The sea spat him out like something it regretted swallowing.
Jalen woke with sand in his teeth and salt burning the cuts along his jaw. The sky above him was bruised—thunder stacked in heavy slabs, lightning sketching bones across the clouds. Waves shouldered in, mean and regular, each cold rush crawling up the beach to touch his boots before slipping back with a hiss.
He rolled, coughed up seawater, and the world steadied enough for one fact to emerge:
Rhea lay beside him.
She was half on her back, half on her side, the surf having turned her just so. Her hair fanned dark against the wet sand. The gleam that used to live behind her eyes was gone, and the armor that never quite fit right was scored and salt-frosted. She looked smaller than she ever had in life.
Everything else went quiet.
There was no Ember. No Vexa's shadow. No Nathan blinking in or Kullen's steady shoulder. No Lucio's laugh. Only the long, indifferent pull of the sea and the body of the one he loved.
He crawled the last foot to her and cupped the back of her head because that was what you did when you were afraid to find out how cold the skin was. It was cold. His hands shook, and he could not tell if it was the chill or the truth.
"Hey," he said, but it was barely air. He cleared his throat. "Hey, Rhea. We… we made it out."
The next wave reached higher and licked at her boots. Something woke in him like a bad animal.
"No."
He slipped his arm under her shoulders, another beneath her knees, and stood. His body almost failed him. The world tilted, black fuzz creeping in at the edges, and he had to lock his knees and feel the hot stab of something in his ribs before balance found him again. Step by step, boots sinking, jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached, he staggered up the beach until the line the ocean would not cross was ten paces behind them.
He looked around. Nothing but stone and sand and wind and a ragged treeline crouched up the slope like a crowd of witnesses. No tools. No help.
"Okay," he said to no one. "Okay."
He knelt and began to dig.
The sand near the surface was easy, damp, and pliant under his fingers, but the waterlogged weight of it slid back into the hole almost as fast as he threw it out. He scraped, scooped, clawed deeper until his nails hit firmer earth. Already bleeding from the cuticles, grit packed under his nails, he braced his palms and dug harder. Skin split. Blood ran in ribbons down his wrists, then washed clean with every gust of blown spray.
He did not stop.
He widened the hole. His shoulders burned, both arms shaking. His breath rasped in his throat, but every time he paused, the sound of the sea filled his head, and he thought of a mouth closing around something precious. He dug again.
Memories slipped in the way they always did when the body was too busy to argue.
Rhea was standing on a crate in Everlock's market, chin up, haggling with a vendor twice her age into silence. Rhea, in armor too big, stared Kuromi dead in the eye after a throw that rattled her teeth and said, "Again." Rhea, under a cloak in the rain with Ember curled on her lap, glancing across the fire at him with that look that meant she knew he was about to do something stupid—and was going to help anyway.
The hole deepened. His rhythm was primal: dig, breathe, throw. A buried vein of pebbles shredded his fingers until they felt made of glass.
"Almost," he lied. He did not know who to.
When the grave was thigh-deep, he climbed out and nearly collapsed. His hands were a ruin. His whole body trembled. He steadied himself on the edge, gulped air until the world steadied, and went to her.
There were rules no one wrote down for this part. He tried to remember them anyway. He brushed sand from her cheek with the back of his fingers. He smoothed her hair. Straightened the strap that always slid because her shoulders were stronger than the armor was meant for. He unbuckled the stiff leather at her throat and loosened it so she looked like she could breathe.
"Rhea," he said, because saying her name anchored him. "I'm going to—I'll make it right."
He wanted to look up, to see Nathan roll his eyes or Kullen nod the way he did when words had weight. But the beach offered him only the waves.
He slid his arms beneath her again and lowered her into the grave, slow and careful. He arranged her hands at her middle. Closed her eyes with a touch. The ease of it broke something in him.
"I should've been enough," he whispered. "I told you I'd get you home."
He could still hear her voice: "I'll protect him. I'm not the girl who hides anymore."
His throat closed until it hurt.
He found his knife, walked down the beach until he found a flat stone, and scratched her name. The first lines were ugly, the knife skipping when the wind shoved him. He started again, slower, deeper, until the letters held.
RHEA.
He pressed the stone to his forehead, breathed, then set it aside. With both hands, he scooped sand and let it fall. Again. Again. The rhythm built: the hush of the sea, the whisper of sand, the dull thud when it landed. He did not look away until her face was gone.
When the grave was full, he mounded it higher. Pressed the stone into the crest. Sat back. His vision swam.
He tried to stand, failed, and let his legs fold. He lay on his side, the grave at his back, the sea at his face. Sleep did not take him so much as pull him under.
Something shifted in the hollow of his mind.
'…she was mine too.'
The voice was not loud. Not playful. Just small. Joker did not push forward. Did not laugh. He just sat in the silence and let it be true.
The clouds tore open long enough for the moon to mark the stone, then closed again.
When Jalen woke, cold biting his spine, the sky was a shade closer to morning. His body complained about everything it could. He pushed upright, stared at the marker like it might vanish if he blinked.
"Hi," he rasped. "I'm still here."
He tied a sailor's knot with a length of cord around the stone. It was nothing. It was something. He tried to pray and found he did not know how anymore. So he leaned his forehead against the stone and breathed.
Then he stood, because standing was the only revenge grief allowed. He memorized the place: the black jag of rock, the crooked pine, the arc of the beach like a held breath.
He did not look away until the curve of the shore hid the grave.
When he turned inland, his hands were empty. No glyphs. No glow. Just the red ache of raw fingers and a promise inside him with nowhere to go but forward.
The storm groaned overhead. The earth waited. He kept walking.
He would come back.
He did not need to say it. The promise was already written in stone.