"It'll all fall apart", Silver said, as Grey faced off against her.

Grey has snatched a sword from the storm. It probably belonged to one of the knights. Silver and Grey clashed over and over again and pushed each other back. Even though Excalibur didn't look it, it was still quite strong.

"Grey!!", Silver howled before surrounding him in her ice and launching at him.

Grey had no trouble parrying her, before undoing the ice and getting out of her way. They went back and forth wounding each other while Sight and I were putting our all in eradicating the curse. I wasn't sure we'd hold out as long as we had, but I was getting a hang of it. I thought we might just be able to do it.

I suppose Silver saw that we were making good progress. That spelled trouble for her. Undoing the curse meant undoing Excalibur. And that was death.

Silver was going to try her best to get in our way. The biggest obstacle that stood in her way was Grey. Arthur had said earlier that something was preventing him from killing Grey. I took it to be the last remaining conscious of the real Silver. But I wondered if Arthur could just overpower that conscious. Perhaps even now, he was trying to kill Grey.

"Don't get distracted boy!", Sight called to me.

Right when we thought we'd gotten past the worse part of it, there was some chunk of curse that was utterly repulsive. Someone had hated this world with all their might all those years ago. But even their name was lost now. All that remained of them was the darkness in their heart.

And as I focused myself on keeping it under control so Sight could destroy it, Grey and Silver collided once again.

"You're in the way!", Silver shouted.

"I won't let you get any closer", Grey replied.

But Silver had noticed we were in a pinch. And so was she. Grey was stronger than her. At least, this constant sparring wasn't getting her nowhere. She decided to put everything into cutting us down once and for all.

She waved her arm around and closed her fist, something glowing in her hand. She then smirked, and threw the glowing object in the air.

In the blink of an eye, there was her ice shooting out of every bit of ground. Grey quickly started undoing it, but it was massive. Then she launched herself at Grey and knocked him off his balance while he was occupied in undoing the ice around us. She didn't use Excalibur to knock him down. Instead she just kicked him right in the face. But even then, Grey didn't cease his magic.

"Fools!", she grinned, deploying another wave of that same ice shooting off the ground.

I took a deep breath and extended my arm towards her. One drop of Nasty's blood was still somewhere inside her. I just needed to focus on it. It wouldn't have been easy, since I needed to focus on stopping the storm too. That one girl had our hands full.

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As soon as I'd captured the drop, heaving my breath, Silver realized it too.

"You're trouble, kid", she said, before I felt something warm in my stomach.

I looked down. Excalibur was impaling me. Again.

"Curses", I muttered, feeling dizzy, almost losing control.

She loved doing that to me.

"Seraph!", Grey yelled, before pummeling his fist into the ground.

All the ice quickly turned to snow and shot off towards Silver. We expected her to get out of the way. But she didn't. She just stood there. And then she looked at Grey.

Grey gasped. He saw something that Sight and I didn't. It was a glimpse of Silva. Something that had become lost in Excalibur. His snow slowed down just within inches of her. But she predicted that.

A grin came to her face, before she directed a spear of ice that shot out from the ground right below Grey. It dug through his side and passed through. Blood flooded out of his mouth, but he didn't fall.

Sight had already seen through Silver's pretense. While she was busy deceiving Grey into slowing down his snow, Sight deployed a dismantling field her way. By the time she was aware of it, it was too late.

But that deception wasn't just deception. Grey saw her just as Sight deployed his field.

"Silva", he muttered before leaping towards her, getting in the way of the dismantling field.

Of course, even if I was barely breathing, I couldn't just let Grey throw himself away impulsively. I formed a string of blood, and caught his foot, preventing him from getting in the way.

And thus Sight's dismantling field hit her. Grey's right arm was the first to get shredded. Silver's one half was all gone. She fell down, her only remaining eye tearing up, while its color faded away. Grey grabbed her before she fell down. Even with the spear digging into his body, he was unfazed by it.

"Silva!"

She looked on emptily.

I found it hard to keep up any longer. The storm was already out of control. It would have taken me time to slow it down and we'd have died before that could happen. I didn't have enough left in me anyway, having being impaled twice. So I decided to take the other approach.

I went up to Silver and sat down beside her. She didn't spare me a look.

"Arthur", I spoke in a low voice, having lost all strength, "The war is already over."

"Huh?", escaped her mouth, barely.

A light came and then disappeared from her eyes.

"I see...", her mouth twitched into a broken smile.

A trail of tears continued from her lone left eye. I wish I could have told her this before.

The storm slowed down. Excalibur heard my words too. I pulled it out of me and turned around to see the storm. It was all but gone. Only Yngvi remained. I could see him standing right in the eye of the storm.

He heard it too. But his despair wasn't going to end. Ever since the beginning, he'd been watching the wielders of Excalibur die one by one. The war he sacrificed everything for, never ended. But now it had all come to its conclusion. I would have asked him what he was thinking seeing everything, and knowing what I had just told Arthur. But his face said everything, and I was too exhausted to speak.

No one else saw him.

"For the kingdom...for the country...for the...honor...", Arthur muttered but then his eyes changed and he seemed to have fallen asleep.

Silver reached out her hand and touched Grey's face, her eye fixed on him.

"Did you build this grave for us? It has an epitaph", Grey smiled weakly.

I thought I saw Silver smiling back. But just like that, her light went out.

The storm had already died away, and as the broken garden was revealed to the world above, the sun seeping through, Grey held her in his arms, just sitting there motionlessly. The grave was still standing under the shade of the tree.

And just as I caught a glimpse of icy cold letters written on it, I knew Grey had joined her. Snow was falling just above the two of them and they were still. Sight and I stood there and beheld what was before us.

It was over all too suddenly. There were no winners.

The bold icy letters on the grave would never melt. And I thought that it had been just as futile as it was all those years of constant, pointless warring.

They read, "Silver and Grey".