheath, then sent it swinging downwards in a huge overhead swing. Mother stumbled out of the way, but my blow found its target all the same: the crate of loaded crossbows beside her, which broke apart under sharp steel and several swift kicks from my boot.

An echo of my blade’s draw sounded as Mother drew her own sword. We faced one another. Our boots were silent as we drew ourselves into a readied stance. The sun’s reflection shone from the edge of our blades.

“You’re a bad person, Mother.”

She smiled thinly. “If I taught you anythin’, it’s that good ‘n bad’s jus’ lip-service people pay to themselves. T’make up reasons to do what they want to anyway. Like godsdamned mutts chasin’ their own tail.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But there’s people, there’s pain, and there’s loss. That means somethin’ – somethin’ like good an’ bad – but you can’t see it.”

She shook her head with a wry grin. “You jus’ wanna gut me.”

I looked inside myself. Found she wasn’t quite wrong. “Yeah, well,” I said, smiling weakly, “I am my mother’s daughter.”

The Jackal laughed. “I’m proud o’ you, Kit. You know what you want. You know why you want it. That’s real power, there.” She flipped her sword. “Well come on, daughter o’ mine. Let’s see if you can get it.”

W⬛ st⬛pp⬛⬛ ⬛o⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛-

----------------------------------------

-and I stepped backwards, slamming my leg against the corner of a table. I barely noticed.

“That’s what this is about?” My breath rushed hard and fast from between my teeth. “Me?”

Ma gave a grave nod. “I need to keep you safe.”

“By dying for me?”

She knew immediately what I spoke of. “Even if I had lived through my wounds, I would have been a cripple. The choice I made was a fair one.”

“Choice?” I could scarcely believe that such words spewed from her mouth. Her memories were lost to me, but I’d traced them so many times their echoes endured. They reeked of lies or delusions – and neither belonged to the woman I’d known. “There was no choice.”

A frown flitted across her face. “I died because I loved you.”

I shook my head. “Your love hit you like a knife in the neck. Monstrously powerful, and completely out of your control. The kind of love that steals everything – even the chance to say no. On the roof that day, there were no choices.”

“What’s wrong with that, Orvi?”

I grasped the air in front of me. “Because I caged you in that love.” My eyes locked with hers and, finding them sightless, turned to the dark orbs embedded in her palms. Ma had to understand. “I forced you here. And I’ve kept you here, even as you gave everything for me. I have to set you free from me, once and for all.”

Ma’s face tightened. Her eyes shone, and I felt sickened by the fact that I’d hurt her again, when she should be beyond all hurt.

Her voice was hoarse when she responded. “That’s what Ravenblood is, Orvi.”

I shook my head. “You’ve been in that body for a few days,” I stated. “You have no idea what Ravenblood is.”

Ma lowered her hands to the side and took a deep, shuddering breath. From her pocket, she retrieved a tube. At its head were two pincers. The Ravenblood Babs was in. That Gale had taken from me the day before. Ma’d kept it for me.

“I am sorry,” she carefully told me, “that I have left you alone for all these years. And I’m sorry I’ve left you with…”

She swallowed heavily. “You might die, Orvi. Please take the Ravenblood back.”

“Get rid of it, Ma,” I pleaded. “Finish what you started. End this piece of Avri, and let the memory of it fade to nothing.”

“My deed was illusory. But you,” Ma stated fiercely, “are not.”

Our words were heard, but not accepted. The problem was not that we were different. It was that we were just similar enough to understand exactly where the other stood. To see the flaws beneath our foundation. And to know that our minds were already set in ice.

----------------------------------------

And so we fought.

----------------------------------------

⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛o⬛e, ⬛ kic⬛e⬛ th⬛ sh⬛ttered remnants of a crossbow forward, where they tangled with my mother’s legs. She swore as I rushed forward, instinctually inching backwards to retreat yet stumbling as her feet caught on an errant chunk of wood. I ducked underneath her warding slash to aim my own blow towards her legs, only for her to angle the wood around her calf so my blade caught in it.

Even as the momentum jarred her leg, the Jackal grinned at my trapped weapon. But she’d failed to anticipate that when I yanked my sword backwards, it would pull her directly into my fist. Her jaw was smashed sideways as my knuckles jarred painfully. I allowed her to catch herself on the side of the battlements.

“Ox’s balls,” I swore as I shook my hand.

Mother blinked rapidly. The legs beneath her wobbled.

I squinted at her. It would be far too easy to slit her throat. “You good?” I asked, eying her warily.

It took Mother shoving herself back onto her feet for me to realise her weakness hadn’t been feigned.

“By the blood,” I muttered. “You really felt that, huh?”

She spat a wad of reddened spit onto the stone beneath us. “Who taught you t’punch like that? I know butterflies that hit heavier.”

I rubbed my aching knuckles against the side of my sword-arm, still staring at her. “Uh…”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Damn. I really thought I’d match you fer longer. Didn’t even get a godsdamn hit in.” Mother’s scarred face twisted into a vicious tirade of curses, then settled just as quickly. “Oh well.”

I frowned. “You givin’ up?”

She doled me a lazy grin. “I mean, you’re the one on a timer t’get rid o’ me, right? You might be havin’ an easy time with me, but yer boy inside’s gonna be a bloody mess if you take too long. Not to mention,” she drawled, placing a hand in her pocket as if we were strolling instead of fighting, “the big feller down there’s gonna bleed to death soon enough.”

My eyes flickered. Below, Taja and Maddie were packing torn pieces of their clothing into Ronnie’s wound while the giant mouthed swears and beat the ground beside them with their arm. I didn’t think Ronnie would bleed to death. Why had Mother…

I looked back and barely had time to close my eyes before something detonated in front of me.

A dull ringing immediately settled into my ears as I stumbled backwards, entirely blind except for a few splotches at the edge of my vision. Through them, I saw a dark blur approaching. My legs backpedalled rapidly – barely prevented from turning into an outright sprint – when the combination of a flash of metal and a rush of air had my instincts slamming me into the side of the battlements before I could understand why.

Mother’s steel sword missed my heart, but her fist did not. It slammed against my jaw with enough force to send my head cracking against the stone behind me. Another flash drove me to roll backwards with the momentum her punch’d lent me. When I finally found my feet again, I swayed my head blindly from side to side and managed to find Mother’s face as a blur in the corner of my eyes. She was pointing at me and yelling something I was entirely deaf to.

Talking. Even here. She sure did like to talk.

“Why’d you do all this?” My mouth went through the motions of speech, but the only thing I heard was a vague buzz. “Kill all them people? What’s it for?”

A blur I thought might be her eyes widened slightly. I guessed she was saying some variation of: ‘You can hear me?’

I nodded.

Mother opened her arms expansively and said something. Her lips moved for a few more moments, then paused.

“…Sure,” I belatedly blurted, “but why?”

She tilted her head to the side and continued speaking, mindless of the fact I couldn’t hear her. Every time she paused, I filled the space with a nod or some meaningless acknowledgement of the words I could not understand.

Before everything had fallen apart, there’d been days where Mother had spent hours complaining to me about members of the band: their stupidity or idiocy or money-grubbing ways (that was Jana) or people turning soft (almost always Father, before he’d died). Some of my earliest memories were of her groaning pitifully because of something I could barely understand; asking whether she should’ve done anything differently but seeking only one reply.

This was no different. I didn’t need ears to figure out what she was saying: something about power and weakness and domination and such. Stuff I didn’t disagree with. She could weave a good enough set of words to net just about anyone with a beating heart, but without my ears she just looked like a bloody-faced woman flapping her gums and arms. I would’ve laughed, if I hadn’t been so scared she’d figure out my game and kill me.

To my relief, in the space my bland statements made my hearing and vision slowly began to resemble something functional. Mother must’ve used one of the loud, flashing things Tully had thrown all the way back at the abandoned farmstead, but whatever it was’d probably been much weaker, for its effects to fade so quickly. Made sense: she’d probably snatched it from Gale, who by his own account was a weak Owlblood – probably not much power to put into the thing. Maybe she’d used Colin’s blood, before he died. I’d gotten lucky that the device’s Godsblood hadn’t lost potency; if Gale’d used the Ravenblood he had now, his divinity would’ve been enough to render me blind and deaf for the rest of my short life.

I shuddered at the thought.

Mother frowned at me, then said something that lilted upwards at the end. A question.

“Jus’ wonderin’ why you haven’t killed me is all.” The ringing in my ears had faded enough that I could comprehend my own words.

I barely made out something about ‘fairness’ and ‘proof’.

“You sure it wasn’t ‘cause you wanted a chat?”

Mother swayed one hand from side-to-side.

Though both my hearing and vision were still muddied, I figured it best to end the game while I was ahead. “Y’know I couldn’t hear you this whole time?”

Mother stared at me for a moment, then swore ferociously.

“Gimme a summary,” I offered.

“You absolute ingrate,” she spat.

After a moment, her fury evaporated into an abrupt laugh. “Guess you had to, t’stop me guttin’ you. Fair’s fair. As I was sayin’: We’re all gonna die one day, Kit. Whether you amble yer way over or run all th’ way makes no difference. Death’s as mundane as life, and life’s so damn ubiquitous you can find it in whatever chunk o’ dung you scrape off the ground. No big loss to squash whatever beetles come crawlin’ out.”

“An’ you’re different?”

She cackled. “I’m jus’ a different breed o’ beetle, Kit. So are you. But the great thing about all this’s that even beetles can scale th’ back of a god.” She pointed her blade towards me. “Same as anyone else: I kill ‘cause it’s what I need t’do to get where I wanna be.”

“Atop it all,” I finished for her. “Where you deserve.”

Mother sneered. “Damn straight. An’ this late in the game, all that’s left t’get through is you. Th’ girl who can’t damn well listen.”

I str⬛ightened and sp⬛n my swor⬛, squi⬛ti⬛⬛ thro⬛gh the blur that settled ⬛ver my vi⬛⬛on. “Y⬛u’re ⬛n, ol⬛ l⬛dy.”

⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛-

----------------------------------------

-the next step Ma took I wreathed in purple borne of the runeslate bound to my skinless arm. Rather than allow the sudden jerking of her feet to throw her gait off, she simply stilled, her hand placing her weight on a table with a care that was no longer necessary.

“Gast, then,” she stated.

The name set me blinking. It was mine- No, I was… Not Wil. Not Tully. Not ⬛⬛⬛⬛. Not Se⬛ras. Not Orvi.

A migraine ravaged the edges of my skull. I grabbed it and heaved in a desperate bid to split it open; free my brain from its cage of blood and bone.

In the space my confusion made, Ma continued walking forward. With one hand still clutching my head, I grasped the onyx sword belted to my side and ripped it from its scabbard. Its midnight blade stole the light of the room’s lanterns. Though the sheer heft of it caused my emaciated arm to tremble, I nevertheless managed to extend it towards her.

