She turned away.
Vomited.
Qaritas moved.
Stopped.
She braced against a root and vomited again.
Nothing black this time.
Just bile.
Her entire body shook.
Again.
She coughed.
Spat.
Stayed bent over.
Qaritas remained several feet away.
Waiting.
Watching.
Wanting to kill something he couldn't reach.
Eventually—
Xheavend wiped her mouth.
Straightened.
Her face had gone pale.
She avoided looking at him.
"Let's keep looking."
Qaritas stared at her.
"No."
Her eyes finally met his.
"No?"
"That wasn't a command."
"Sounded like one."
"It was an observation."
"About what?"
"You're not okay."
Xheavend gave him an exhausted look.
"Very insightful."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
She started walking.
Qaritas watched her.
Her movements were too controlled.
That was the problem.
Xheavend shaking was normal.
Xheavend angry was normal.
Xheavend crying?
Painful.
But understandable.
This—
was nothing.
Mechanical.
One foot.
Then the other.
She crouched beside a broken mineral outcrop.
Touched it.
Examined it.
Stood.
Moved on.
As if Yzer hadn't just reached across worlds, ripped Goro's protection from her blood and promised to put her in a better cage.
Qaritas followed.
"Xheavend."
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not."
"I'm functional."
"Those are different words."
"Then appreciate my precision."
That sounded like her.
Almost.
But her voice was too flat.
She kept walking.
Qaritas didn't push.
Yet.
The Shaal glowed beneath their steps.
Two trails.
His.
Hers.
Blue-white pulses spreading through deep violet blades.
The mist thickened farther from the wreck.
Everything became shadows and enormous black columns.
They walked perhaps another hundred metres.
Then Qaritas heard:
"Let's keep looking."
He stopped.
Xheavend kept walking two steps.
Then stopped too.
Neither turned.
The voice had come from the trees.
Her voice.
Perfect.
Same exhaustion.
Same slight rasp after vomiting.
Same words.
Qaritas slowly looked left.
Nothing.
Then—
from somewhere behind them:
"Random planet?"
His voice.
From yesterday.
From the crash.
Qaritas's stomach tightened.
Xheavend turned toward him.
Another voice answered from somewhere far ahead.
Her voice.
"Random planet."
The exact response.
Not approximately.
Exact.
They had heard them.
Not just now.
Earlier.
Since the crash.
Perhaps from the moment they'd crawled out of the ship.
Qaritas looked up at the trees.
Black branches.
Dead-looking shapes.
Silver mist.
Something was collecting them.
Learning them.
Storing sounds.
Then—
footsteps.
To Qaritas's right.
Two.
Pause.
Two.
They matched his.
He shifted one foot.
A step answered from the fog.
Xheavend's eyes sharpened.
"What the fuck."
A cough came from behind her.
She spun.
Nothing.
Then the same cough came from farther left.
She hadn't coughed.
Qaritas drew his weapon.
A metallic scrape sounded from ahead.
His own weapon leaving its sheath.
Except—
his was already out.
Something in the forest reproduced the sound again.
Closer.
Then farther.
Xheavend whispered:
"They're mapping us."
Qaritas glanced at her.
"Or confusing us."
Another footstep.
Then another.
Four locations.
Different distances.
Same weight.
Same rhythm.
Qaritas's gaze moved through the trunks.
Something looked wrong.
A dead branch—
except it wasn't attached to anything.
Four metres above the ground.
Too straight.
Too symmetrical.
He focused.
The shape moved.
Barely.
A long black limb unfolded from beside a Kaereth.
Then another.
A hunched body detached itself from what Qaritas had assumed was part of the tree.
Four long walking limbs.
Hooked points instead of feet.
A raised narrow torso.
Above it—
a crown of branch-like extensions.
Pale luminous filaments hung from them.
Glowing moss.
No.
Sensory organs.
The creature had been standing there.
Watching.
Listening.
Qaritas slowly looked left.
Another one unfolded.
Then behind Xheavend.
A third.
And farther through the mist—
the fourth.
Four.
Of course.
The first opened no mouth.
It didn't need one.
Qaritas's own voice came from somewhere inside its crown.
"That's probably bad."
Xheavend looked at him.
He stared at the creature.
"Rude."
The second answered in Xheavend's voice:
"You think?"
Another one reproduced the corpse-ship's scream.
Not the external sound.
The horrible biological shriek from launch.
Xheavend flinched.
Qaritas's grip tightened.
The fourth remained still.
Too still.
Then—
a man's voice drifted through the forest.
Soft.
Fond.
Possessive.
"There you are, pet."
Xheavend stopped breathing.
