We don't speak as we move. There's no need to. Words would only slow us down, and neither of us can afford that anymore. The ground between us and Aurix is uneven and scarred, the remnants of old destruction layered beneath newer ones, and we navigate it without discussion, adjusting our pace instinctively, one slowing when the other falters, one shifting direction before the other needs to ask. It's only after several minutes pass like this that I realize how natural it feels, how easily we've fallen back into step, not as we were before, but as something more refined, more deliberate.
We've both changed.
I see it in the way Violet moves ahead of me without ever leaving my line of sight, the way she checks angles and terrain with quick, efficient glances instead of nervous ones. She no longer rushes. She no longer hesitates. There's a calm to her now that wasn't there before, a steadiness that doesn't come from confidence so much as survival. When she senses something off, she doesn't freeze or panic. She adjusts.
I realize I'm doing the same.
There was a time when I would have filled this silence with questions. Where have you been. Are you hurt. How did you survive. That version of me is gone. Whatever answers those questions carry will come when they're meant to, not while something is calling us forward with this much urgency.
The closer we get to Aurix, the heavier the air becomes. Not thick with smoke or heat, but with pressure, like the atmosphere itself is strained. The faint glow we saw earlier sharpens into something unmistakable, a distorted pulse of light rising and falling beyond the city's walls, irregular and wrong. It doesn't look like fire. It doesn't look like energy. It looks like something struggling to stay contained.
Violet slows beside me, her jaw tightening.
"This feels bad," she says quietly.
"Yeah," I answer. "It does."
The tremors come again, stronger now. Not constant, but intermittent, as if something massive is shifting its weight beneath the ground. Each time it happens, the world seems to hold its breath afterward.
We crest a rise and finally see the outskirts of Aurix.
The city isn't burning.
That's almost worse.
Structures still stand. Walls are damaged but intact. There's no obvious devastation spreading outward. Instead, everything seems frozen in a moment of aftermath, like the city has just survived something catastrophic and hasn't realized it yet. Smoke curls lazily from collapsed sections near the center. Figures move along the perimeter, disorganized, wounded, stunned.
And beyond them, deeper within the city, the battlefield opens up.
We don't rush in blindly.
We slow. We observe.
That's when we see her.
Celest.
I recognize her immediately, though she's nothing like the stories. She's on her feet, but barely, her posture rigid with pain, armor split and bloodied, one arm hanging wrong at her side. She's facing the center of the battlefield alone, nagata raised, her stance determined but fragile, like something held together by will alone.
"She's not going to survive another hit," Violet murmurs.
"No," I say. "She knows that."
The tremor hits again, violent enough to stagger us where we stand. The battlefield reacts in a wave of chaos, people shouting, debris shifting, and then the rubble at the center of it all explodes outward.
The shockwave rolls through Aurix like a living thing.
We don't need to see what emerges to know it's wrong. The air changes instantly, pressure snapping tight around us, a sensation that prickles across my skin and crawls into my chest. When the dust clears enough to see again, my breath catches hard in my throat.
There's a figure standing where the rubble was.
Tall. Still.
Bathed in a glistening purple glow that feels too dense, too heavy for light.
"Oh no," Violet whispers.
I know who it is before my mind is ready to accept it.
Matte.
But not the Matte I remember.
His clothes are torn and soaked through with blood. His posture is rigid, unnatural, like something is holding him upright rather than muscle and bone. His eyes are completely white, stripped of pupils, stripped of anything familiar. Essence rolls off him in slow, suffocating waves, controlled and violent at the same time, like a storm held together by sheer refusal.
He doesn't move.
He doesn't speak.
He just stands there.
And the thing facing him, the Dracus Lieutenant, no longer looks pleased.
Violet grabs my arm.
"Scarlett," she says, low and urgent. "He's not okay."
"I know," I answer.
We don't move toward him.
Not yet.
Celest stumbles then, her legs finally giving out beneath her. She doesn't fall forward into the fight. She collapses sideways, her Nagata slipping from her grasp as her strength runs out at last.
That decides it.
We move together.
Fast.
Efficient.
Violet reaches Celest first, dropping to one knee beside her, checking wounds with practiced hands while I cover them, my attention flicking between the battlefield and the figure standing at its center. Celest's eyes flutter open as Violet lifts her, confusion flickering across her bloodied face before recognition settles in.
"You're real," Celest breathes, voice barely there.
"So are you," Violet answers simply.
We don't linger. We don't explain. We pull Celest back from the battlefield, step by step, shielding her as best we can, because whatever is about to happen next doesn't need her caught in the middle of it.
Only once she's clear, only once she's safe, do we stop.
And only then do we turn back toward the battlefield.
Toward Matte.
Toward the thing he's becoming.