“There is no need to fight,” she said.

Pain was the world; my words a thin froth atop it. “If I tell you to stop,” I panted, “will you?”

“…No.”

I clawed my way back to coherency. My body was bent over. “What right do you have to make that decision for me?”

She looked away. “…The only right that matters, in this space.”

“The same right that let you put your blood on my forehead, on that roof,” I finished for her. I couldn’t allow her to try it again. “It won’t work. If you try it again, I’ll deny it. I’m stronger now. And if I fail, I’ll gut myself. You’ll find no purchase in this body.”

Failure was possible, there. Ma was strong. I thought I could wrest control from her, if she crept into my body, but that could simply be the insidious tongue of conceit; a symptom of the dulled imagination the past few weeks of stupor had buried me in. Neither could I be certain that the same would apply if I went into her. It was best to either kill her outright or weaken her first – make her vulnerable before she killed me. The safest option was the bloodier one…

Ma’s rumble interrupted my words. “I speak of an older right.”

I looked at her. Saw arms stiffen; her legs coil. “Oh,” I said. She thought the same as me.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

My body tensed. “I get it, Ma.”

Then she was sprinting at me with all the power of a galloping horse and moments before contact I managed to shove a table onto its side and kick it towards her but the paltry force my foot imbued in it was laughable so with a brush of my runeslate I multiplied it until it sped towards Ma’s legs which swiftly sprung over the obstacle only for a hurled chair to smash against her torso and send her to the ground and I fled backwards, eyes wide.

The former general was up again in scarcely a heartbeat and I scrambled backwards like a rabbit under the gaze of a swooping eagle. My heart thudded in my chest as I bashed into another table behind me with enough force to send me flipping over it moments before Ma’s arms seized the space I’d just occupied. She loomed over me and I kicked the table upwards so its purple-suffused edge crashed into her head and sent her stumbling backwards, giving me just enough time to leap to my feet and angle my sword at her chest.

Then Ma looked at me and my blade froze where it was.

“Come on,” I told myself. My vision blurred. I forced every ounce of will I had into simply pushing the sword downwards. Yet all I could see was everything she used to mean to me, before this. The fear and hope and the raw need to be worthy of all she’d given.

But then I saw the eyes – unblinking, blacker than pitch – staring from her palms. In them, an emaciated figure loomed.

I thrusted my blade and she slipped aside. Her palm pounded into my face faster than my eyes could follow and I stumbled backwards, spitting teeth and blood. My back halted against the dining hall’s walls.

Several paces distant, Ma’s arms were spread uselessly. “Oh gods,” she said, blind eyes wide. “I’m sorry, Orvi.”

I shook the stars from my vision. The pain barely registered against the agony of air against my raw arms. I spat a chunk of something onto the ground and felt the brush of air on my gums. One single thought wormed through it all: I was losing. I was weak – incredibly weak. My arms barely held any strength. This rotting shell of a body felt less like mine than the one I fought. And if I lost, it would never leave.

“Orvi?”

No reply was given. I began tracing my way around the side of the room. It was only when she moved to follow that I spoke.

“Ambrose; Henrik; Ma; Gale,” I hissed at her. “Who are they? Why did you kill them?”

Ma paused for a moment. I saw her frown. “I…”

“Who else did you kill?” I demanded. “They can’t have been the first.”

“No,” she muttered, bringing a hand to her head. “It wasn’t…”

My mind grasped the edges of what Gale had hidden. “Where’s Colin? Where’s Greta?”

“What do you mean? I’m right…” She blinked rapidly. “Here.”

I was halfway there. “Why did you kill them?”

Her breathing was heavy. “I didn’t… I needed…”

“Colin because you needed his Owlblood.” I sneered. “That was all it took to end someone who’d spent years helping you?”

“I… I…”

“What about Greta? What could a godsdamn cook have that you needed so badly?”

“She… she knew I was acting different,” the Ravenblood protested. “If she’d simply promised to keep silent, there would’ve been no need to hurt her!”

“You killed her.”

Wide eyes trembled towards nothing at all. “I saved her.”

Unwittingly I took a step closer. “Do you remember dying?”

The Ravenblood’s nails dragged furrows down the side of her face.

“Did you feel saved?” I demanded.

Suddenly, Ma stilled.

I froze where I stood.

“Many people don’t understand.” It was impossible to know who spoke from Gale’s mouth. “Disease. Suffering. Death. All are symptoms of the world outside.” All four of the Ravenblood’s eyes affixed my own. “So long as I have the strength, those I save will never be harmed.”

Something had changed in her, in the shadowy, insubstantial places where ghosts dwell. Something had seeped into that fragmented world, darker than black; whispering kind words to hide its toothsome maw. If I could dismiss her as only a sack of flesh hollowed of any hint of Ma, it might’ve been easier. But she was there, and all I managed was a shake of my head.

Ma cautiously stepped towards me. “We’re capable of this, Orvi.” The vial of Ravenblood was gripped tightly in her hands.

She was wrong. But nothing I said would show her that. Instead, the words that emerged my mouth were: “I can’t.”

Then I ran.

Footsteps thundered behind me as I sprinted as fast as my sluggish body could manage through the various tables and chairs scattered throughout the room. Each time I passed one, I pawed it backwards while modifying the force via which they travelled, sending them shooting back towards my pursuer. None hit, but the fact she hadn’t already caught me told volumes of their efficacy.

I barged shoulder-first through the door of the attached kitchen – letting loose a hoarse scream as something tore from my collarbone – and staggered towards the stove, where a pot waited. I dropped the onyx blade at my feet and peered inside. Mercifully, it was still full of water.

Momentum & Force were my runeslate’s focuses. Light held a small corner, while Bond was entirely beyond its scope. I’d barely managed to carve Heat along its margins, but the exponential intricacy of casting it at a distance meant that casting past my fingertips outstripped my comprehension of the magic. And even that paltry distance was only possible if I could work the magic through my arm – air was too thin a conduit.

All that meant was that if I wanted to make the pot of water boil, I needed to shove one hand in it while I did so.

A slight pinch was all I felt at first. Then groans ground through clenched teeth as the skin of my hand reddened. Then I watched that skin simply slough away. Rising bubbles distorted the intricate string of tendons, bone, and veins that formed my hand. Then the pain in my hand outstripped that of my arms. As if a vice were crushing every individual fleck of them. A scream ripped from my throat.

By the time the fourth heartbeat of heating passed, Ma slammed into the room. I ripped my hand from the pot – resisting the urge to uselessly clutch at it – and grabbed the pot with the other to hurl towards her. She staggered sideways a mere instant before the airborne water shone purple and shot towards her hands. She tried to dodge but it was already too late.

The boiling water fell into the unblinking eyes lodged in her palms. They reddened as the water remained within them, unable to blink and clear them away.

The other Ravenblood screamed, “No!” as I slumped against an oven, skeletal hand over my mouth to hide from the blind thing raging through the kitchen.

I-

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-⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛; ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛’⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ulty vis⬛⬛n, ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛d ⬛⬛⬛ M⬛⬛⬛er’s bl⬛rred snee⬛, f⬛⬛⬛⬛ng ⬛⬛ wit⬛ t⬛e ⬛⬛ge t⬛ surg⬛ forw⬛rd – t⬛ wip⬛ the disp⬛ragement off her face – but I resisted it. She knew exactly what she was doing.

Yet when her hand fell into her p⬛cket I could retreat no longer.

Her arm – visible as a haze of darkness against a diffus⬛on of dawn light – struck sideways, allowing me to infer the position of her blade, which was imperceptibly vague except for the moments where its steel caught the sun. I raised mine to the side in an undignified block which misjudged where her weapon’s e⬛ge would land badly enough the impact rattled my bones, however it was enough for me to close the distance and grab her other wrist.

The edge of Mother’s blade whacked against my back and I grunted in pain, but the awkward angle was enough armour to stop the cut from going further than skin-deep. She yanked her head back, but I mirrored the Foxblood that’d nearly broken my nose weeks ago and angled my forehead downwards, so the ensuing headbutt smashed the softest part of Mother’s face into the hardest part of my skull. The force was enough that she would’ve fallen, were my grip on her arm not so firm.

Her fingers twitched around the ⬛rb in her hand.

“Go on,” I said, muscles trembling as I gradually pulled it before her eyes. “Set it off, ol’ lady.”

The Jackal snarled, then dropped it. I released my grip and batted it over the side of the battlements. I didn’t know to use it anyway.

We both took a single step backwards, the⬛ extended our swords so they nearly touched. I watched her free hand carefully.

“You’re a filthy little whore,” Mother spat. Her scowl turned mocking. “S’that what Jana taught you, huh? How t’lay on yer godsdamned back for whoever comes yer way; maybe spurn a customer an’ get acid thrown on you.”

I blinked, and barely stopped myself from taking another step back.

At my silence, h⬛r scowl grew darker. “Real easy to toss me aside, after I’ve given you everythin’ you’ll ever need. Y’know how easy you had it? I gave you everythin’. I had nothing; jus’ a mother who couldn’t’ve cared less an’ a rotation o’ ‘Uncles’ t’beat the snot outta me. Then I spent th’ better part o’ two years trekkin’ out t’Korla, because at least with all their military dyin’ constantly it’s easy to climb th’ ranks. So long as you don’t bloody well get stabbed or maimed or shot through with arrows or used as a decoy for a godsdamn flankin’ manoeuvre! Your soft arse wouldn’t survive a day in a place like that.”

I’d heard it all before. Of more interest was the flicker of orange moving across the outer courts.

Before my opponent c⬛uld turn, I spoke. “I would.”

“Cause I gave you every tool you’d need t’do it!” Mother bellowed, blade trembling. “Took me fourteen damn years t’end that whore; you’d do it a bloody afternoon.”

There were only two people Mother regularly called that. Jana – because she used work as an ‘escort’, whatever that entailed – and the one that’d raised her.

“You killed your mother?” I blurted.

She paused. “Yeah,” came her answer.

The shockin⬛ part wasn’t the matricide. “You spent hours groanin’ at me about all the things that happened t’you as a kid, an’ never told me that?”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Well, I was tryin’ t’make sure you didn’t f⬛llow my lead.”

My mouth opened, then closed. It opened again. “How much o’ the stuff you did t’me was makin’ sure I didn’t kill you too?”

“I didn’t give you reason,” the Jackal spat. “I was gonna give you everythin’, so long as you jus’ listened.” She barked a laugh. “Guess it’s in th’ blood.”

I twisted my gaze s⬛ that the one spot where my vision was clear contained Mother’s face: scarred, mocking, and delighted at the expression on my face. “You made me do this,” I tried to tell her.