Qaritas turned so fast his neck hurt.
Nothing stood behind her.
The fourth creature's filaments glowed.
But Qaritas couldn't know.
Had it heard Yzer?
Could it hear what Xheavend heard through the blood-road?
Had Yzer just spoken?
Was the creature repeating something from ten years ago it had never physically been present for?
That made no sense.
Which meant—
Qaritas had absolutely no idea what was happening.
Xheavend's face emptied.
The forest repeated:
"There you are, pet."
From the left.
Then right.
Then behind them.
Then—
in Qaritas's voice:
"Xheavend."
She looked at him.
He hadn't spoken.
The creature to his right repeated:
"Xheavend."
Another:
"Xheavend."
Then her own voice:
"Don't call me that."
The room with Yzer.
Qaritas went cold.
That had not happened on this planet.
The creatures shouldn't know it.
Unless—
unless one of them was not repeating sound from the forest.
Unless Yzer was using the blood-road now.
Unless Xheavend was hearing him and the creatures were catching her body's response somehow.
Unless—
too many possibilities.
That was the point.
Qaritas understood suddenly.
These things didn't need to be stronger.
They only needed prey to stop knowing what was real.
Xheavend whispered:
"Use me as bait."
Qaritas's head snapped toward her.
"What?"
Her eyes remained on the creatures.
"Use me as bait."
"No."
His hand shot toward her arm.
Stopped.
Inches away.
Goro.
Don't decide her choices for her.
Qaritas's fingers curled.
He hated that lesson.
Not because it was wrong.
Because the difficult parts always arrived when there wasn't time.
Xheavend was offering a tactic.
Normally—
he would hear it.
Evaluate it.
Respect that she understood her own abilities.
But this wasn't normal.
Her pupils were too wide.
Her voice too flat.
She had vomited minutes earlier.
Yzer had just torn down eight years of protection.
She was dissociating.
Badly.
Respecting autonomy did not mean pretending someone in the middle of severe dissociation could safely volunteer themselves as bait for an unknown predator.
So Qaritas changed approach.
He stepped around her.
Into her line of sight.
Not touching.
"Xheavend."
Her gaze remained past him.
"Use me."
"No."
"Their attention—"
"Xheavend."
Nothing.
Qaritas lowered himself slightly so his face entered her visual field.
"Can you hear me?"
From the forest:
"Can you hear me?"
Qaritas's jaw tightened.
Another creature answered:
"Can you hear me?"
Then another.
Farther away:
"Can you hear me?"
The words came from four directions.
Different distances.
Different volumes.
Same voice.
His.
Xheavend's eyes twitched toward one.
Wrong direction.
Qaritas moved slightly.
"Here."
A creature repeated:
"Here."
Another:
"Here."
Another:
"Here."
Then—
Yzer.
"There you are, pet."
Xheavend's pupils dilated.
Her breath stopped.
Qaritas saw the change.
Not fear exactly.
Not present fear.
Something older.
The forest disappeared from her eyes.
The silver mist.
The violet grass.
The black trees.
All of it gone.
She wasn't here anymore.
Qaritas knew that look.
He had seen it once before.
Only once.
Eight years ago—
two years after Xheavend escaped Yeitshoja—
Yzer had sent six hundred beings to retrieve her.
Not kill.
Retrieve.
That distinction somehow made it worse.
Qaritas remembered the way Goro had once described it.
No anger.
No theatrics.
Just facts.
Six hundred.
Hunters.
Soldiers.
Things trained to restrain, track, break, transport.
Some had been ordered not to damage her face.
Some had been instructed not to damage her hands.
Some had been given specific chains.
Specific drugs.
Specific cages.
Because Yzer hadn't been preparing for war.
He'd been preparing for delivery.
Xheavend had already been awake for two years by then.
No sleep.
Not bad sleep.
Not interrupted sleep.
None.
Two years of consciousness without relief.
Two years of exhaustion accumulating in a body End refused to let remain dead.
Two years of flinching at doors.
Checking windows.
Hearing footsteps in empty corridors.
Waking—
No.
Not waking.
Never waking.
Because she never stopped being awake.
And then six hundred came for her.
Qaritas remembered Goro's words.
Not the number.
The duration.
One month.
For one month—
Xheavend and End lost control.
Not once.
Not in a single battle.
A month.
Thirty days of pursuit.
Killing.
Running.
Regenerating.
Breaking.
Bleeding.
Finding more.
Being found again.
Goro had eventually reached her.
Qaritas had never asked exactly what it took to bring her back.
Partly because Goro rarely volunteered unnecessary details.
Partly because Xheavend had gone silent the one time the subject came close.
