Keiser couldn't tell if it had been seconds or minutes… or longer. The mad scramble had drained away, leaving behind a stillness that felt wrong, like the air itself was holding its breath.
They huddled near the locked entrance, their voices dulled into murmurs and defeated sighs.
No one was banging at the gates. No one was calling for help. That desperation must have already burned itself out when they first arrived... Keiser could imagine them screaming, pounding on the wood, begging the unseen villagers behind the wall to open it. Now they only lingered, restless but resigned, like people waiting for an answer that would never come.
Beside him, Lenko let out a long breath, the kind of sound that carried both relief and exhaustion. He set his satchel on the ground, pulling free rolls of garments as bandages and vials of a mixture. His hands shook slightly as he worked, not from inexperience but from fatigue, from being stretched too thin.
Keiser's gaze drifted past him, drawn down the road toward Sheol.
The princess sat there.
She was a solitary figure, seated in the dirt at the edge of the path, one of her short blades stabbed into the ground in front of her like a ward. The other blade remained sheathed, cradled in her other hand, as if even in her exhaustion she refused to let herself be unarmed.
The setting sun caught her silhouette, pulling her shadow long and jagged across the ground. To the people behind her, it looked like an unyielding outline that told them.
'She is here, she is watching, she will keep them safe.'
She bore bandages of her own---hastily tied strips that could only have been Lenko's work... but what struck Keiser most wasn't the wrappings. It was the fire.
She was burning.
Her whole body licked in a faint glow of purple flame. Her eyes were closed, her face pale with focus, and around her drifted the pyre bugs. They floated lazily, hundreds of them, their tiny wings scattering sparks of light that should have been pale gold, yet now glowed deep violet. As if she had taken them, reshaped them, infused them with herself.
It was like she had poured her mana into the swarm, and in return they had become her wardens. Their glow washed over the villagers, a trembling lantern-light that said.
'You are not alone.'
For a moment, even through the ache in his body, Keiser felt the weight of it. She wasn't just protecting them. She was showing them, in no uncertain terms, that she was willing to burn herself to ash if it meant keeping them alive.
And on the road, scattered between the dirt and the faint shimmer of the dying light, lay the remains of what they had barely survived.
Charred husks, blackened bone, and mounds of burnt coal... the remnants of the beasts. They had been cut down, slashed and torn, then finished in purple fire. Even as ash, the smell of them clung heavy in the air.
Keiser tore his gaze from them, catching sight instead of Lenko.
The boy's face was pinched, jaw tight, though his hands trembled as he worked. He had pulled a strip of his own clothing, already stained, and was scrubbing at the blood caked on Keiser's arm with uneven motions. Every so often, Lenko's sniffles betrayed him---frustration, exhaustion, maybe even grief pressed into the sound. He dipped his fingers into one of the herb salves from his satchel, smearing it over torn skin with more care than Keiser thought himself worthy of.
"Can we…" Keiser's voice rasped, hoarse from disuse and blood in his throat. He swallowed and tried again, softer. "Can we just heal it with a sigil?"
The question made Lenko freeze. Slowly, he turned his head, and his eyes narrowed into something sharp, a glare that was equal parts fury and despair.
"If I could use that," Lenko hissed, voice breaking in the middle, "would I even bother bandaging your hand back at the forest?" His hands shook harder now, though he didn't stop pressing the cloth into Keiser's skin. "When you first acted so damn stupid---using your hand for this."
He gestured roughly to the welts now revealed as he scrubbed away the dried blood. The marks stood out ugly and raw against Keiser's arm... scorched imprints where smaller sigils had once been etched, over and over until they turn into burns.
Keiser stared at them. For the first time, he understood.
"Oh," Keiser muttered. His voice was thin, more breath than sound. "So that's it."
The flesh was ruined. Scar tissue and burns didn't take well to the ink of a sigil. The magic couldn't find purchase there anymore, couldn't seep into skin that had already been hollowed out by its own overuse.
But what gnawed at Keiser more than the pain---more than the way his arm throbbed, raw and seared---was the truth pressing in on all of them.
They were stranded. Stuck outside of Hinnom Village, without the ward that should've kept them safe. And the forest behind them wasn't empty... not anymore. The beasts would crawl back soon, slinking through the trees of Sheol now that the Muzio's old barriers were gone.
Keiser flinched as something stung cold against his arm.
He looked down.
Salve.
