The moment lingered, like it didn't know how to end.
Kasmina's Vector lowered, like a candle set gently onto a shelf that no longer remembered flame.
Cain didn't strike again.
He didn't need to.
Kasmina's walker lay motionless in the ruin of a street already burned out, shoulders hunched, reactor fading. The light had gone out of her gauntlets. Her last cast hadn't even tried.
Inside the cockpit, she exhaled once—shallow, slow.
It wasn't surrender.
It was grief.
Her hand hovered over the ejection lever, contemplating, whether it was a right choice.
And Cain, watching from inside the crown of a war machine built on lies, let her reach it.
He didn't wait for telemetry.
MERIT flagged the launch momentarily as it happened, but he was already moving—arm lifting with mechanical precision. The pod entered his grip before the first stabilization ping could register.
The pod hissed, thrusters coughing feebly before it gave out. But it was futile, as Chernobog's hand held the pod steady, one massive fist wrapped around the capsule's midsection like it was no more than a battery cell. Its fingers didn't flex. The servos didn't twitch. The grip was exact, tight enough to prevent escape, but not enough to crush, unless necessary. Calculated restraint, the kind that wasn't born of mercy but of purpose.
The pod sat in its palm like an offering not yet accepted. The emergency vent hissed once, bleeding the last of its heat into the dusty air. Hydraulics inside the capsule cycled down with a quiet sigh, lights flickering in soft pulses, then falling still. No motion. No signals.
Then the hatch cracked.
Cain felt it before he saw it—an almost imperceptible shift in pressure, the air parting across the fingers of the machine with subtle force. Heat lifted in ghostly coils from the pod's top seam, distorting the dust in the space between them. Then came the mechanical exhale: the slow, reluctant breath of the seal releasing, one lock at a time, until the hatch split open in halves.
The monitor blinked once, as the figure rose from the pod, and Cain froze.
She didn't climb. She didn't crawl. She just rose—slow and deliberate, one hand catching the interior railing, movements smooth but fragile, like they were being held together by memory more than muscle. Her armor was torn through at the collar, seared down to blackened plating and exposed synth-skin, the burn lines arcing dangerously close to her shoulder artery. Her hair was matted with sweat and soot. Blood ran from her nose and bloodshot eyes. She looked at Chernobog's head through haze and heat and the blue-white drift of static like she was already standing on the other side of the war.
For a moment, the cockpit didn't feel like a machine anymore.
It felt like a coffin.
Cain didn't move.
Didn't speak.
He stared at the feed, waiting for it to flicker. Waiting for MERIT to correct the record. Waiting for the vector's camera to glitch or the identification overlay to shift or anything—anything—that would make what he was seeing not real.
Kasmina.
Climbing out of Bloodsucker's pod like she'd never left.
She can't be one of them.
She can't be the one.
His pulse spiked, not with adrenaline, but with something colder. A leaden pressure in his lungs, thick and suffocating, dragging him down with the weight of everything he hadn't been brave enough to question until this moment. It was the same feeling he had before the masks, before Nobody, before Chernobog, when all of this was just ideals and iron and impossible promises.
He reached for the pocket, arming himself, and forced his body to stand up.
The hiss of pressure equalizing in the cabin was faint and distant, as though it belonged to someone else's mech, someone else's moment. He climbed upward through the hatch, not quickly, not with urgency or rage, but slow, trying to extend this moment as much as he could, before facing the inevitability. His hands gripped the ladder. His boots met the outer spine of the crown. And the wind caught him immediately.
It wasn't cold. Wasn't hot either. Just friction and movement of air.
He stepped out onto the top of Chernobog's head and walked toward the edge.
She was still there.
Kasmina.
Not a ghost. Not a projection. Not the memory of some training room. Just her—burned, breathing, and looking up. As if she knew, that whoever piloted Chernobog, would want to meet her face to face.
She was not wrong.
The wind moved first, sliding across the broad deck plates of Chernobog's back, tugging gently at the hem of Cain's coat, lifting curls of ash and red dust that spiraled around his boots. Heat still rose off the Vector's shoulders below them—not pulsed, but in a dull drift, the last breath of a machine not quite done dying.
Cain stood at the crown's edge, the mask still in place, eyes locked on the woman below.
She hadn't moved. Didn't try to run away. She remained framed by the opened capsule, one boot braced against the inner rail, shoulders square but quiet. Her jacket hung loose where it had split at the ribs. There was blood on her collarbone, soot along her jaw. The set of her mouth was unreadable from this distance.
Cain said nothing. Neither did Kasmina.