And partly because—
some things didn't need to be excavated simply because you were curious.
But Qaritas remembered one detail.
Yzer's response afterward.
Not rage.
Not grief over six hundred dead.
Fascination.
That was when something had changed.
Before the massacre—
Yzer had known Xheavend was powerful.
A strange child.
Dangerous.
Connected to something vast enough to make even Fragments pay attention.
Afterward—
he understood scale.
Potential.
What End could become when Xheavend stopped holding back.
What Xheavend could become when she learned to wield End without being consumed by it.
Not merely dangerous.
Not merely useful.
Eventually—
possibly capable of challenging something like him.
Fragment-level power.
Qaritas stared into Xheavend's unfocused eyes.
That was why Yzer hadn't lost interest.
Why he never would.
Not only obsession.
Not only possession.
Fear dressed as ownership.
If she became strong enough—
she might become something he could no longer cage.
Which meant he had every reason to reclaim her before that happened.
Qaritas looked around.
Four Threnkel.
Silver mist.
Black trees.
Xheavend barely present.
Goro nowhere near them.
A fantastic time for history to repeat itself.
The Shaal lit up.
Qaritas looked down.
A pale blue-white line moved through the violet-black grass.
Nothing stood above it.
His expression changed.
Another line appeared.
Then another.
Then—
a fourth.
All moving toward them.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
No visible bodies.
Just grass flattening beneath pressure that apparently belonged to nothing.
Qaritas stared.
"...That's probably bad."
Xheavend didn't answer.
The first trail stopped.
The mist above it bent.
Not much.
Just enough.
Then something began to appear.
Not emerge.
Render.
A shoulder existed first.
Only half of one.
Pale translucent tissue flickered into reality.
Then disappeared.
An arm appeared several inches away from where the shoulder had been.
Wrong angle.
Wrong connection.
No hand.
Then fingers without a wrist.
A face attempted to exist.
Only the left half arrived.
One eye.
No mouth.
Then that vanished too.
Qaritas's grip tightened.
A second creature started forming behind it.
Tall.
Far too thin.
Limbs stretched longer than anatomy should allow.
Each joint bent more than once.
Its skin looked translucent.
Something enormous seemed to move beneath it—
not inside muscle.
Behind reality.
Like the body was merely a membrane separating this world from something much larger trying to push through.
Its face was smooth.
Completely.
Then a vertical slit opened.
Inside—
hundreds of teeth rotated.
Spiral upon spiral.
A galaxy made of mouths.
Qaritas stared.
"Oh, good."
The third appeared to their right.
Too many eyes.
Most floating beside the skull rather than inside it.
The fourth had no face at all.
Still—
Qaritas felt it looking directly at him.
Four Threnkel.
Four whatever-the-hell-these-were.
Eight.
The Threnkel made sound unreliable.
These new things made existence unreliable.
And Yzer—
Yzer had already made Xheavend unreliable to herself.
Perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
One Threnkel repeated in Qaritas's voice:
"That's probably bad."
The half-faced creature vanished.
Qaritas moved.
Too late.
It reappeared directly beside him.
An arm phased through his chest.
Cold tore through him.
Qaritas swung.
His blade passed through the creature as though through mist.
No resistance.
Nothing.
The Utrumamja—
though Qaritas did not know that name yet—
tilted its incomplete head.
Then accelerated.
Horribly.
One instant still.
The next—
Qaritas was thrown through a Kaereth root.
Wood exploded behind him.
He hit the ground.
Shaal flashed beneath his body.
"Q!"
Xheavend's voice.
From his left.
Then—
"Q!"
From his right.
Then behind him.
Then above.
Qaritas rolled just as something hooked through the space where his skull had been.
His blade came up.
Again—
nothing.
The creature flickered through it.
"Of course."
A Threnkel reproduced his exact annoyed tone.
"Of course."
Qaritas looked at it.
"I'm going to kill you specifically."
From another direction:
"I'm going to kill you specifically."
"Stop helping."
"Stop helping."
Qaritas's eye twitched.
Then the forest exploded.
Xheavend moved.
Not fast.
Faster than that.
She simply ceased being where she had been.
One second beside Qaritas.
The next—
her hand was buried through the torso of a Threnkel.
The creature folded backward.
Its branch-like crown snapped.
Pale filaments flared.
Then End moved through her.
Not fully visible.
Never fully.
A pressure.
A horizon collapsing inward.
The certainty of conclusion.
Xheavend ripped the Threnkel in half.
Black tissue hit the Shaal.
The grass illuminated beneath it.
The remaining three shrieked—
not in their own voices.
In stolen ones.
A child crying.
Qaritas laughing.
