Adrian didn’t stir.

  His breathing was shallow, uneven. Blood still leaked from the wound on his side, dark and steady.

  I pressed my hands against it again, light spilling from my palms. The pain followed instantly - sharp, white, suffocating.

  I bit down on the strip of torn cloth between my teeth and screamed into it.

  It felt like being stabbed and slowly carved open at the same time. The pain didn’t fade - it spread. Every nerve, every muscle, burning. My body wanted to stop. My mind begged to. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  Not while someone still needed me.

  When the wound finally closed, I let go. My hands fell away, trembling. The light faded. I pulled the cloth from my mouth and gasped for air, the taste of blood still on my tongue. My chest heaved.

  I could only repeat the same words in my head. The only thing to console me.

  You have to keep going

  Something to make it easier for him.

  “Damian…”

  Adrian’s voice was hoarse but alive. His eyes - sharp green beneath his dark fringe - opened, focusing on me. He blinked, then slowly sat up, one hand brushing the healed skin at his side.

  “You shouldn’t have, your Highness.” he said quietly.

  “It’s fine,” I managed, forcing steadiness into my voice. My tone came out colder than I intended. Inside, my body still screamed from the memory of the pain.

  Adrian looked at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. He gave a small, stiff nod - closer to a soldier’s acknowledgement than gratitude.

  I stood, wiping my hands on my soaked skirt. “Stay here. You need to rest. I have to go help Damian.”

  He didn’t move. “You can’t.”

  I turned to him, frowning. His voice had changed - flat, detached, as if the man who’d been joking beside Damian earlier had vanished.

  “I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” I said.

  Adrian looked away. “As you wish, Your Highness. But…” His eyes flicked toward the door. “Something tells me this is Damian’s fight. Interfering might only make it worse.”

  I bit my lip until I tasted blood again. “Even so - I won’t stay here and wait.”

  His sigh followed me as I pushed through the door into the storm.

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  The rain hit like stones, soaking through Damian’s coat in seconds. The world was all sound and shadow - thunder above, firelight somewhere distant. The smell of smoke and ash burned in my throat.

  The explosions had stopped. That silence was worse than any noise.

  I grasped onto my necklace as I ran, muttering silent prayers under my breathe.

  Please, let him be alive.

  I ran, my boots slipping on mud, branches clawing at my arms. The closer I came to the treeline, the more the world glowed with the orange of burning wood. I burst through the last of the brush - and stopped.

  The forest burned.

  Fire climbed the trunks like serpents, the heat so strong it made the rain hiss before it reached the ground. In the middle of it all lay Arthur - half-buried in mud, his clothes scorched, his sword beside him.

  “Lord Arthur!” I dropped to my knees beside him, hands already glowing again. The pain hit instantly, a blade in my shouler. I gritted my teeth. “Please - stay still.”

  He stirred, eyes fluttering open. His voice rasped, “Don’t… don’t waste your strength.”

  “You’re bleeding badly, I can’t-”

  “The fire will heal me,” he muttered. “It’s mine. Not my enemy.”

  I hesitated, looking at the flames licking around us. I noticed a faint scar around his shoulder, that seemed to be healing visibly.

  “It could consume you.”

  “It won’t,” he said simply. “It never does.”

  His gaze flicked around wildly, scanning the smoke-choked forest. “Where’s Damian?”

  “I-” I looked around, panic rising. “I don’t know. I just-”

  Then Arthur’s eyes went wide with horror. He tried to stand, but his knees buckled, and he fell again, coughing blood.

  “Stay still!” I tried to steady him, but he shoved me weakly away.

  “No… no matter what happens,” he rasped, “I have to stop him.”

  “Stop him from what?” I asked, voice breaking.

  He didn’t answer.

  Because a scream cut through the rain.

  Not a normal one - a sound that tore straight through the air and lodged in my chest. Human, yet not. Familiar, yet warped.

  I froze. My heart stopped.

  It came from the direction of the church.

  Arthur reached out, trying again to stand. “Don’t-!”

  But I was already running.

  Branches whipped my arms. My breath came ragged, my vision blurring. All I could think was his name.

  He promised. He promised he’d come back.

  The fire grew brighter ahead. The sound of rain vanished behind the roar of my pulse.

  When I reached the church, the doors towered before me - black against the storm. I shoved them open with both hands.

  “Damian!”

  The word tore out of me.

  And then I saw.

  The world stopped.

  At the far end of the church stood Damian and the Bishop. Between them, the Cardinal - crucified against the wall, his body sagging like a marionette with its strings cut.

  Their hands were joined on a single sword. The blade hovered just above the Cardinal’s chest.

  But it wasn’t the sword that made me stop breathing.

  It was Damian’s eyes.

  His left burned red as usual - but his right… his right was wrong.

  A void. An endless pit of blackness and lightless motion, shifting like smoke within his iris. No pattern. No life. Just chaos.

  The shadows clung to him like living things, wrapping his body and limbs like snakes.

  My eyes widened in horror and fear.

  “Stop!” I screamed, voice battling against the rain above. “He’s controlling you!”

  Damian turned his head slowly toward me. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked shocked.

  And afraid.

  The most genuine emotions I had ever seen on his face.

  The Bishop didn’t hesitate.

  He murmured something to Damian, something I couldn't hear.

  And then, with a determined look, he forced their joined hands forward.

  The sword plunged down.

  The sound of steel meeting flesh drowned even the storm.

  The candles blew out.

  And the world went dark.