It was a moment of peace in this trying time. Just two silhouettes caught in a pause the war didn't understand.
Then—finally—she spoke.
Not loud. Not trembling. Just level.
"Are you the one commanding them? I assume if I kill you, this mess ends."
It didn't echo. It didn't need to. It just hung there between them like a wire pulled tight across an old bridge, taut and humming, holding far more weight than it should. Cain felt a strong sense of deja vu, but didn't respond, trying to process it. It didn't add up. But at the same time...
I am at friend's. He felt something was off, but worst case scenario was that Kasmina just wanted to take a break. Not be a monster, children of Resistance think lives under their beds.
His hands stayed at his sides, fingers loose but twitching, the left one flexing once, then locking again.
Chernobog's vents clicked once behind him, winding down into silence. Somewhere far in the distance, another building collapsed—just the sound of something giving up. Neither of them turned to look at it.
Kasmina didn't advance. She didn't raise her hands. She simply stood there, watching him, and Cain, behind the mask, behind the name, behind the myth that had made him more symbol than man, stood just the same.
And for one breath, neither knew if this was a beginning or an end.
Then Cain raised his hand.
Slowly, not like a threat, not like a draw, just a simple motion. He reached up toward the base of his mask, found the seal line beneath his jaw, pressed the latch with muscle memory he hadn't used in weeks. Plating, that was covering his head, slowly retracting.
He didn't pull.
Not yet.
The wind ran its fingers over Chernobog's scorched neck plating. Somewhere below them, in a cratered street full of melted rebar and dying lights, the echo of a broken alarm still blinked on and off with no one left to hear it. The war had gone quiet.
He was going to take it off. To show her. But before that happened, she spoke again.
"You don't stand for anything," she said.
Her voice was steady. Not bitter. Not angry. Just hollow, like she'd been carrying the truth so long it had gone weightless.
"You wear a mask and blow things up and think that makes you holy."
Cain stopped.
"You fight for ashes. For slogans. For cities that ate themselves alive before we ever arrived."
She raised her hand, pointing at the city behind her. The skyline was still cracked open with heat. Towers like broken teeth, windows melted down into slag.
"This is what Earth gave itself. Not freedom. Not unity. Just noise. Guns and tribes and burning hospitals. And when someone finally came to clean it up, you called it tyranny."
She shook her head once, slow.
"The Empire gave you clean water. Electricity. Medicine that didn't come from a crate dropped by a drone with no flag. But that wasn't enough, was it?"
Her hand dropped.
"You want to suffer. You want your world to burn. Because if it doesn't—if the enemy's gone—then you're just a violent child with no future and nothing left to blame."
She took one step forward, steady even on the uneven plating.
"You think you're saving this planet," she said, softer now. "You're not. You're just breaking it slower."
Cain hesitated, and for the first time, it showed.
This wasn't the Kasmina he remembered. This wasn't the girl from the Fold who bled with him, who fought in silence and cut corners in drills to drag him forward. This wasn't his partner. This wasn't his war.
This was the moment he realized—
He'd been played.
Mask's plating closed back with barely audible click, and his hand dipped into the pocket of his coat. A motion that felt like betrayal even to himself. Fingers closed around the sidearm, but at this point it was not just a resignation of his own feelings.
"You can kill me," he said, and his voice broke—not from fear, but from the fracture spreading in his ribs. "But that will never make your cause just."
Cain pulled it out, barell leveled with Kasmina's beautiful blue eyes, and hesitated. Not because he was unsure of the target, but because something inside him was splintering in real time.
She didn't know it was him.
Didn't know he used to braid her hair, clumsily, before missions—because she asked him to. Said it made her feel more like herself.
Didn't know he remembered the sound she made when she laughed unexpectedly—like she was surprised it still worked.
Didn't know how close he was to shaking.
Cain said nothing.
She thought she was talking to a weapon.
To a symbol.
To Nobody.
He thought of her fingers brushing his cheek once, when he was too tired to sit up. Of how she wiped sweat off his forehead and didn't say a word.
He thought of how warm her palm was.
She didn't know.
She'd never know.
And that was mercy.
Because if she saw him now, if she recognized the man who had once whispered Don't fall asleep, I need you to stay—
She would break.
And he couldn't do that to her.
So he gave her the only thing he had left - the monster she needed him to be.
Kasmina straightened her spine, even as her legs wobbled. Her eyes didn't leave the barrel.
This can't be mercy. It can't be rage. It has to be necessity. She would never stop. Not until they dragged the last ember of rebellion out of this world. And she would call it peace.