Someone begging.
Xheavend's father saying something neither Qaritas had ever heard before.
Xheavend froze for half a fraction of a second.
That was enough.
An Utrumamja appeared behind her.
Its stretched arm became solid around her throat.
Then phased partly inside it.
Qaritas moved.
"XHEAVEND!"
She twisted.
Her body broke.
Not metaphorically.
Her neck turned too far.
Shoulder dislocated.
Spine bent.
For one sick instant the Utrumamja folded her backward as though her bones had become soft.
Then—
End refused.
Everything snapped back into place.
Bone.
Muscle.
Skin.
Xheavend turned her head.
Too slowly.
Smiled.
The Utrumamja hesitated.
Qaritas had never seen one of them before.
But even he understood that hesitation.
Predator realizing prey had just ignored something that should have ended the encounter.
Xheavend grabbed the creature.
Her fingers passed through.
Once.
Twice.
Then End surged.
The space around her hand darkened.
Not Void.
Something else.
Finality.
The Utrumamja flickered violently.
Part of its torso became solid.
Xheavend tore through it.
It made no sound.
Its missing face appeared for half a second—
complete.
Terrified.
Then vanished.
The thing collapsed sideways into itself.
Gone.
Qaritas stared.
One.
Seven left.
A burst of gold erupted beneath exposed roots.
Oruun.
Dozens.
They had been disturbed by the fight.
Tiny bodies scattered directly into the battlefield.
One Utrumamja lunged.
Not at them.
Through them.
Its path would take it straight through the colony.
Xheavend saw it.
Her entire body rotated.
End's power erupted.
Qaritas expected indiscriminate destruction.
Instead—
it curved.
Perfectly.
A black pressure sliced around the Oruun.
Not through.
Around.
The Utrumamja was hurled sideways.
The small animals remained untouched.
They flashed in panic.
Gold everywhere.
Xheavend didn't even look at them.
Qaritas did.
His expression changed.
That was new.
Eight years ago—
during the Six Hundred—
there had been no distinction.
Threat.
Obstacle.
Noise.
Movement.
Everything became part of the same storm.
Now—
even barely present—
she had redirected End.
Around something harmless.
A terrified Velka crashed through the mist next.
Blue plates glowing.
It stumbled between Qaritas and a Threnkel.
The predator's branch-crown lowered.
Xheavend raised one hand.
For a fraction of a second, Qaritas expected her attack to go straight through both.
Instead—
the force split.
One half passed above the Velka.
One beneath.
The Threnkel behind it came apart.
The animal screamed and bolted.
Untouched.
Qaritas stared at Xheavend.
She wasn't gone.
Not entirely.
Even like this—
she was choosing.
Somewhere inside the madness, she and End had learned each other.
That frightened him.
And relieved him.
Both at once.
Another Utrumamja phased through him.
Qaritas swung.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
"Stop doing that."
The creature mirrored his stance.
Then copied his movement.
Not sound.
Movement.
Qaritas stepped left.
It stepped left.
He raised the blade.
It raised one incomplete arm.
He stopped.
It stopped.
"Oh."
The vertical mouth opened.
Spiral teeth began rotating.
Then it lunged.
Qaritas activated Void.
Darkness collapsed around the blade.
He struck.
The Utrumamja phased.
The Void passed through emptiness.
Again.
It appeared behind him.
Qaritas turned.
Strike.
Nothing.
He tried spatial pressure.
Nothing.
He folded local distance.
The thing vanished from the fold before it could close.
He tried pinning its shadow.
It didn't possess one consistently enough to matter.
Qaritas's irritation became personal.
"This is getting ridiculous."
The creature's half-face appeared beside his shoulder.
He drove his elbow through it.
Nothing.
Then—
the Chronolock struck his hip.
Qaritas felt it.
Not physically.
Something deeper.
A pull.
A correction.
The Utrumamja lunged again.
Qaritas grabbed the Chronolock instinctively with his free hand.
The world changed.
Not dramatically.
No explosion.
No flash.
Just—
stability.
The silver mist stopped swirling for one impossible instant.
Shaal froze mid-pulse.
The space immediately around Qaritas tightened.
Time aligned.
Distance aligned.
Reality seemed to remember what shape it was supposed to have.
The Utrumamja entered that field.
And screamed.
Actually screamed.
Its entire body rendered.
All at once.
Qaritas stared.
Arms attached properly.
Torso complete.
Face fully present.
Two eyes.
Vertical mouth.
Hundreds of teeth.
Skin stretched over too-long bone.
For perhaps the first time in its existence—
it was entirely real.
And it hated it.
The creature thrashed.