“Sure,” she drawled with a lazy nod. “But not cause o’ anythin’ I done here.” She leaned forward, grinning toothily. “I hammered my shape into yer godsdamn veins a bit too well.”

I flinched, then red⬛⬛bled my voice in a feeble attempt to hide it. “You ain’t no god, an’ I ain’t no Blooded.”

“But I put myself in there all the same.” Her sneer deep⬛⬛ed. “You could kill me where I stand, an’ every time you swing a sword I’ll still be there. You’ll still speak with my voice. An’ I’ll still be waitin’ fer you each night, at th’ edges o’ yer dreams.”

In the brightening world, her voice faded instantly. Yet as it echoed through my skull, her words only grew louder. I feared they’d never fade.

I tightened my grip on my sword. “You’re an idiot,” I said weakly. “What did you think I’d do, when you started killin’ my friends?”

“Friends?” Mother repeated in a tone she reserved for dogs and fools. I ⬛⬛ushed deeply. “Oh, lil’ Kit prancin’ ‘round, makin’ flower-crowns with her damned friends. What’ve they done fer you but led you on a wild chase through the Heartlands and get your face all scarred up?”

When Mad⬛ie finally made her way to the top of the ladder, my eyes didn’t move from Mother’s. She s⬛w me, gave a tight smile, and raised her hand. The device I’d batted down into the outer courts – where the others could retrieve it – was contained within. I’d had n⬛ idea how to use it. But Maddie was Heltian.

“Well,” I said softly. “⬛y friend’s about to brain th’ back o’ yer head.”

I turned my face away and plugged my e⬛rs at the same moment that my mother cautiously turned her head. The detonation was th⬛nderous, yet when I tur⬛ed back my vision and hearing ⬛ere barely weaker than before.

Mother sw⬛re as she flaile⬛ her s⬛⬛rd b⬛⬛k an⬛ fo⬛⬛h. I d⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ a swing, gr⬛⬛bed her ⬛egs, ⬛nd tossed her over the edge of the battlements.

⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛.

⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛.

“⬛⬛⬛’ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛,” ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛.

⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛, ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, “⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛’ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛.”

“⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛. ⬛⬛’ ⬛⬛⬛’ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛.”

⬛-

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-tried to stifle my screams, wipe the water away, but my eyes – my eyes – were scalding into useless lumps of jelly alongside any hope of sight I’d ever held. Blinking was an impossibility, so nothing could end the sight of the kitchen’s lines fuzzing apart as the colours of it bloomed until they dominated my vision. Until there were no more lines, and no more certainty. Colours – beautiful, intangible and meaningless – were all that remained.

I was blind again.

My scream narrowed as my lungs emptied. Then it dwindled to little more than a pathetic whine. I culled it, and began groping around the room.

“Why?” I asked. “I’m just…”

I paused to clench my palms tightly. It felt as if stakes had been driven through them. “I’m just trying to help! And you’ve blinded me in exchange?!”

A quiet part of my mind told me I knew why. That Orvi had presented his agenda clearly in his rejection of mine. But the pain of those colours demanded release.

“Why are you here?” I hissed. “Why are you not in the Wastes? You had family there! Was what we made not enough for you? Every day I strived to make what we had safe and comfortable for you. Did I fail? Was I wrong?”

There was a clatter from across the tiny room. I ran towards it, felt a waft of air, and managed to raise an arm quickly enough to prevent something sharp from stabbing into my sternum. Instead, it ripped through my forearm before jamming against the bone of my elbow.

I tore it out. Felt it in my hand. A knife. A kitchen knife. Thrown from somewhere in the room. “I would’ve killed to have what you had, Orvi,” I whispered. “I have killed. To have friends. Someone who would laugh at my jokes. To have two siblings; to care and be cared for. To have a parent that would give their life for you. Anything instead of silence. Why would you leave?”

I didn’t expect a reply. One found me regardless. “They thought I killed Ma.”

My head snapped towards the voice. “Why wouldn’t you have stayed and tried to fix it?”

There was a metallic clang. “Everyone knew I was a Ravenblood.” A quaver distorted that last word; Orvi quickly stifled it. “They would’ve hurt them simply for associating with me.”

I spoke more softly. “They may have hurt them regardless, Orvi.”

His voice retreated upwards, along the stairs at the back of the kitchen. “Dash called me a monster.”

I swept my leg forward, and finally found the first step. “…That was it?”

“He was right. I killed you.”

“Orvi…” I wished I could just see him. “You did not murder me. You played no part in the choice I made.”

“Really, Ma?” A brittle chuckle. “Is that what you did? Is that what we’re doing here? Making choices?”

“Your time with my mind must have confused you. The blame is not in you. It is in me.”

“The fact there were no Esfarians to help deter the Lizard was my fault. Your missing arm was my fault.” He reached the top of the stairs. “Whatever caused you to die is something I put there.”

“You would take my death from me?” I demanded, struggling to place my feet along the narrow staircase as my eyes burned.

Nothing. No response.

“Orvi?” I winced at a spike of pain from my torn arm. “Orvi?”

“I’m here to kill you.” The reply was soft. It was also directly in front of me. “And your death is mine.”

A boot thrust against my chest. For a moment I teetered. My fingernails barely managed to slide into a divot in the wall. Then something heavy crashed into them and I fell. I managed to wrap both arms around my head before slamming into the corner of a stair. Another two turns of the world and a heavy object clubbed my side – an oven, I surmised. After struggling to my feet, another shard of pain erupted from my thigh followed by a clattering from behind.

A knife again.

His strategy, I realised, was simple. Orvi had gathered the knives in the kitchen – likely within a metal pot. He would accelerate them towards me using Gast’s runeslate while I flailed. I’d decades of experience fighting and moving blind, but none whatsoever doing both simultaneously. The wounds would mount. At my weakest point, he would try to execute me.

Before my palm-strike had torn half his cheek from his face, he had hesitated. He might once more. But it would not last forever.

My rapid turn was accompanied by another metallic clattering against a wall – my sudden movement had ruined his aim. I barged back into the dining hall. Three tables were dodged on memory; in my haste, the fourth crashed into my knee with enough force that it would have broken something, were I still in… Maja’s body? My body? Whose body?

As I frowned into myself, a fourth knife shot into my back and rebounded off a rib. A pained bark emerged from my mouth as I instinctually beat at my back and brushed my burned eyes against fabric. Another blade drew a line of fire along my ribs.

I screamed and felt my mind fall into a casting (force, undirected/absentee), twisting and falling in and out of focus as I descended into where things met and moved everything in the room away from myself.

A grunt as Orvi fell. Instead of going to him and ensuring his safety, I sprinted towards the side of the room and ripped open the cupboard waiting there. Within were several weapons. It took scarcely a heartbeat to find the telltale heft of a halberd – even blunted as it was – and charge back outwards.

One leg stuttered beneath me as Gast’s magic stole the momentum of it, and I failed to restore it before it sent me crashing to my knees. Yet though the sweep of the halberd in my hands should have deterred anyone drawing closer, a sudden rebound jarred my arm.

I’d hit some kind of armour; neither bronze nor iron nor Owlforged steel. Stone, I judged from the blunt sound of the impact. Or bone.

My knuckles clenched around the haft of my halberd. “Shrikeblood,” I mused.

I’d barely been aware of their existence before meeting Gaia, beyond a few superstitious mutterings amongst the officers. Ones that were quickly met with discipline – mention of the god was outlawed. I’d certainly never fought one.

But bone, however divine, was only bone. There was a limit to what he could do with it.

Something clattered as Orvi landed heavily on the ground, giving me leave to sprint towards the back of the room and haul the doors there open. Within was the telltale whir of bloodtech. I ducked a pipe and drew closer to its centre.

I was certain Orvi knew the layout of the Fort as well as I, by this point. Even thin Ravenbloods possessed excellent memories; with a slightly greater dose of divinity, theirs became perfect. But simply because Orvi knew the layout as well as I did not mean he understood it. Not in the same manner I did.

My outstretched hand fell upon the intricate lay of carved stone embedded in the ceiling. We were directly underneath my workshop. The maintenance and alteration of the machine was made possible via a hatch in the storeroom. Its complexity was borne of the extraneous demands of distance and efficiency; at its core was a very simple array. One that lit the everburning lanterns of the Fort.

They were for the sake of others. I did not need them. But Orvi did.

When the door finally creaked as my son ran inside, I lifted my halberd and brought my full strength down on the device above. Something hard cracked against my back – the pot, alongside the knives it contained – but his blow was too late. For a moment, the azure colours blooming across my vision held. Then they ebbed to black.

We stood in absolute darkness.

I-

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-⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ M⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛l⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ r⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛’ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛, ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛’ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛t⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛a⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ s⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛s.

“⬛⬛⬛nie ⬛⬛⬛⬛?” ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ T⬛⬛⬛.

⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛. I⬛ ⬛as th⬛ giant t⬛⬛⬛self tha⬛ e⬛⬛ed up gi⬛⬛ng m⬛ a thumbs-up.

Mothe⬛ finished working her way out of the stable. The mule’s front legs rapidly beat at the wreckage her fall had created. Mother’s fall’d managed to destroy the entire structure, but the poor beast had still drawn the far worse hand. She squinted owlishly towards the courtyard, swaying her head back and forth.

“You broke anythin’?” I cal⬛ed to her.

She finally worked her way to her feet, bent-over at her back. A wince passed across her face as she cracked her back and groaned. “Who’s talkin’? S’that you, Kit?”

“You mess up yer back?”

“You think you managed t’mess- “ A second groa⬛ belied her words as she bent over and crouched beside a chunk of wood.

I rai⬛ed an eyebrow. “What’re you doin’?”

From behind the barrier, I heard her say, “Real gracious o’ you, lettin’ me know where y’are and standin’ that far away.”

“What- “ I froze, then shouted. “Maddie get back up! Taja, stay-”

Mother tossed a large sphere into the sky. I turned and ran.

It descended directly behind me. The moment it touched ground, it explo⬛⬛⬛, ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ -- ⬛⬛⬛⬛, ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ -- ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛-⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛.

Th⬛ pain caug⬛⬛ on a lump in my thr⬛at. I barke⬛ a strange cough-scream. Grime covered my body. I lay on my side. ⬛y fingers hurt. Another cough-wheeze. It transformed into a groan as I slid one arm from where it lay trapped underneath my body. It lay in the dirt. I brought it to my eyes. ⬛t took a moment to recognise them. Beneath the dirt my skin was smeared in lurked my hand. The last two finger⬛ on my sword-hand were bent sideways. Perpendicular to themselv⬛⬛. I managed not to scream.

Then I rolled and found myself face-to-face with the pale face of Greta and I did.