Lenko's hand hovered steady despite the red in his eyes, dabbing the mixture carefully over the welts. A soft sniffle broke out of him again. Keiser felt something twist in his chest. He hated seeing the boy wear grief like that, forced to hold himself together while everyone else leaned on him. Still, it was better than ashes. Ashes couldn't mend themselves, couldn't sit here waiting to be pieced back together.
And corpses in Sheol? Corpses didn't stay corpses for long.
They lived again… just not the same way as before.
"You're awake?"
The voice drew him up. The princess hadn't moved from her place, still keeping her distance, but her eyes were on him now.
"…Pretty sure I won't even consider this a dream," Keiser rasped, half a smile tugging at his lips.
Only silence followed. A silence that made his humor shrivel in his throat.
Right, maybe not the best time.
He swallowed and gestured weakly toward the looming gates.
"So… what are we gonna do about that? Can't you just... slash your way in?"
The princess turned her gaze back on him, flat and cutting.
The kind of look that said, without a single word.
'Are you an idiot?'
It wasn't her who answered.
"The princess already did," Lenko whispered. His voice was strained, weary, but matter-of-fact.
He nodded toward the people gathered nearby. Groups huddled together around small fires, whispering, keeping children close and blankets tighter. They had started working, dividing tasks among themselves. At least they knew how to act without waiting for the princess every command.
But that detail snagged Keiser's attention. His eyes flicked back to the princess, expression guarded. She should have been able to cut through... easily. He'd seen what she could do. He had no doubt she strong, maybe even sharper than the fiancée of the first prince he'd witnessed during the King's Gambit.
So why hadn't she broken them in?
Unless…
"…A new ward?" Keiser muttered under his breath.
Lenko nodded once, still working on his arm. "One that negates attacks. Defensive. In case of an emergency surge of beasts."
Keiser scoffed. "Beasts?"
His gaze swept over the group, faces hollowed by fatigue, huddled under the glow of thin fires. Their eyes darted not just to the treeline, but to the walls that locked them out.
Yeah. He could see it plain as day.
The real beasts weren't the ones outside.
They were sitting behind the gate.
Keiser looked back to the princess, her fire burning defiantly against the dying sun.
The last of the light bled into the horizon, but hers did not waver. The fire clung to her, burning brighter than the scattered logs the people had lit for warmth. Their flames sputtered meekly in comparison... fragile, ordinary. Hers was a beacon, and whether she meant it or not, it told the frightened people.
'As long as I'm standing, so will you.'
Keiser hissed as Lenko tugged at his sleeve, the boy's fingers rough with urgency. The fabric was rolled higher and higher until his shoulder was exposed. The hiss turned into a sharp breath when Lenko pushed harder.
"Stop---why are you moving away..." Lenko muttered, his voice already trembling.
Then Lenko froze. "There's more?" His tone broke into disbelief, nearly a plea.
Keiser felt the tug at his tunic this time. Then the cool rush of evening air on his bare back. He exhaled, long and resigned. His skin prickled with exposure.
Lenko's gasp was loud, raw, and it wasn't just him... Keiser could hear the murmur ripple through the people nearby. Older men and women dragged children behind them, shielding their eyes, as though the sight of him was too heavy for their innocence to carry.
"…how bad?" Keiser finally asked, his voice lower, hoarse.
Lenko's face had gone pale, his eyes glassy with unshed tears. His words cracked when they came. "…it's like you've been whipped. Over and over. Your whole back, your highness… it's carved into you."
Keiser's jaw tightened. He could feel it himself... the searing, the tearing, every welt that throbbed when Lenko's cloth cleaning it, touched. He gritted his teeth as the boy dabbed at the mess of blood and charred flesh. It stung worse near his spine, near the nape of his neck, places where pain radiated like fire crawling beneath his skin.
He forced his body not to flinch, but his shoulders twitched when Lenko pressed against the deep grooves. That was where the runes had burned hottest, the sigils he carved into Muzio's body---his body now---to reinforce it beyond its limit.
It had worked.
His plans had held.
But the toll was etched into his flesh, carved deep.
He caught the whispers among the people... frightened murmurs, pity, maybe even revulsion. Let them think what they would. To them, he must have looked like an offering laid out by the village itself, punished by fire and lash, left at Sheol's door for the forest to claim.
Keiser clenched his teeth and tilted his head back, staring at the star-pricked sky.
He thought bitterly, 'So this is the price of power. A body chewed through by its own resolve.'
And still, they were locked outside Hinnom's walls.
Cast out.
Left in the open, like a life someone had already written off.
And he hated that idea most of all… being used for someone else's gain.