Tried to phase.
Couldn't.
Qaritas didn't waste the opportunity.
His blade entered beneath its jaw.
Void followed.
The creature split from chin to sternum.
Black fluid erupted.
It hit the ground physically.
Solid.
Heavy.
Real.
For several seconds more—
then parts began flickering away.
Qaritas looked at the Chronolock in his hand.
Then at the corpse.
Then back.
"...What did you just do?"
The Book did not appear.
Helpful.
A Threnkel repeated:
"What did you just do?"
Qaritas pointed his blade at it.
"Not now."
Xheavend screamed.
Not from a creature.
Qaritas turned.
A cut appeared across her ribs.
He saw it happen.
Skin opening.
Blood spilling.
Nothing touched her.
Xheavend staggered.
Qaritas's entire body went cold.
Another wound appeared across her shoulder.
Straight line.
Clean.
Deliberate.
Then bruising formed around her throat.
Finger-shaped.
No hands there.
Blood ran from her nose.
Xheavend wiped it.
Looked at the red across her knuckles.
And laughed.
Wrongly.
Qaritas knew.
"Yzer."
Her eyes flicked toward him.
Another cut opened across her stomach.
She hissed.
The Utrumamja nearest her attacked.
Xheavend broke its arm.
End twisted reality around the limb.
The creature screamed silently.
Then another wound appeared along Xheavend's thigh.
Remote.
Precise.
Timed between attacks.
Qaritas understood suddenly.
Not punishment.
Not random cruelty.
Conditions.
Pain.
Adrenaline.
Fear.
Rage.
Exhaustion.
He was recreating the massacre.
The Six Hundred.
He wanted that version of her.
Wanted End closer.
Wanted to see whether Xheavend had become stronger.
Maybe wanted to wear her down before retrieval.
Maybe wanted proof.
Maybe simply enjoyed conducting experiments on something he considered his.
Qaritas's vision darkened.
Ayla flashed through his mind.
Not the same story.
Not the same woman.
But the pattern.
Powerful enough that others stopped seeing the person.
Useful enough that choice became inconvenient.
A body becoming territory.
A gift becoming a weapon.
Existence reduced to function.
Qaritas had seen what happened when people decided power belonged to whoever could exploit it.
Ayla.
Xheavend.
Different cages.
Same language.
He looked at Xheavend.
Blood across her mouth.
Eyes unfocused.
End rising.
No.
Yzer would not turn her into another weapon.
The thought came immediately after—
Then stop her.
Qaritas's jaw tightened.
No.
Wrong.
That was the trap.
Not stop her.
Stop what was being done to her.
Protect her ability to choose.
Protect the possibility that when she came back—
the choices would still be hers.
That was Goro's lesson.
Not gentleness for its own sake.
Not passivity.
Respect.
Even under pressure.
Especially under pressure.
An Utrumamja hit Qaritas from the side.
He went through another root.
Something cracked.
Ribs.
Probably his.
He regenerated before landing.
The creature appeared above him.
Qaritas raised Void.
Too slow.
Its arm phased through his defense—
then into his chest.
Cold.
Wrong.
Not damage exactly.
Displacement.
His organs felt momentarily out of agreement with themselves.
Qaritas gasped.
The creature leaned closer.
Vertical mouth opening.
He couldn't stabilize it.
Chronolock too far from his hand.
His Void slipped.
The Utrumamja moved deeper.
Then—
something moved inside Qaritas.
Barely.
No voice.
No waking.
Just cold.
Ancient.
Familiar.
The pressure of something that had slept behind his consciousness for ten years and still, somehow, recognized danger.
Eon.
Qaritas froze.
The Utrumamja did too.
Void changed.
Not larger.
Sharper.
Still.
Absolute.
The space around Qaritas hardened.
The creature's arm—
which had been halfway phased through his chest—
became solid.
Its expression appeared completely.
For one instant.
Confusion.
Then panic.
Qaritas smiled.
Softly.
"There you are."
No answer.
Of course not.
Eon slept.
But the flicker remained.
Just enough.
Qaritas grabbed the creature's wrist.
This time—
he could touch it.
His fingers closed.
The Utrumamja thrashed.
Qaritas stood.
Pulled.
And drove Void through its skull.
The head ceased.
Not exploded.
Not severed.
Ceased.
The body dropped.
Qaritas breathed.
Eon's presence vanished again.
Quiet.
Sleeping.
But Qaritas smiled anyway.
Ten years.
Still there.
Still impossible.
Still apparently unwilling to let him get murdered by badly rendered forest nightmares.
"Missed you too."
A Threnkel copied:
"Missed you too."
Qaritas turned.