That lie was the last thing he had left.
And he fired.
The gunshot cracked like a fault line. Kasmina staggered once—no scream, no denial—just a collapse, folding back into the capsule as if the thread holding her upright had snapped.
Her body hit the metal hard, one leg caught on the hatch rail, the rest of her disappearing behind the shadows of the pod.
Cain turned away, nausea rising sharp and sudden. He couldn't stand the look of blood. Not hers. Not like this.
His hands trembled, as he turned towards Chernobog's hatch, and wind erased all the sounds around.
Juno saw the shot, saw her best friend collapse in silence like a story being erased mid-sentence.
One moment Kasmina was standing, shoulders squared in the pod's open light, jaw set like she'd already decided how this would end, and the next—she folded backward, spine arching, head snapping slightly left, a red mist blooming too fast to register.
And Juno screamed.
"NO—!"
It ripped out of her like the first breath of a drowning body, too raw to be controlled, too loud to sound like grief, echoing across the broken plaza like thunder through static.
She didn't wait. Didn't think.
She was running, full-speed, across the fractured stone, stumbling once, then again, shoulders catching the remains of a twisted railing that shredded her jacket open at the seam. She didn't stop. Her body burned, legs still weak from the crash, lungs thick with smoke, but none of it mattered.
Because she saw Kasmina fall.
And she knew—deep in the marrow of her bones—that something in the world had snapped the moment she did.
The pod dropped from Chernobog's grip like it was trash, the warmachine was already turning away, massive shoulders dragging its silhouette back into the smoke. Like it hadn't just killed the only person that mattered.
Juno hit the edge of the pod at full force, palms slapping down hard, body sliding into a kneel as she reached for the hatch with trembling fingers, screaming her name over and over and over again, like maybe if she said it enough, the bullet would come back out, time would reverse, this would stop—
"Kasmina—Kasmina, please—Kasmina, talk to me—!"
The hatch creaked as she forced it open.
Smoke hissed out.
And then silence.
Kasmina lay twisted inside, one boot still hooked on the outer rim, one hand slack in her lap, face half-turned in profile, and as Juno saw the wound, she staggered backward.
"No. No, no, no—"
Her hands went cold. Her mouth was still open. Tears filled her eyes and, for the first time, she spilled out in broken gasps, punched forward by a chest too full to hold any more.
The wind had gone still. The world had stopped moving. Only her, and the body in the pod, and the long, dark shadow of a warmachine retreating without a word.
Juno dropped to her knees, bloodied fingers dragging across the edge of the open hatch. Her breath fogged late, like the atmosphere itself didn't want to acknowledge what had just happened. Her hands hovered over Kasmina's frame like she was trying to press the life back in—then stopped, as her own limbs gave out beneath the weight of what wasn't there anymore.
"She's not dead," Juno whispered again, but this time it sounded like a threat.
Something would burn for this. She didn't know what yet. But it would burn.
And then, quieter this time, cracked open and lost inside her:
"No."
The truck was still there. Dark and waiting, with a bomb ready to explode any moment.
That's when she saw her. At first, just a silhouette near the edge of the truck, half-lost in the settling haze where the smoke bled into heat mirages, barely a shape at all. Her eyes were still full of static and ash, her knees bruised raw from skidding into the broken earth, hands cracked along the knuckles where she'd tried too hard to open something that didn't want to be opened.
Her body moved the only way it could—with speed that didn't belong to reason. Boots catching on shattered tile, shoulder slamming into rusted railing, hands scraping raw as she pushed forward in a lurching sprint that had more to do with falling than running. She didn't breathe. She didn't call her name.
She tackled Titania at full force, both of them tumbling sideways into the dirt beside the wheel housing, gravel biting through what was left of their sleeves.
Juno struck her.
Hard. First with the side of her fist, then her elbow, then both hands curled into something that didn't quite remember how to be human.
Titania tried to block her blows, but didn't look like she tried to fight back.
And when Juno paused—arms shaking, shoulders pulled tight, mouth open wide but making no sound—Titania spoke.
Not like a soldier. Not like a prisoner.
Just a girl. Out of breath.
"You lost," she said.
Juno blinked.
"What?"
The rage didn't vanish. But it faltered, like a fire realizing it had run out of oxygen.
"The bomb," Titania clarified, quieter now. "It's off. I disabled it while you were fighting."
Juno's mouth moved, but nothing came out. Her chest ached, tight with too many kinds of pain.
"You... you weren't supposed to," she whispered.