My attempt to scrabbl⬛ away from the corpse failed immediately as the brush of earth against my spine flared the chisel of pain embedded into every inch of my back into all-consuming agony. Dirt pressed against my cheek as I flailed away from what scorched me but the fire that burned me burned in me and there was no escape.

When I pressed my hands against the garden bed to rise, I felt the bones in my broken fingers shift. Then and there I v⬛⬛ited – thick strings of bile and undigested food appearing beneath my body. The shock of it shot me to my feet, where I barely managed to avoid slumping against the wall behind me.

Once again, I glanced at my fingers. I’d hold a sword again one day. Surely, I thought. But if I didn’t find a way to get through the next few minutes without it, I would never see another day.

Acro⬛s the outer courts, Ronnie gradually bro⬛⬛ht themselves to their feet. In front of them stood a dark blur – Taja, standing between the giant and Mother. His hand shook around the hilt of the sword I’d dropped in the explosion. A singular, shattered ghost knelt in the centre of it all with hands pressed against its eyes. Unlike any other I’d seen before, for it grew more solid with every second that passed.

I took a step towards them and nearly fell. Several paces distant, Maddie reached the bottom of the ladder – entirely unharmed – and moved towards me. Instead, I wrested my gait into a limping jog towards the two. It wouldn’t be fast enough.

The Jackal’s blade fell towards Taja like a scythe towards grain. It bounced off the threshes – stalks revealed as iron. Taja had blocked the first blow.

The second swooped like a bird, taking advantage of how the teenager’s stance had weakened. He barely batted that one away.

With his weapon swung far to the side, there was nothing to prevent a third from diving towards his chest like an eagle. Bereft of any other options, Taja simply let himself fall to the side.

I came to the abrupt realisation that all were moves I had taught him the previous day. Fresh as the bruises I’d left on his skin. Despite everything, they saved his life. But with his footing gone, she had him trapped.

Before Mother could deliver the fourth, final blow, Ronnie swept one massive leg sideways. Though she hopped over it, the motion gave Taja time to scurry backwards and attempt to yank the giant to their feet. He provided little help, but it was enough for Ronnie to finally rise with their back pressed against the wall. When the Strain stepped forward, they formed a wall of their own.

“You look familiar.” Mother grinned. “Like some big oaf o’ an Oxblood I met back in Spires.”

Ronnie’s eyes widened.

As did the Jackal’s smile. “You know, he talked a lot about a ‘Ronnie’ ‘fore I killed him. Said he was sorry fer everythin’. Name sound familiar t’you?” She barked a laugh. “Soon enough, I had him beggin’ forgiveness from me as well.”

Ronnie’s arm flailed towards her, only for the giant to collapse to their knees as the bleeding in their shoulder redoubled.

Mother managed h⬛lf a swing before I barged into her shoulder-first. She stumbled sideways under the weak assault. I swayed underneath one swing – spittle flying from between my lips as it wrenched whatever wound had taken my back – as Taja tossed the sword to me. I caught it from the air.

She stepped backwards once, then twice. “Wrong hand,” she told me.

I panted, attempting to focus my vision.

She squinted towards my grip. After her damaged vision filtered through her brain, her eyes widened. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” I wheezed. “Oh.”

“Guess I broke that. You wanna know what else I broke?”

I could barely stand. I needed more time. “Sure.”

Mother stepped backwards, gaze flickering between myself, Taja, Ronnie, and Maddie. When they fell on the Head, they found that the short woman had retrieved Whip’s crossbow from wherever it had been stashed. Mother hastily bent downwards to retrieve a hefty chunk of the wrecked stable mere moments before the young H⬛ad fired her weapon.

The bolt blurred into the makeshift shield. For a moment, I thought Mother had blocked it completely. Then a groan tore from her clenched teeth as her body swayed, revealing the quarrel’s tip had protruded through the wood far enough to pierce her forearm. But she’d survived long enough to reach her destination.

From the wreckage of the barn, she produced two things. What seemed to be a tortoiseshell, and a carved length of wood with several strings attached. Entirely separate. Broken.

Words dropped from my mouth like stones. “My lute.”

Mother sne⬛red. “I smashed it. An’ watch this.”

She dropped it to the dirt and stomped the wood to pieces.

“So damn easy.”

I felt my eyes shiver in their sockets. I took a single step forward.

Maddie had brought the crossbow to the ground. Her foot was in the stirrup, frantically rearming its firing mechanism. “Kit,” she gr⬛wled.

I paused. I saw my Mother. I felt her wrecked eyes on my skin. For just a moment, I saw as she did.

“Jus’ like killin’ yer Father.”

I looked at her.

“Oh yeah,” she drawled, a grin spreading across her grotesquely scarred face. “I lied ‘bout him bein’ killed by caravan guards. Really used t’like him, y’know? Thought I’d found a good partner. Man was different. A killer like me, but one with no ambition. Content t’know his place. Beneath me.”

I took another step towards her.

Maddie barked another warning. Taja said something.

My hands shivered as I stumbled closer.

Mother’s smile widened. “Do you know when that changed? Was when you were born. At first, I thought givin’ birth might change me; curb some o’ the harsher lines in me. But I felt nothin’ but sick lookin’ at you. You squalled, night after night, an’ I damn near strangled you for it. So dear old dad ended up bein’ th’ one who looked after you. Year after year with our little kit, each pilin’ more fat over him. Eyes only fer you. An’ he got soft. An’ he got weak. An’ he started t’get ideas.”

I twisted my visage furiously. “You- “

“But I still needed someone, Kit.” Her eyes bore into mine: savage and expectant. “‘Cause it just ain’t possible t’do everythin’ on yer own. To make that next step, you got to have someone keepin’ th’ ground beneath you free o’ dung. I very nearly gave up on endin’ him. But then I realised: I had you. You’d do anythin’ fer so much as a sideways look from me. An if you’d do anythin’, I could make you into anythin’. Like the perfect partner.

“I thought you was like me. Thought I needed t’keep you in line. But you know what?” She leaned forward. “You’re just another damn cattle. I killed him ‘cause o’ you, an’ I didn’t even get anythin’ out of it.”

Maddie had nearly cranked the mechanism into place. “Kit- “

I gave a low, guttural scream and charged at Mother. My feet ate the distance between us in heartbeats. My blade rose in preparation for a wide, overhead swing.

When I was five steps away, my mother’s vicious grin shifted fractionally. The mocking edge to it disappeared, replaced by a quiet relief. Her sword was raised in the only position her torn arm would allow: straightened in preparation to impale me on my own charge.

We met with the blunt sound of tearing flesh.

In the instant after the impact, we held one another. The sword I’d held clattered to the dirt dully. The dawn light lit neither blood nor gore on its edge. Harsh, jagged pants broke from my throat as pain coursed through my body. I could scarcely believe what had just happened. From the look in Mother’s eyes, neither could she.

I tore the dagger from her ribs with a soft sucking sound. It had been in my hand the instant after I’d dropped my sword. Her own sword departed her limp fingers. Its edge shone with the barest hint of my blood, drawn from a gouge along my ribs. Drip by drip, it was joined by Mother’s.

She coughed. “You weren’t mad?”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“You were pretendin’?”

“Yeah.”

“You knew I killed him?”

I swallowed. “Yeah.”

“How?”

“Cause I know you, Mother.” I tucked my arms under her armpits as she began to slump. “I knew you killed him the moment you came back alone. Who else would’ve done it?”

“Damn,” she wheezed. “I never… I always thought you’d leave if you knew.”

“Guess you were wrong.”

“Yeah.” A soft sigh. “Guess I was. Anyone ever tell you you’re a good liar?”

“Just you,” I said.

“Well.” My mother struggled to pull herself upright using my shoulders. “You are.”

From behind us, I heard Maddie shout, “Kit! If you can- “ She sobbed. “If you can still move her, I can take a shot!”

“It’s over,” I muttered to myself.

“Kit, you need to- “

“It’s over,” I said, louder. My voice quavered, and I swallowed heavily. “I’m fine.”

Then there was only silence, and the weight of the woman I hated falling apart in my arms. I’d fantasised about killing her, sometimes. The same way some people fantasised about vanquishing a god. It felt too real, now.

“Kit,” Mother said. “I…”

I leaned forward.

There was a tug at my belt as Mother ripped a knife from it and rammed it upwards towards my neck. I tried to lean backwards, but the arms I’d used to support her were trapped under hers in a death grip.

Before the moment passed me, I grabbed her wrist, causing the bones of my broken fingers to grind together. The pain robbed the strength of my grip, and with a sudden roll of her hand Mother casually broke away from it. Only one hand was left to keep the weapon from killing me. It wasn’t enough.

The dagger’s tip brushed my chin. I sucked in air and prepared to die.

“Got you,” Mother drawled weakly. And instead of ending me, she let the blade fall from her hand. It fell without a hint of blood on it.

She sagged onto my body.

“Guess we can call that one a draw, eh?” she muttered. “You never did beat me, in the end.”

“No,” I managed.

“But I guess I never beat you, either.”

Her breathing began to slow. Somehow, I thought I’d have more time. But she was so light. So suddenly old. Every breath aged her decades. Try as I might, I could barely feel where her fingers held mine.

My throat was suddenly tight. “Mother?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“You ever regret it?”

⬛-

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I-

I…

No. Not I.

I don’t know what her answer was.

I wasn’t there. I didn’t hear it.

Only one person in the outer courts did.

Whatever was said remains for her and her alone.

Gods know I’ve stolen enough already.

After this moment, Kit unravels within me. There are flashes of clarity. Cohesion. A solemn moment that I – that she – did not expect. Incomprehensible tears from her eyes. A weary question to those that remained. A weight as they are helped to their feet. A movement into the dark innards of the Fort, flames held aloft above their head. And pain and panic and deep dread. But the threads fray. The specifics blur and reappear amidst a mound of fog. The answers have been shredded, and most of the pieces are missing. I do know one thing.

The Jackal died in her daughter’s arms. Kit finished what she set out to do.

If only we were both so lucky.

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When the lights fled, the world faded in their absence. The darkness was all-consuming. As if the boundaries of my skull encompassed reality. You lost your body in such darkness. You could be convinced that the world had never existed.

You would be wrong, but convinced all the same.

Despite the absence of breaths or footsteps, I could feel the other Ravenblood moving through the room. As if I were treading water above the Dolphin itself – shape hidden beneath the fathomless blue of the ocean. Yet its presence was unmistakeable. I felt her lifeforce pace around me. Despite mingling with the smaller flames – bugs and insects – my attention nevertheless remained fixated on the one. Though her location was as obvious as it was in daylight, the specifics of her movements – her plans – were unknown.