"No one asked you."
He threw the Chronolock.
Not away.
Through Void.
The device passed beside the Threnkel and erupted a pulse of spatial stability around the Utrumamja behind it.
The creature rendered.
Xheavend hit it before Qaritas did.
End tore through its middle.
That made four Utrumamja.
Dead.
The Threnkel remained.
Three.
One mimicked Xheavend sobbing.
She wasn't sobbing.
One mimicked Q screaming.
He wasn't.
One repeated Yzer.
"Come home."
Xheavend stopped.
Then looked directly at that one.
For the first time since the fight began—
her focus sharpened.
"No."
The Threnkel repeated:
"No."
Xheavend vanished.
Its crown came off.
Two.
The next tried Qaritas's voice.
"Xheavend, wait."
She didn't.
Its legs folded backward as End compressed it.
One.
The final Threnkel backed toward a Kaereth.
For the first time—
it seemed uncertain.
Its filaments flickered.
Then it made the worst possible choice.
Goro's voice.
Perfect.
"Little Lady."
Xheavend stopped.
Qaritas did too.
The forest held its breath.
The Threnkel repeated:
"Little Lady."
Xheavend's face changed.
Not fear.
Not dissociation.
Anger.
Clean.
Focused.
Personal.
She crossed the distance.
The Threnkel tried another sound.
Too late.
End descended.
The creature folded inward.
Crown.
Torso.
Limbs.
Compressed into something smaller than Qaritas's fist.
Then disappeared completely.
Silence.
Real silence.
For the first time since the fight began.
Qaritas looked around.
Four Threnkel.
Four Utrumamja.
Dead.
The Shaal still glowed.
Silver mist rolled back into the clearing.
Oruun slowly began emerging from under roots.
One flashed once.
Tentatively.
Qaritas lowered his weapon.
Xheavend stood with her back to him.
Blood ran from her shoulder.
Ribs.
Nose.
Several wounds were already closing.
Qaritas exhaled.
"Xheavend."
She inhaled.
Slowly.
Too deeply.
Her head turned.
Not toward him.
Toward the forest.
"I smell more."
Qaritas's body tensed again.
"More creatures?"
She shook her head.
"Abuse."
His stomach dropped.
Xheavend started walking.
"Where?"
"There."
She pointed into the mist.
Qaritas saw nothing.
"What is?"
"Someone hurting."
"How far?"
"I don't know."
"Who?"
"I don't know."
She continued.
"They need to be dealt with."
Qaritas stepped into her path.
She stopped.
Looked at him.
"Move."
"No."
Her face emptied.
"Q."
"No."
"Move."
"You're bleeding."
"It heals."
"That's not the point."
"They need me."
"You don't know who they are."
"I know what I smell."
"And you can barely tell which voices are real."
Her expression changed.
Dangerously.
"Move."
Qaritas stayed.
No weapon raised.
Hands visible.
Feet planted.
"No."
For several seconds neither moved.
Then Xheavend drew a blade.
Qaritas's eyes dropped to it.
Then back to her face.
"Don't."
She drove it into her own stomach.
Qaritas froze.
The sound was small.
Wet.
The blade disappeared nearly to the hilt.
Xheavend stared ahead.
Not at him.
At nothing.
Pulled it out.
The wound began closing immediately.
"Xheavend."
Again.
She stabbed herself beneath the ribs.
"This is what you want, Yzer?!"
Qaritas moved one step.
She raised the blade toward him.
Not threatening him.
Warning him back.
Then—
again.
Into her thigh.
End healed it.
Again.
Her shoulder.
Again.
Her side.
Blood spilled across the Shaal.
Blue-white grass illuminated beneath red.
"You want pain?!"
She laughed.
Wrong.
Sharp.
Broken.
"Fine!"
Qaritas's face went pale.
Another wound opened across her back.
Not hers.
Yzer.
Xheavend screamed.
Then stabbed herself again.
"YOU WANT ME MAD?!"
End sealed the wound before she could even pull the blade fully free.
She stabbed again.
"YOU WANT END?!"
Another remote cut opened across her cheek.
"YOU GOT IT!"
Qaritas moved.
This time—
he did not stop.
Xheavend raised the blade.
He caught her wrist.
She reacted instantly.
Violently.
Her other hand struck his chest hard enough to crack bone.
Qaritas held on.
Not tighter than necessary.
But enough.
"Let go!"
"No."
"LET GO!"
She drove her knee into him.
Ribs broke.
Regenerated.
Qaritas caught the second wrist when she tried transferring the blade.
"Q!"
"I know."
"LET GO OF ME!"
"I know."
She thrashed.