Titania shifted her shoulder slightly, just enough to nod toward the panel embedded in the side of the truck. The display was still glowing, flickering faint behind a spiderweb of scratches.
SEQUENCE ABORTED
MANUAL INTERRUPT // SAFETY LOCKED
Juno stared at it.
A breeze passed over the plaza. Somewhere in the ruins behind her, a steel beam creaked and fell, slow and exhausted.
Juno lowered her hands.
Her whole body felt like it had been emptied out—like her bones were just scaffolding now, holding the grief in place.
Titania didn't get up. She didn't cry or plead.
She just sat back against the truck, dust settling across her lap, throat still raw from something that hadn't turned into a scream, blood caked on her face like streaks of tears.
Juno sat beside her.
Not out of trust. Not out of forgiveness.
Just... because she couldn't stand anymore.
And in the middle of a plaza full of broken glass and blackened silence, two girls sat shoulder to shoulder beside a weapon that hadn't gone off, beneath a sky that still hadn't decided what came next.
"You are under arrest, Titania Montawells." Juno finally managed to groan.
"Whatever."
The ceiling above groaned once — faint, deep, like something old shifting far overhead.
The Colonel didn't look up.
The room was carved out of concrete and silence, old warroom bones repurposed into something more private. It smelled of mineral dust and dried wiring. No lights. No windows. Just the dim flicker of a laptop screen, cracked slightly along one edge, resting on a rust-streaked crate where someone had once stenciled PROPERTY OF MINISTRY // DO NOT RELOCATE in blocky half-erased paint.
On the screen, a face glared at him through a bad compression codec — too many packets dropped in transit, every blink a smear of pixels and rage.
"You failed," Akkbar said.
The Colonel didn't answer right away. He sat still in the folding chair, one leg crossed over the other, gloved fingers steepled in front of him, the soft hum of power banks ticking down somewhere behind the walls.
"You didn't kill him," the Colonel said, voice low and even. "That wasn't me. That was your call. Your cruiser. Don't pin that on me."
Akkbar's jaw tensed on screen.
"And whose plan was it to drop weapons in the square? Who gave the order to 'show some guns, make them scared'? I did what you asked."
"You were supposed to flex the teeth, not take the whole goddamn jaw off. We said make noise, not light the city on fire."
"I didn't light anything. Your boys were the ones who pulled coverage off the east quarter. You gave me static uplink and a 'show of force' brief with half a plan and less than half a squad."
"And you unleashed him."
The Colonel leaned forward, the screen glow casting harsh angles across his cheekbones.
"He moved because the plan broke around him. You think I unleashed him? He wasn't even supposed to be there."
Akkbar snapped back:
"He crowned himself in a crater full of bodies. Is that what we're doing now? Electing ghosts?"
The Colonel's mouth was a thin line.
"No. But it's what happened when you didn't glass the ridge. You sat on the strike order too long. You wanted clean optics. You waited for drama. Now you've got it."
"You think this buys us leverage? It buys us chaos. Every cell is spinning rumors now. He's not a symbol, he's a goddamn wildfire."
"Which you lit," the Colonel said. "You just don't like where the flames landed."
Akkbar stared at him, motionless.
"You will not raise him up."
The Colonel didn't blink.
"I'm not raising anyone."
"You put a crown on him the second you let him walk away alive."
Silence.
Then the Colonel spoke, quiet, measured:
"He survived what none of us could. And the people saw it."
Akkbar's jaw clenched.
"That wasn't what we agreed on."
Akkbar didn't answer at first. He stared through the screen, face lit from beneath, like a man watching a fire he knew would spread.
Then he exhaled—once, shallow, almost amused.
"No," he said. "Agreement didn't change. You just stopped being part of it."
The Colonel's eyes narrowed.
Akkbar leaned forward. His expression wasn't angry now—just tired, sharp at the edges.
"You were always good at setting fires. But you forgot what comes after. While you were chasing symbols and speeches, we were preparing for something real."
The Colonel didn't move.
"You think the riots mattered? The boy in the crater? That was pageantry. Smoke. A show for the crowd."
He paused, let the words land.
"The real operation begins tonight."
Somewhere in the walls, a faint click—too soft to be mechanical failure. The Colonel tensed.
"You bastard," he said.
Akkbar's voice lowered.
"You won't need to worry about who inherits the war. You won't be around to see it."
And then, faintly—far too faint to be coincidence—the sound of distant ordinance. A dull thud. Another. Echoing up through the floor like thunder rolling through stone.
The Colonel stood.
Akkbar didn't even blink.
"Goodbye, Colonel."