My breathing was almost silent: lungs held in aching tension as I forced slowness into an organ that wanted nothing more than to panic. As I carefully weaved my way through the room using an internal map I was condensing from a world of colour, my steps were also silent. Even so, I couldn’t help but feel she knew precisely where I was.

Her gaze was unmistakeable.

I felt the edge of my runeslate and attempted to work my hand over the runes for light. The pain of both hands – one blistered from the brazier the night before and the other stripped of all skin – was enormous without sight to distract me. It served as undeniable proof they both existed. I fumbled once, twice, thrice. No light appeared.

The boundaries of my perception had expanded once again. My runeslate had run dry of divinity to power it, I realised. The Ravenblood had returned to me. Without fuel, it was merely a lump of rock.

In an attempt to trade blood for light, I shoved a tooth into my blistered hand and wrenched my head away. Only to be assaulted by the sensation of a thousand ants eating my skin. For a moment, I simply held my wrist and trembled against the urge to scream. What had happened?

It was only when I compared the agony of both hands together that I realised. With a wrench of my teeth, I’d degloved my entire hand.

My breath came and went in gasps. My body – the thing that always been there to support me, whatever my stupid ideas – was finally failing. The Lizardblood I’d stolen over twelve years ago could no longer keep my flesh on my bones.

As I hissed at my pain, the fire paused.

She knew where I was anyway. Silence was meaningless.

The appearance of my voice was sacrilege against the quiet. “You understand, right?”

Silence. The flame flitted around me.

I tried to look at her. “You know why I’m doing this!”

Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound of talons scratching along metal.

“You removed your Oxblood as well! Even though it would’ve killed you, one day.”

“I did not know that, at the time.” The voice was deep, yet edged with a far higher note. “The Houses do not share that information with their Blooded.”

“But if you had known,” I asked the darkness, “would you have done anything differently?”

No response, beyond the constant tapping. But I needed none, for I already knew the answer. “The Oxblood was dangerous. It was hurting us; it was hurting you. Instead of enduring it, you gave it to Jackson.”

A long, metallic screech. “The anger was a hammer with which I plied my craft. It was useful, until it was not.”

“It wasn’t useful. It was you.”

“I retired.”

“You can’t retire from blood. You can only die.”

“To die is to surrender any hope of improvement. So long as you live, there is a chance. Death is the end. But- “

“And if I live, when will it end? I don’t sleep anymore. All I do is stare downwards through the night, with only myself for company. The days blur into one another. The difference between yesterday and decades ago is so thin I can barely see it. I can’t string eight thoughts together without falling apart, and there is no end to it. All you do is…”

I curled my fingers incoherently. “All you’re doing is keeping me here. Let me go.”

A great, weighty pause. Sound ceased.

Then, “You deserve to be saved as well.”

And didn’t that word whisper with pain and promise? Like the shine of a pretty stone, before it’s ground into dust under the rapids of a river. Or the perfect balance of a blade, before it’s snapped under the force of another. Or the smile of someone you love, the moment before you lose them forever.

The chance to save them before they were lost was something no one could deny.

“This isn’t the way,” I said.

Ravenbloods were dangerous. Mad. I knew that personally. And with every death they stole, they only grew stronger. The Raven had kept its Aspirants’ madness controllable – it had consumed them before they frayed too far. But without Avri, there were no limits. Unleashed upon the world without a god to call it home, a Ravenblood would destroy countless lives. And who alive would be able to stop one with the skill of General Maja?

Just me.

My son, Alton, wouldn’t survive the Ravenblood. Neither would Tam, or the girls, or Head Maleen. Or Ronnie, or Taja, or Kit. Or even Jana, with Tippi and Crumpet, back in the farmstead where I’d grown up. Nor would Dash or Sash. Or Blake, or Erin. Or Jackson. Or Stitch. Or Miss Tran, or Jasmine or her family. Or the Butcher Street Boys, or even Peeler.

That wouldn’t change whether the Ravenblood wore Gale or I. This was the last chance.

“I have to kill you,” I told it. “It’s the only way to save everyone.”

“What about you?”

“It’ll save me too.”

“You’re delusional.”

“Like mother, like son.”

I heard the stark smile in its voice. “Like son, like mother.”

An explosion from the outer court interrupted my thoughts. I didn’t have time for caution. Kit had been hit; Ronnie was hurting. I couldn’t play the fight safe anymore – an hourglass hung over my head, and it was impossible to see how much sand remained in it.

I finished slicing the flesh of my hand with my fingernails and wiped a bloodied palm over my runeslate. A beat later, my fingers danced across the runeslate, lighting the room in a low glow.

In the space where I felt the other Ravenblood, something walked through the light. Solid, four-limbed. I swung my sword through it and felt no resistance.

It was fully formed. Its clothing was visible, even while shattered by the air – coloured a rich purple. It had a dark beard. And no facial features. A more complete ghost than any I’d seen before. Beautiful in its vague permanence. Somehow, I’d sensed life from it.

Beneath it lay the source of that sense: a pot coursing with black blood. Within it, scratchings of runes circulated the lifeforce through an intricate maze filled with invisible walls. A bloodied knife lay beside it.

It was a primitive imitation of a system of veins connected to a heart. Slowly ebbing away even as I watched it. But it’d been enough to fool me for a moment, and that was all the time the other Ravenblood needed.

Too late, I realised that one of the smaller flames I had ignored stood behind me.

I turned.

“I’m sorry.”

There was a flash of movement as Maja slammer her halberd down onto my left shoulder, shattering both the bone-layer I’d grown over its top as protection and the collarbone beneath. Splinters of my skeleton embedded deep in my flesh. Somehow, I managed to keep my feet.

“I’m sorry.”

I tried to throw myself sideways. Yet the halberd’s descent was faster. It buried its blunted edge halfway through my shoulder. Black blood sprayed upwards, splattering across my face and eye. My arm jerked, then stilled – heedless of my attempts to move it. The sheer force of the blow slammed me to my knees.

“I’m sorry.”

I jerked my one good arm to the runeslate still strapped to its twin. Then the halberd descended one final time, cleaving through the shattered bone and paltry remnants of flesh tying my arm to my body.

I groped weakly for a runeslate that was no longer there. Then tried to find the arm it was meant to be attached to.

My eyes sluggishly followed a smear of light. Across the room, a runeslate lit the spur of ruined flesh it was tied to. Little more than thin strips of muscle and sinew hugging a piece of bone. Life sprayed from the stump they had left behind. The runeslate’s glow reflected off the midnight blood pooling across the room.

Then its absence hit like a wraith clawing through the edges of what I was and I screamed.

Every fibre of my soul was filled with agony. It erupted from my lungs where I sent it deep into the earth pressed against my face, to be idly considered by whatever distant thing lurked beneath the veneer of reality; digested or discarded according to its whims. The mere presence of the pain was a brutal, senseless injustice. Forced upon my body for no other reason than the way in which it was carved.

My body bled. My spine creaked. My throat tore itself apart.

The pain did not ebb, but my energy did. My breath ran out.

With a sullen click, a divot on the bloodtech communicator in my pocket shifted upwards. The others had defeated the Jackal. That wouldn’t be the end, though.

I tried to get up. But I listed to the side and fell. My cheek pressed against a warm pool of my own blood. The pain was a mist I could not bat away.

A face appeared. Bone-white. Two hands shook. Something pressed against my ravaged shoulder and I managed to scream once more as the scent of burning flesh filled my nostrils. It stopped, but neither the stench nor the pain did.

I bit the thing’s collar and brought my blade to rest on its neck. It froze. The device it had burned me with clattered to the ground.

If I had the energy, I could’ve opened its throat.

No. That was a lie.

I had the energy. But I saw her – swaying atop the roof at the blood loss from her missing arm – in its eyes. I let the onyx sword fall from my fingers and slumped back onto my knees. The floor had been frigid. The blood soaking into my pants was only slightly warmer.

In front of my swaying vision, the hands shook. They held a cylinder. Filled with blood. My blood.

I tried to move away, but gods I was tired. Couldn’t sleep, though. That was beyond me.

Lurking above the haze that strangled my soul, the Ravenblood spoke.

“You will be fine. You will be okay. The blood – the blood will not stay where it is. The blood will come back as it always does, yes? For the mere physicality of Godsblood cannot account for its properties; the blood does not follow the laws of base matter. When used in runic arrays it always returns to its host; when spilled upon the ground its divinity does not persist alongside the mere liquid.

“That’s how a city like Spires operates. It does nothing outside a body outside a god outside a host it is bound to its host so you will be fine, Mael, you will be fine. Divinity will find you again; everything will be returned to where it should be. You will be saved, whether you choose it or not.”

Thick strings of saliva fell from my open mouth.

“Val, Val has been hurt. I need to go. You will be fine, yes?”

Don’t, I tried to say. But all I did was grope at my stump as the pain choked sound from me.

“Yes. Yes. I’ll return. But before I go…”

I writhed as the cylinder was brought to my neck. The chill of the metal as it clamped onto my veins. Then with a furious burst of energy, I slapped it with my remaining arm to the floor and broke it under my boot.

“No. No. This cannot… You cannot lose this. When it returns the divinity in all likelihood will be empty you need him and his Foxblood you need it I will hold it.”

Then a grotesque slurping.

“You will be fine.”

Then footsteps. Then a door closed. A flicker of light. Then it disappeared once more.

“Ngh,” I choked into the dark. “Agh.”

No one was there. Just myself, the lights, and the ghosts stepping above me, over me, through me, appearing increasingly solid with every heartbeat that passed but empty, because no one had saved them before the end. Only I could’ve. Only I could’ve.

The pain. Gods, the pain. It was eating me alive. What would be left, at the end of all this?

I choked and pawed at the burnt stump where my arm once was and I needed to find the energy to get up. I couldn’t leave them again. Couldn’t fail again. Couldn’t let what little I had be lost. I howled at my feebleness. Then felt something snap in my body.

My muscles strained against themselves as my body twisted. I tried to rise. Tried to rise. To rise. Rise.

I-

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-⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ Fort, makeshift torches raised above our heads. Ronnie’d been carrying an old tinderbox. Might’ve been Davian’s, once. ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛ few small windows providing light, darkness shrouded the hall.

⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ was ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, a⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛a⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. Chairs ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ empty stretch in the centre of the room. ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ black droplets ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ghosts flitted across the room, mindless of ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛.

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛, Ronnie’s ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ as they tried to sign. But twitch was all they did. ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ in their shoulder must’ve messed with ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛, ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛; ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛’ ⬛ ⬛ doctor.

The giant’s lip curled in teary frustration. I felt the same. I still couldn’t hold my sword. ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛ never would again.

⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛-

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-and I walked out.

“Gale?” Maleen’s voice rung from a place ahead of me.