End surged around them.
The forest darkened.
Shaal flattened in a ring.
Qaritas's coat snapped backward in pressure.
"I SAID LET GO!"
"I heard you!"
"THEN DO IT!"
"No!"
Her eyes widened.
Rage.
Betrayal.
Panic.
Everything at once.
Qaritas tightened his grip just enough to stop the blade reaching her.
Not controlling where she went.
Not dictating what she believed.
Not deciding her future.
Stopping an actively dissociated woman from stabbing herself repeatedly while a Fragment remotely tortured her into a breakdown.
There was a difference.
There had to be.
Xheavend twisted.
Qaritas almost lost her.
He shifted.
Caught her against his chest from behind.
Pinned the knife-arm away from her body.
She screamed.
Not pain.
Fury.
Fear.
"GET OFF ME!"
Qaritas's face tightened.
"I'm sorry."
"GET OFF!"
"I'm sorry."
"Q!"
"I KNOW!"
End hit him.
For one instant Qaritas thought his entire left side had disappeared.
Then regenerated.
He still held on.
"I'm not letting you cut yourself open for him!"
"IT'S MY BODY!"
The words hit harder than End.
Qaritas's grip faltered.
Xheavend nearly broke free.
He closed his eyes for half a second.
"My body. My fear. My choice."
He remembered.
Gods.
He remembered.
Then he looked at the knife in her hand.
The blood.
The empty eyes.
The wounds appearing from somewhere else.
And understood the distinction with brutal clarity.
"Yes."
Xheavend struggled.
"Then LET GO!"
"Not while you're trying to kill yourself because he wants you destabilized!"
Her body went still.
Only for a second.
Qaritas continued.
"You get to choose what happens to your body."
His voice broke.
"But he is in your head right now."
Another cut opened across her arm.
Qaritas flinched.
"He's hurting you until you stop being able to choose anything."
Xheavend shook.
"I can choose."
"Then choose when you're back."
Silence.
Her breathing turned ragged.
Qaritas held her.
Not gently.
There was no gentle version of restraining someone powerful enough to turn mountains into conclusions.
But carefully.
As carefully as he could.
"Choose when it's you."
Xheavend's fingers loosened slightly around the knife.
Then tightened again.
"I am me."
"I know."
"You think I'm broken."
"No."
"You think I'm gone."
"No."
"You think End is—"
"I think Yzer is trying to make the decision for both of you."
That stopped her.
Only slightly.
But enough.
Qaritas lowered his voice.
"And I refuse to help him."
Xheavend's breathing hitched.
The knife trembled.
Then—
another wound appeared across her ribs.
Her body jerked.
End surged.
And something inside Xheavend changed.
Bone shifted beneath Qaritas's arms.
Her shoulders broadened.
Height changed.
Voice caught in her throat and dropped.
Qaritas's eyes widened.
The body he was holding—
was no longer shaped the same way.
Xheavend looked down.
And screamed.
Not because Qaritas was holding her.
Not because Yzer had opened another wound.
Because the hands in front of her—
weren't hers.
Or perhaps they were.
That was the problem.
Her fingers had lengthened.
Knuckles broader.
The tendons running along the back of her hands suddenly more pronounced.
Qaritas felt the change happening beneath his arms.
Bone moved.
Not broke.
Moved.
Shoulders widening against his chest.
Muscle rearranging beneath skin.
Her spine lengthened.
Her center of balance shifted so violently Qaritas almost lost his hold.
Xheavend gasped.
"What—"
Her voice cracked halfway through the word.
Dropped.
Not slightly.
Deepened into an unfamiliar register.
She froze.
Qaritas did too.
Xheavend looked down at herself.
Her chest was changing.
Hips narrowing.
Waist shifting.
The structure of her jaw pushed outward beneath skin.
Her face lengthened.
Brow changed.
Neck thickened.
Height increased by several centimetres.
Qaritas's arms were suddenly positioned incorrectly because the body he'd restrained no longer had the same proportions.
He released her immediately.
Xheavend stumbled forward.
Caught herself.
Looked at her hands.
Male.
Completely.
She touched her face.
Her fingers shook over an unfamiliar jaw.
"No."
Qaritas stood several steps behind her.
"Xheavend."
"No."
She looked down.
Her breathing accelerated.
"No, no, no—"
Then it changed again.
Her shoulders contracted.
Height dropped.
Jaw softened.
Chest returned.
Hips widened sharply enough to make her stumble sideways.
Female.
Xheavend grabbed her own arms.
"No."
Qaritas didn't move.
"Xheavend—"
She changed again.
Male.
Faster this time.
Bone rolled under skin like something trying to remember which blueprint belonged there.