I carefully closed the pair of doors behind me. “Is…” I supported myself against a table I stumbled. Blood loss was doing me no favours. But it would remedy itself soon. “Val dead?”

“Yeah,” came a familiar drawl. But it was too young and too open to be hers.

A deep, shuddering sigh emerged from my chest.

“Is Vin alive?”

“Yes,” I responded quickly. “You shouldn’t worry.”

“Looks like he did a number on you. Boiled yer creepy eyes; damn near peeled the skin off yer back. If you don’t tell us why he ain’t here, I might jus’ finish the job.” The bite of the threat was blunted by the fatigue colouring her tone.

“He is…” I searched for the words. “I’m helping him with something.”

Simultaneously, Kit and Maleen spoke.

“Ain’t you Maja? Why th’- “

“Gale, this- “

They finished their statements, but I didn’t hear them. Maja. Gale. I…

A piercing pain split my skull. My thoughts twisted in on themselves recursively – a runic array that grew deeper the longer I spent gazing upon it; a series of broken engagements in an endless war. I frowned. I twitched.

“Turn back,” I interrupted.

A pause. Their breathing was harsh against my ears. The stagnant air of the room pressed against my skin. As did the scent of blood curling through my nose. My pain slowly grew sharper. Babs’ Foxblood – I hadn’t thought I would assimilate it so quickly. I’d thought it would be more pleasant. But I could almost judge-

“What’re you gonna do if we don’t?”

I didn’t want to voice it. Not in front of the little girl that used to look up to me, when everything had been almost alright. But my silence was enough.

“Can’t you stop this, Gale?”

Gale. Me. “I can’t, Maleen. I’ve come too far, and this is too important.”

“This won’t bring your family back, Gale.”

My eyes clenched tight upon the tears that suddenly sprung behind them. “I know.” I opened them again. “But I can still save those that remain.”

“But the Raven’s Cult?” Disbelief coloured her tone. “Why?”

“Why do you think that out of the eight gods that walk this land, only one fostered its own Cult?”

“Big ego,” Kit drawled dispassionately. “An’ th’ Dolphin don’t walk.”

The question had been rhetorical. “It’s because out of all the gods that walk this earth, only one saw us as anything more than pebbles on the ground. Only one cared.”

“The Raven killed countless people, Gale,” Maleen crooned. “It was mad.”

“All gods are mad!” I retorted. “But the Raven was trying to save people.”

“By killing them?” I could hear the brush of her hair as she shook her head. Her soft voice continued. “It doesn’t matter, Gale. The Raven is dead. No Cult can exist without it.”

“You don’t understand,” I stated emphatically. “More remains upon death than just a corpse.”

There was a faint squelch as Val’s daughter rubbed her eyes. “Maddie, this ain’t gonna work. His head’s jus’ ‘bout scampered off.”

“Then leave,” I told her.

The floor creaked as Kit turned to address me. “Give us Vin, and we’ll be outta yer hair faster’n you can say blood.”

“What will you do if I do not?” I rumbled.

“You know.”

“The four of you stand little chance. Your wounds are far too heavy for you to pose a significant threat.”

“How d’you even- “ The Jackal’s child spat on the floor. “Y’know what?”

“Kit,” Maddie repeated, “please.”

“I- “ Kit began, then paused as something rustled. “Ronnie, I can hardly tell what yer sayin’ even when- “

A guttural wail pierced from the door behind me.

I struggled not to weep. “He’ll be okay.”

They-

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-⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ the Ravenblood, drawing a dagger with my good hand ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛.

⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, “⬛⬛⬛⬛!” ⬛⬛⬛ we were past the time for waiting. That’d been Vin screaming, as if he were on the verge of death, ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ let the thing in front of us ⬛⬛⬛⬛ its way, he’d end up ⬛⬛ empty-eyed corpse ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛…

If he were dying, we needed to be there for him. And the Ravenblood was in the way.

⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛ was within range of the blinded creature’s halberd, ⬛⬛-

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-heard her approach and swept my halberd horizontally. The lack of resistance revealed my miss, as did a knife tearing a long gouge through my stomach. Yet my attacker was too slow to avoid a follow-up swing directed downwards, where it impacted against a leg with an audible snap. The girl screamed and crumpled, but I had no time to neutralise her completely – the heavy steps of the mute giant were already within range.

For a distended moment, they paused, giving ample notice for me to I step aside before a boot that would have crushed my ribcage flew through my previous position. Using the momentum of my first blow, I spun, reversed my grip, and rammed the butt of the halberd into the Strain’s skull. I took two steps sideways – I could not be certain Ronnie had been incapacitated, weakened by blood-loss as my attack was – and as I’d predicted the giant barrelled through the position I had left.

As they passed, I brought the weight of my body down upon the heel of the Strain with a snap, causing them to topple like a felled tree. Then I swung my halberd horizontally, misjudging my target – the head – and instead of chopping it in half merely slammed it with my haft. When I moved forward to end them – the threat such a large individual posed to my blinded self vastly outweighed the consequences of saving them – something pierced through my abdomen with enough force to send me stumbling away.

The pain nearly overwhelmed me before I crushed it. A cursory grope revealed the instrument to be an arrow or bolt of some kind. It had likely perforated my intestines, however for a Lizardblood like myself such an injury would result only in hampered mobility and a week of sickness, provided I could ignore the pain. I could have likely deflected the projectile entirely, had I properly assimilated Owlblood into my fighting style.

Owlblood? Wasn’t I-

The sound of cranking interrupted my thoughts-

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-⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛.

I managed to silence my screams ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. “⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛,” ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, “it can hear where you are.”

⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛’ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, and launched it towards Maddie. It shattered against her shoulder, spinning her around until the side of her head cracked against the stone wall behind her.

⬛-

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-rose to my knees. Agony suffused my body. Fumbled blindly for the thing it had dropped. Then rose to my feet, where-

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-I heard Maleen slump to the floor. Neither her nor the giant moved. Val’s daughter was conscious; however, her grunts and muted howls were immobile. She posed no threat. But while they breathed, they could interfere. Were I still the general I once was, killing them outright would be the wise move. But better options were available to me, now. It was possible to save them as well. Yet I could not begin immediately.

One remained standing. Where was he?

I could feel his lifeforce tremble. He must have purposefully stifled his breathing. All I needed to do was wait for a mistake. I slowly picked up a chair, braced it against a table, and broke off all four of its legs with the side of my foot. I-

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-⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛’ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛.

My eyes flickered to Taja, painstakingly lowering his leg between splinters of furniture. Whip’s loaded crossbow lay under one arm. The other was clamped tight around his mouth, beneath a pair of bulging eyes. With every step, he drew minutely closer to the Ravenblood. ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛-

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-balance was off. In the darkness, I couldn’t know why. Had to move, but when I took my first step I stumbled to my left-

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-where a creak emanated from. I threw one of the legs towards it, magnifying the force transform the blunt splinter of wood into a javelin. It broke against a back wall. Even so, I heard a grunt. Yet while drawing my arm back for a second attempt, a cacophony shattered my attempts at focusing.

“AARGH!” Kit bellowed from beside me as she continually sheathed and unsheathed her sword to create a jagged screech of metal.

The second missed entirely, and whatever movements the teenager was making lay concealed behind the storm of noise.

So I took the third chunk of wood and whipped it blindly towards the young woman’s body. Something-

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-crunched.

There was pain. And a sudden sense of wrongness that ran through it all.

I looked sideways. To the end of the arm.

Fingers were twisted like the branches of a gnarled, dead tree. Defeated in their life’s search for sunlight. Made grey by that terrible loss. Blood leaked from that ruin. Bone peeked through in places. It was my hand. My sword-hand.

I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand.

The blood continued to leak.

Above, the Ravenblood muttered, “I’m sorry, Val. I could not help you. But at least your daughter remains.”

It reached down, daubed its fingers in blood, and spread it across-

-my forehead. I watched myself. A pale, black-haired monstrosity. Flayed spine; dark blood spreading across its torso. And a tall, dark-skinned young woman; cheeks split by twin scars. The hand that had been my life ruined in a single blow. Eyes wide with the horror of a soul cracked wide open.

I remembered her ⬛⬛⬛⬛.

“No,” I told myself. “Don’t fight it.”

But the twin consciousnesses began to ⬛⬛⬛⬛ bec⬛use I w⬛⬛ldn’t al⬛⬛w m⬛self to become ju⬛t a memory.

No. Wait. Me? ⬛?

It wouldn’t matter. The strength of the blood that coursed through me was undeniable. My will forced the quavering walls of the channel open.

A bolt rammed through my neck and my concentration ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, and I was one again, but I barely caught the edge of the channel and I-

----------------------------------------

-could feel her dying. I was going to save-

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-her, I would not allow K⬛t to fade into nothing. But ⬛-

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-had to save them. Had to save them. Just a bit further, and I could end what hurt us. I-

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-fel⬛ myself ⬛⬛ain away. H⬛⬛low. Frag⬛ent. ⬛-

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-pushed the door open and staggered into the dining hall.

At first, my entrance was unnoticed. A constant stream of ghosts entered and exited the Fort, conspiring to block my vision. Through their shoulders and shattered silhouettes I took in what my absence had enabled.

Head Maleen was unconscious near the doorway, while Ronnie bled quietly beneath the table Taja had mounted. The young man frantically worked the loading mechanism of his crossbow. Kit writhed feebly on the ground beneath the other Ravenblood – Ma or Gale or Colin or Ambrose or Greta or Henrik or whatever it was – whispered meaningless reassurances to the crippled swordswoman. For Kit’s dominant hand did not resemble a hand so much as the broken end of a pipe, continually pumping her life away.

They breathed. I could still save them.

The Ravenblood itself should’ve been dead. Flaps of skin hung off its body where my knives had struck it earlier. There was a bolt embedded in its neck and a gouge in its stomach. Onyx blood smeared every inch of its skin. As I watched, the wound in its gut blinked wetly. A small eye had grown there. Yet despite it all, the creature stood.

Taja was the first to notice me. He flinched backwards, and fell off the table to land heavily on his side. His jaw worked silently. His eyes never left my left arm.

When the Ravenblood’s gaze shot to the fallen teenager, I lurched towards it. The monster took a straight chunk of wood and reared back, causing me to whip my left arm forward and slap it out of its hand. It turned, and I saw the blood on its forehead. The return blow knocked it aside.

My eyes flickered to Kit as she slowly died. I could still save her. I-

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-⬛⬛⬛⬛ Orvi ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛.

Through my slowly bolstering vision, I saw what looked like him next to my body as well.

“⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛,” ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛. “⬛⬛⬛ ⬛’ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛.”

I heard it from where I stood, as well. “I can save you,” he said. “But I’ll need to take your hand.”

“N⬛”, ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛.

“No,” I heard myself say.