Her voice came out low.
"Make it stop."
Then—
female.
"Make it stop."
Then halfway.
Neither.
Her face held elements of both.
One shoulder broader than the other.
Voice trapped between registers.
Chest partially shifted.
Pelvis changing and correcting so rapidly that Xheavend doubled over.
She screamed.
Qaritas took one instinctive step.
Stopped.
"Can I touch you?"
Xheavend didn't answer.
Her body shifted again.
Male.
This time taller.
Muscle heavier across the back.
Then female almost immediately.
Then male again.
Every transition came without blood.
Without tearing.
End didn't need ordinary biology to obey ordinary limitations.
That was what made it worse.
This wasn't transformation through injury.
It was revision.
As though Xheavend's body had stopped recognizing permanence as a meaningful rule.
She gripped her head.
"STOP!"
The word came from a man's throat.
Then the last syllable rose into her usual voice.
Qaritas went cold.
Yzer's words returned.
It becomes terribly difficult to remember which pieces of yourself belong to you...
No.
No.
That bastard did not get to be right.
Xheavend's body lurched.
Female.
Male.
Something between.
She stared down at herself as though her skin had betrayed her.
"I can't—"
Her throat shifted.
Voice dropped.
"I can't stop it."
Qaritas's chest tightened.
Another remote cut opened across her abdomen.
Male skin split.
Then, halfway through regeneration, the body shifted female again.
The wound moved with it.
End repaired both.
Xheavend laughed.
One broken sound.
"This is funny."
"No."
"He's going to love this."
"No."
"He said he made me a better cage."
"Xheavend."
"Maybe this is it."
"No."
"Maybe I don't even get to keep the fucking shape—"
"That is not his."
She looked at him.
Qaritas's voice sharpened.
"Do not give him that."
Her face shifted while he watched.
Cheekbones.
Jaw.
Eyes remained hers.
Always hers.
That mattered.
"You don't know what's happening."
"No."
Her voice deepened again.
"Then don't lie to me."
"I'm not."
Male.
Female.
Halfway.
Qaritas kept his eyes on hers.
"I don't know why your body is changing."
Another shift.
"I don't know whether this is End."
Another.
"I don't know whether Yzer triggered it."
Another.
"But he doesn't get to decide what it means."
Xheavend stared.
Her breathing shook.
Qaritas continued.
"You are still standing here."
Male.
"You are still angry."
Female.
"You still hate him."
Between.
"You still think my plans are stupid."
A tiny, involuntary sound left her.
Almost a laugh.
Qaritas seized it.
"And you are still the person who called a twenty-metre crystal corpse architect 'nice.'"
"It was making a bridge."
The voice was male.
Qaritas pointed.
"Exactly."
Then her body changed again.
She flinched.
Hands went immediately to her ribs.
The moment was gone.
Qaritas looked toward the forest.
The Shaal was glowing everywhere now.
Their battle had turned the ground into a map of disturbance.
Blue-white veins pulsed beneath the violet grass.
Four dead Threnkel.
Four dead half-rendered nightmares.
Blood.
Broken roots.
Noise.
The corpse-ship's gravity distortion behind them.
And somewhere beyond the mist—
something answered with a distant call.
Another sound replied.
Then another.
Qaritas made the decision.
"We can't stay here."
Xheavend looked at him.
Female again.
"Ship."
"Too exposed."
"Where?"
Qaritas reached for the Chronolock.
Her eyes narrowed.
"The Book said not to fly it."
"I'm not flying it."
"You say things like that immediately before technically obeying instructions."
"That's unfair."
"Is it?"
"No."
He activated the entrance.
Space folded.
A doorway appeared where there shouldn't have been one.
Darkness beyond.
Interior light.
Stable geometry.
The Chronolock.
Xheavend stared at it.
Then toward the forest.
Something large moved far away.
The mist bulged around it.
Qaritas held the doorway open.
"Inside."
Her expression sharpened.
Not at the word.
At the tone.
Qaritas caught himself.
He changed it.
"Can you get inside?"
She looked at him.
Then nodded.
"Yes."
"Good."
Another shift hit her halfway there.
Her height increased.
She stumbled.
Qaritas reached.
Stopped.
"Do you want help?"
Xheavend clenched her jaw.
Then held out one hand.
Qaritas took it.
That mattered.
He pulled only when she pulled back.
Together—
they crossed.
Qaritas followed.
The doorway sealed.
Locks engaged.
The forest vanished.
And for the first time since Yzer had torn the poison from her blood—
there was a wall between Xheavend and Hstrarkit.
Not between her and Yzer.
But one problem at a time.