Then I said it again. “No. I’m saving her.”

“K⬛⬛. ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛’ t ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛o⬛. ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛’ l⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛f ⬛ d⬛⬛’ ⬛.”

He – something about that word seemed off – ignored me. “Kit. I won’t make you. But you’ll die if I don’t.”

⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛.

I sobbed. Then, briefly, my vision returned to the singular as she fought me.

“I won’t let myself become just a memory,” Kit hissed furiously. “I won’t.”

Orvi nodded, took his blade in his left hand, and brought it down upon her wrist. It severed without resistance. The gnarled, broken thing that was separated seemed foreign to my body.

As if it had dropped from the sky mere seconds before. For an instant, its departure barely seemed a loss. Then I realised that with it had gone any hope of healing, and ⬛ howled.

I paused, blinking my new eye. Orvi’s left hand?

But that thought shattered as I felt ⬛⬛ lifeforce drain faster, and knew I still had a chance to save her. Myself.

As Orvi produced something from his pocket – the heated device I’d hastily scratched mere minutes before to cauterise his wounds – I charged him. He batted aside the tip of my halberd, but the bulk of my weight barged into him. Yet even as I rammed him into a wall, he managed to toss the device to the floor. Where it slid against Kit’s side.

I ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ it, and ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ against ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛.

I saw myself seize it, and smelled it sizzling against the lone hand that held it.

⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛-

-she released a harsh, guttural scream as she pressed against the stump of her forearm, cauterising the limb. But the barest hint of the connection remained, until-

-I pressed my forehead against the Ravenblood’s and suddenly felt the world as a trio, then severed the conduit between the three of us.

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That’s the last time I was ever Kit.

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The swordswoman shuddered upon the ground. Her eyes – rolled back in her head – began to redden as several capillaries burst. Blood leaked from her nose. Her lifeforce flickered like a candle in a dream.

Severing the connection wounded the Ravenblood. The person they were trying to save invariably died afterwards. But it seemed that for the girl I used to be, something important had been taken.

“Taja!” Orvi yelled. “Get them out of here!”

Then a chisel of bone rammed into my gut once, twice, thrice, and I shoved myself off him to stumble backwards. It was there that I received my first good look at him since my vision had miraculously returned.

Each wound my son had taken had torn a little more of his skin away. Alongside his cheek, half of his gaunt face had been ripped from its flesh. His teeth were exposed in a permanent grimace. The gulleys and peaks of the other half of his visage were filled with the midnight liquid leaking from his eyes and ears and nostrils. His right arm was a chunk of meat riddled with dark veins, capped by the onyx blade he somehow still clutched. His left arm…

His left arm was not human. The shattered pieces of his shoulder met an alien material spun of glistening darkness. Threads joined together to weave what resembled a thick, muscular arm yet as I watched the appendage collapsed as if formed of primordial ooze. A blink later and it had reassembled itself into a shorter, more dextrous appendage. There were no indications it had ever been anything malleable. Until it collapsed barely a heartbeat later and reformed once again. Then did it again.

My tongue began to work again. “Orvi, do you- “

He took a single step backwards.

“Don’t- “

He ran. I pursued.

We-

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-exited the dining hall at a sprint, swerving towards the grand staircase at its end. My gait was off – some great weight seemed to tug on my left side – yet the Ravenblood’s wounds were slowing it. We fled the sunlight peeking through the door by the entrance to the Fort. I needed to give Taja space to clear the dining area; to save them.

That word rung like a gong. A shiver travelled through my body at the thought of it – neither painful nor pleasant but vibrating with a sensation I could not define.

My eyes kept catching on the beautiful craftsmanship of the stairs; my ears on the way our pained grunts reverberated through the space; my feet on the strength of the stairs as I mounted the first landing. The impeccably smooth stone of the railing seemed to dominate everything. The air around stunk of lightning. It all seemed so still.

Was the blood within me beginning to subsume my humanity? Was this the moment where I transitioned from a merely human monster to a Ravenkin proper? Was I finally losing my mind?

It didn’t matter. All I needed to do was hold on for a bit longer. When we reached the Hall of Mirrors, I could end it.

There was a grunt as the Ravenblood behind me smashed its shin on the first landing, shortly followed by a purple glow that caught my leg moments before I entered the second floor. I tripped and fell into a roll – the same kind I’d seen Kit or Davian or myself perform, when I wasn’t falling apart – before springing back to my feet. The Ravenblood had caught up.

“Ambrose,” it said, lighting the everburning lanterns along the room with a wave of a hand, “stop. You won’t be able to get rid of- ”

I slammed my sword back into its sheath and grew a long, pointed shaft of bone from my right wrist. In an instant beyond conscious comprehension, I panned through a hundred different memories of archers and pulled a memory of Davian firing downwards, then mimicked his stance. I nocked the makeshift arrow on the string of my left arm and fired it at my adversary.

A purple shroud turned what might’ve been a head-shot into a mere torn ear. The Ravenblood winced and leaned to its side.

“Ambrose- “

I retreated several more steps and adjusted my strategy. More power. The memory I drew was of Whip, leaning heavily on her crutch as she pointed her armament towards an oncoming monster. The mechanisms of a crossbow were far too complex to imitate, but the sheer force was simple. I nocked the haphazard bolt on the mechanism on my left arm and fired it.

At our close range, it flew directly into the Ravenblood’s cheek, tearing half its face away. It gurgled for a moment, then grabbed both the bolt in its neck and the one I’d shot and ripped them out in a shower of blood and cartilage. I expected the monster to fall. Instead of falling, it stepped forward and swung its halberd.

I hopped backwards, scarcely avoiding its tip disembowelling me. Maja’s form filled the hallway.

“You,” it managed, voice a whispered croak rattling from its ruined neck. “Will fail.”

“I’m going to end this.”

“Is it,” it laboriously uttered, “worth throwing yourself away? Giving up the search for more?”

“More?” A harsh laugh bubbled from my throat. “There is no more than this."

“Child…”

Its voice faded. We lurched in the thin light of the hallway: entities that should not, by right, be standing.

“We,” I said, gesturing from the Ravenblood to myself, “are marionette monsters. Tied by the laws of blood and bone. Pulled this way and that by those barbed manacles, sharp enough that each tug flays the flesh of our being just a bit more. Until every brush of air against our skin is agony, and our flailing breaks the world around us. And when our energy is spent, all that remains will be a set of veins, dancing to the tune of their chains.

“I can’t leave you to that fate,” I finished. “I’ll save you.”

“You chose to help me.” Its speech sounded like bones scraping together. “You took this path.”

“Do you really think, even now, that my actions can violate what I am?” I tapped an onyx vein on my cheek. “Nothing I do is outside the reach of my chains. I cannot see the way in which they move me, but they move all the same.”

“To your death?”

“Dumb iron cares nothing for whether it lives or dies.”

“Why are we different, then?” it pleaded. “Trying to do different things?”

“Are we, Ma?” I looked at the dark blood caking her body; the single eye peering from the darkness of her stomach. “Because in the end, we’re both trying to save one another. The only difference between us is that you haven’t lived in these veins for as long as I have.”

I-

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-looked at this ruin of a man in front of me. Who had crumbled under nothing more than the weight of his own existence. I tried to pull him back upwards.

“Is there nothing for you here, child?” My questions were a prayer that I hoped became his. “I remember you playing with Sash and Dash. I see you now, with your friends. There are so many people in this world. Enough places to fill a hundred lifetimes. Soaring vistas; snowy mountains – on the corner of the world our continent sits in, you could spend a lifetime walking and never see it all.”

“And if I spent a lifetime walking, would I see it with different eyes? Ponder it with a different skull? Feel it with a different heart?” A weak smile fell across the half of his torn face that remained. He shook his head. “My world will be the same no matter where I go.”

If only I were more eloquent. If only I had not wasted so many years dead. If only I had left him in a kinder way. If only I could reach past the void that separated us and persuade him that he needed to live.

…But I was capable of that now, was I not? Reaching past the abyss that divided people was within my domain. What was the purpose of acquiring Ravenblood, if not saving the people I cared for?

“There it is,” my son said.

My halberd thundered towards him and his ensuing parry was weak enough that he nearly lost hold of his blade. That first, testing blow echoed through the hallway.

I paused to allow him time to switch the onyx blade from his right hand to his otherworldly left.

In return, he gave me time to scrawl a set of runes in my own blood along the edge of the halberd, designed to make its blunt edges as sharp as my son’s sword.

He painstakingly thinned his stance, anticipating the thrusts our narrow environment would force upon us. I did the same.

When our weapons touched again, their echoes were music.

For my first stab, my counterpart retorted with a simple step. His rebuttal came in the form of two whirling slashes, which was rebuked by an open palm against the blade’s flat. When I pulled my overextended halberd backwards to catch him in the spine, my son neatly anticipated the strategy and slipped beneath. His response drew a hint of blood before I rebuffed with a flare of indigo magic. We paused for a beat, then fell upon one another once more.

Each of our exchanges seemed perfectly prepared, as if instead of reading the other’s moves in the barest twitches of muscle we had known them from a timeless rehearsal, spanning eons but preserved in the crystallised breath of a moment, before it shattered upon the future’s arrival.

My own steps were informed by the skills I had painstakingly learned over decades of discipline, the burgeoning acuteness of my perception, and the magic that once been the only way I could help the world; his I recognised as drawn from his memory – the flowing northern forms of the Jackal and her greatest student; rapid projectiles from a bow or crossbow; the falling of a great axe powered by an immense musculature; my own precise, gliding forms created to reduce tendon strain – judiciously applied by an understanding beyond his years. All chosen in an eyelid’s flicker.

Time lost its weight as our weapons sung together. Steps were given; taken. Blows were exchanged. Avoidances measured in the beat of the other’s movements. Our injuries bloomed the same colour. But try as we might, our positions grew more precarious. Our dance inched closer to its finale.

That’s the true hell. Despite our best efforts, all things end.

The tip of my halberd dug into his chest, flaying the skin from his torso. His sword took my right arm at the elbow. With my left, I cleaved his right leg in two. On his way to the ground, he twisted his body to sever my left leg. In one final spin, I grasped my halberd, braced it in indigo, and cleaved it entirely through my counterpart’s skull. It embedded in the stone behind with a thud.

The wound spanned the breadth of his cheekbone and upper head, stealing an eye, a brow, and a quarter of his head.

We fell to the floor. Ebony liquid began to pump across the wood in gouts. It took a moment for my mind to return.

“Orvi?” I asked. “Mael? Ambrose?”

I dug the fingernails of remaining hand into the floorboards. They slipped. I tried to push my body towards him with my leg. I could not. All I could do was bleed.

“No,” I croaked.

I had not intended to kill him. Yet it was a fool who raised their weapon with anything other than murderous intent. When had I become-

I stopped.

My son’s lifeforce was steady.

In fact, it had barely flickered.

I had been entirely wrong.

All I had been thinking of throughout our battle was who I was fighting.

I had forgotten to consider what I was fighting.

From where it had spilled, the Ravenblood he’d lost began to slowly draw closer to him. It crept up his body. Into his wounds. Around them. Through them.

Despite the missing limbs and the gouge torn through his skull, he began to pull himself upright.

I-

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I…

I…

Half my vision was gone. Where it used to be dwelled nothing at all. I didn’t fear that like I used to. Not the quiet itself. But it wasn’t the emptiness that always exists between spaces. It was the absence of the blind. Those that failed to perceive what lay before them. A promise of colour, hidden behind a wall that could never be broken.

I feared that. And I feared it would remain that way forever.

When my vision doubled, that fear endured. As it did when my vision tripled. Quadrupled.

I raised the arm I still possessed to grasp the stone wall behind me and pulled myself into a seated position. Opposite me, the other Ravenblood did the same. The tips of our boots touched.

“It won’t work,” it whispered.

“It will,” I insisted.

“Death won’t kill what we are. When has it ever?”

“There has to be an end.”

As I watched, the creature opposite’s bleeding halted. Then began to reverse.

“You believe our death will destroy the blood.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think happens to a Blooded’s divinity when they die?

“It fades.”

The blood gathered at the end of its-

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-limbs.

“Why would it?” I asked.

“That’s what happens when any Blooded dies,” was the response. “After a time, the divinity fades from them.”

“Haven’t you wondered why?”

“…Not really. Isn’t it the sun?”

The blood began to thread itself into something more solid.

“Is divinity so weak as to be defeated by mere sunlight? And when you shed your blood and leave it in the sun, is that divinity lost forever?”

“…No.”

“When your blood is used in the creation of magic, is it lost?”

“It comes back. But it has something to return to. Nothing remains of the dead.”

The claim hung precariously above us: amalgams of the deceased. The blood at the end of his limbs-

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-continued to wind downwards.

“The return of the blood is the principle the Spires of Heltia maintained itself upon. An entire city can only rest on a fundamental thing.”

“But a city lives and breathes. A corpse does not.”

“Then consider the corpse of an Oxblood. Is its divinity so weak to disappear from mere exposure? Or does it vanish because it goes somewhere?”

“This is all speculation.”

The roots of the limbs solidified, then began to shift. The beginnings of a dozen distinct arms and legs flitted across the eerie substance.

“My hypothesis was that the mechanism by which blood returns does not cease alongside the flesh.”

“Why would the blood not decay? Like anything else?”

“Because it is unlike anything else. Godsblood needs a host. And so the Oxblood would return to the highest concentration of its ilk that remained.”

“…Enn. The Ox.”

There was a constant, rhythmic beating-

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-as his obsidian heart – exposed from our battle – began to be covered by the slow crawl of the blood.

“All evidence pointed here. Do you remember the teachings of Faces? It must feel long ago, now.”

“Ghosts are caught by gods. Only bloodletting can free them.”

“Doesn’t that sound familiar? And why would gods, hunted and bled by humanity, not eventually run out of Divinity? They are not all Dure. How can such grievous injuries be healed?”

“…Because their blood always comes back.”

The ends of the limbs grew defined, then redefined as they shifted. The heart was concealed; hidden tight at the centre of his being.

“It’s obvious, if you think for a moment. But the most obvious answer – the most convenient answer – is the one most believe.”

“What does it matter? The god of Ravenblood is dead, now. There’s nothing for our blood to return to.”

“Oh, my sweet child. When a god dies, where do you think its blood goes? The next highest concentration of its ilk.”

“…It’s just a hypothesis. A guess. You said so yourself.”

He began to push himself upright, and-

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-the Ravenblood followed.

“It was. Until I confirmed it.”

“You’re lying.”

I picked up the halberd that lay between my feet. The thing opposite grabbed the sword that had fallen from my hands. Thick, shadowy ghosts flitted up and the hallway, pacing silently through a world that had long since moved past them.

“Gods twist reality around them. The weight of their blood warps the world beneath their feet.”

“You’re wrong.”

I moved to block its retreat and stabbed with the point of the halberd. It stepped backwards with a smooth parry. A shattering of air, growing increasingly solid, moved through our weapon as if they did not exist.

“It’s true. You will have noticed. Dure draws small pieces of the land towards itself. That is what created the sandstorm in the Wastes. Enn pulls the world into the wake of its movement. That is what kills most of its victims. Kani enhances the senses of all creatures around it. That is what drives those within its territory mad. And what about the Raven? Think, child. What does the Raven do?”

I roared and swung my halberd. It flew through air and the countless ghosts that dwelled within and met neither.

“When House Esfaria finishes killing every single Ravenkin that ate Avri’s body – that split its divinity between them – and lets their blood ‘lose potency’ in the sun…” Its voice smoothened as it healed. Became familiar. “…where does the blood go?”

I braced my halberd sideways and barged into the Ravenblood, shoving it further and further backwards along the Hall. I was met with no resistance beyond the burning question in its eyes.

“When all of the Raven’s divinity accumulates in the veins of a single being, how does the world twist?”

There was a weight to the air around us. Moments stretched upon themselves until it felt as if they might last forever. In that space, everything was precious. From the weight of my blows to the dappled colours within the eyes that bloomed on the shifting limbs of my adversary. A great, terrible beauty, metastasizing through my body with every pulse of my veins.

Zealotry coloured its words. “The weight of its divinity calls forth the memory of the land.”

“…The god creates ghosts,” I realised.

The ghosts flitting around us – after-images of maids and guards and nobles from decades before – did not see us. They did not care. But we did.

We halted before the entrance to the Hall. My many eyes shuddered closed. The cold tendrils of the monster forced them open.

“Do you see, now?” it told me with a dreadful smile. “It’s not the gods that make the blood.

"It’s the blood that makes the gods.”

I looked at the thing.

Then I raised a leg and-

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-kicked me into the Hall of Mirrors.

Cold stone pressed against my back. Shadows danced as the everburning lanterns I had lit outside began to fade. But enough light remained to reveal the monster that had killed me peering from each wall. It peeked from every direction, gaze fixed upon my own. I pressed my hands over my eyes, but there were too many to blind them all.

“Do you see?” it hissed. “Do you see? What are you?”

I staggered upright, sword in hand. A silhouette brushed against my side and I slashed at it. Another, I attempted to stab, but found no resistance to my blow. A third flickered from the corner of one of my eyes, and I swung down upon it only to shatter a table. All were ghosts; crowding the hall from wall to wall and amplified endlessly by the mirrors.

“Are you Gale? Maja?”

Each name was a chisel through my head, pitting thought and memory against one another.

“Greta? Colin-

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“-Ambrose, Henrik, Kit, Gast,” and I felt myself insensate, manic, furious; dozens of clawing fingernails grinding along the inside of my skull, but my mouth kept moving, “Wil, Tully- “

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“-Vin, Orvi, Corvin? What are you?” it demanded. “What are you?!”

And I had no answers. Just the thing I remembered tearing my body apart, over and over, staring at me, and the static tearing my head in a hundred directions, and the muted movements of the ghosts that once lived here.

With a howl, I rose and charged at the walls of the Hall, sword screeching across the reflective surface. Shards exploded with every blow, embedding in the flesh that seemed to constrict my bones.

The Ravenblood leaned on its halberd. Its eyes were fixed on the floor.

“If we were the last Ravenbloods, and both of us died, would I have been right? Would it have ended?”

I slammed the pommel of the sword into the thing, then watched its form find a dozen ways to form an arm and do the same.

“No,” it answered. “It would just gather here, wouldn’t it? In the bones of this place. Until some other soul picked it up.”

As the image fractured, I saw myself multiply.

“Did Avri know what it was doing, before it died?”

I recoiled.

Black droplets leaked from the Ravenblood’s eyes. “And if we died… If I’d done what I set out to do… What would happen if there were two more Ravenbloods?”

I stumbled away. My lopsided legs caught on the ground.

“It would just go to one of them.” It placed two arms over its head: one flayed, the other blooming an all-consuming black. “I’d be putting these chains on them.”

I tried to rally my will against what faced me, as I had done so a thousand times before. But neither halberd nor blade could defeat it. There would be no victory.

“Oh, gods.”

And-

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-for the first time, I turned my head sideways. To truly see what awaited me in the mirror. At the Face that would wear me for the rest of my existence.

Bhan had always said the Raven was my best.

Four limbs. A flayed, human arm, mirrored by a fibrous mass of bound darkness, spiralling into an imitation of its counterpart. A bloodied leg, stripped of skin as its alternate lay frozen in a memory of what it once was: a thinner, booted foot to match what had been lost. As I watched, onyx blood subsumed the unmarred limbs.

Its chest was smooth. Absent of certainty or clear markers of identity; fluctuating between an emaciated promise of frailty and a musculature heralding power. Its heart spoke via the pounding in my ears. And the three twisted maws embedded in its torso.

“Are.”

“You.”

“God?”

They possessed neither tongues nor teeth, but, impossibly, sounded as if they did. They spoke in accents that were once mine.

“Is.”

“God.

“You?”

Its head was a mass of shifting darkness. Noses curled above brows as wrinkles shot through them. There was no mouth. Only four eyes of slightly different colours staring back at me from countless bodies, as the Hall of Mirrors reflected itself with dispassionate ceaselessness.

The Ravenblood and I were multiplied amongst the shards of that frozen moment interminably, from horizon to horizon. Farther than the eye could see.

The thing that would fall upon my family, if I were to die.

“No.”

“Way.”

“Out.”

I screamed with the three mouths-

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-and raised the-

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-halberd above my head. Then-

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-brought-

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-it-

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-down-

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-upon the glass-

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-beneath our feet.

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I-

I…

I’m trying; I’m trying. Hold off for a few more moments. If I can make sense of all this…

But is that possible?

I’ve traced the threads of who I was through countless nights. Each time, it is there – amidst the shower of glass, the faceless masses of ghosts, and the sudden weightlessness of the body – that they fray together indistinctly.

There is the fear and there is the fall. On both sides, that is the same. Nothing more distinguishes one from the other.

I landed in the dining hall where I first fell to blows. No one awaited me there. My body broke upon the ground. Amidst the shattered furniture and corpses and the blood of my friends, it put itself back together.

I rose and tore the Ravenblood apart. I stayed down and let myself be rent asunder. I don’t know which writhing mass did which.

I killed. I died. The distinction is thinner than a single layer of skin.

And irrelevant, nonetheless. It ended the same either way.

At the bottom. Trapped in a cage of my own being.

No way out.