The training ground was a scar in the earth where something holy had died.
Ora stood in the center, twin swords crossed, breathing hard. Around her, seven Sylvan warriors lay groaning. Not dead—she was learning control. But definitely rethinking their life choices.
The air around her was winter incarnate—seven degrees below normal now, cold enough that her breath came in clouds even in daylight. Ice crystals formed on the grass where she stepped, and the warriors' blood froze as it dripped from their wounds. The ash taste had become her only flavor, mixed with the copper memory of every life taken.
"Again," she said.
"No." Kaelen stepped into the circle, his own blade singing as he drew it. Not Prince Kaelen—her Kaelen, the scholar who'd somehow become her keeper, translator, and occasional conscience.
She'd laughed bitterly when she first learned his name. "Another Kaelen. The world has a cruel sense of humor, giving the same name to a pompous Sylvan prince and a curious human scholar."
"Common name," he'd shrugged. "Though I suspect I wear it better than royalty."
Now he stood before her, very much not royal, very much about to get hurt. "You've proved your point."
"Have I? Because they keep getting up." She kicked one of the fallen elves. He whimpered. "In real battle, they'd be dead six times over."
"In real battle, they wouldn't face you alone." Kaelen's stance was perfect—three thousand years of martial tradition in every angle. "They'd use tactics. Coordination. The things that separate us from beasts."
"Beasts are winning this war."
"Are they? Or are we becoming them?" He began to circle her, each step placed with mathematical precision. "Look at yourself, Ora. You fight like the thing that destroyed your city."
The corruption in her veins pulsed. "Good."
"Is it? You're becoming exactly what the Distillers want—pure violence without thought, destruction without purpose. You're not breaking their pattern. You're completing it."
She laughed, ugly and sharp. "Philosophy? Now? While the world burns?"
"Especially now." His blade moved, a testing strike. She blocked it easily, but he was already flowing into the next movement. "What's the point of surviving if we become the enemy?"
"There is no point. There's only survival." She pressed forward, Sussurro and Urlo singing their discordant song. "Your precious philosophy didn't save Crysillia. Your ethics didn't stop the dragons. Your morality is luxury for people who aren't watching their sisters turn to light."
Steel met steel in patterns older than memory. But Ora didn't fight in patterns. She fought like corruption itself—spreading, consuming, adapting.
"You think I don't know loss?" Kaelen's perfect form finally cracked, real emotion bleeding through. "I had a daughter. Six years old. She was visiting the Crystal Academy for her aptitude tests."
Ora's strike faltered.
"She was in the children's wing when it collapsed. I found her hand. Just her hand. Still wearing the bracelet I'd made for her nameday." His blade came at her with renewed fury. "So don't tell me about loss, Ora. Don't tell me about pain. The difference is I choose not to let it define me."
"Then you're a fool." She caught his blade between both of hers, twisted, sent it flying. "Pain is all we have left. Pain and the promise of giving it back."
"That's not—"
She moved. Not with sword but with body, corruption-enhanced speed carrying her inside his guard. Her hand wrapped around his throat, lifting him off the ground with strength that shouldn't exist in her frame.
"You want philosophy? Here's mine." Black veins pulsed visibly under her skin. "The world is eating itself. The gods are lies. The only truth is power and who's willing to use it. I'm willing. That makes me necessary."
"It makes you a monster," he gasped.
"Yes." She dropped him. "And monsters win wars. Heroes just die pretty."
Kaelen coughed, rubbing his throat. "Silenus wouldn't want this for you."
"Silenus is dead." The words came out flat. "Died three days ago trying to save refugees who were already infected. Died believing in honor and redemption and all that shit you preach."
"What?"
"Dragon sickness. The corruption the Distillers spread. It got into the children first—their souls were smaller, easier to twist. He found a caravan of them, maybe thirty families, all infected but still fighting it." The sound of glass breaking filled the air as another truth shattered. "He tried to heal them with the old songs, the pure harmonies from before the Fall. For a moment, it worked. The children's eyes cleared. They smiled at him. Called him the Good Dragon. Then the Distiller corruption twisted his healing songs back on him. Used his own power to tear him apart from the inside. He died screaming in a language that doesn't exist anymore, while the children he'd tried to save turned to crystalline dust in his claws. Soul weight: Ancient, ten thousand years of memory and regret, flavored with guilt and silver starlight. The corruption consumed it all. Left nothing but another Void Garden where he fell."
Silence stretched between them.
"I didn't know," Kaelen finally said.
"Because I didn't tell you. Because it doesn't matter. He's dead. They're all dead or dying or about to die. The only question is whether we take the enemy with us."
"That's not the only question." He stood, retrieving his sword. "There's also the question of what we leave behind. What echo we create."
"Fuck echoes. I want screams."
*Yes,* whispered the corruption in Lyra's voice, sweet as honey, sharp as glass. *Make them all scream. Like I screamed when I turned to light. You remember, don't you? How I reached for you?*
Ora's hand twitched toward her head, trying to silence what wasn't really there.
"And you'll get them. But whose? The enemy's or the innocents caught in your corruption?" He gestured at the training ground. "Look around. Really look."
*He's weak,* Lyra's voice continued, a perfect mimicry that made Ora's chest ache. *Kill him and remember the color of my eyes. Just one life. That's all it costs.*
She did. The grass was dead in a perfect circle around her. The wounded Sylvan warriors had corruption spreading from their bruises—just a touch, but enough. The air itself tasted wrong where she'd been.
"You're not just becoming a weapon," Kaelen said softly. "You're becoming a plague. Is that really what Lyra would want?"
The name hit like a physical blow. Ora's control slipped, corruption flaring out in visible waves. The remaining grass withered. A bird fell from the sky, dead before it hit the ground.
"Don't." Her voice was dangerous. "Don't you dare use her name."
"Someone has to. You've forgotten everything except the pain of losing her. But she was more than her death. She was joy and curiosity and—"
"STOP."
The word carried power. Wrong power. The kind that made reality hiccup. Kaelen's mouth kept moving but no sound came out. His eyes widened in horror.
The theft of his voice made a sound like glass breaking—not in the world but in the space between thought and speech. Another fundamental law shattered. The temperature around Ora dropped another fraction, frost spreading from her feet in fractal patterns.
*Good,* the corruption purred in Lyra's voice. *Now take the rest. Take his memories. His soul. I'm so lonely here in the dark, sister. Bring me company.*
"You're not her," Ora said aloud, not caring if Kaelen heard.
*Of course I am. Who else knows how you used to braid my hair? Who else remembers the song mother sang? I'm all that's left of her. Of us. Feed me, and I'll never leave you.*
Ora stared at what she'd done. She'd stolen his voice. Not metaphorically. She could feel it, trapped in the corruption that ran through her veins. His ability to speak, captured like a butterfly in amber.
She could give it back.
She could keep it forever.
She could—
"This is what I mean," she said quietly. "This is what I'm becoming. Not a hero. Not a villain. Something else. Something necessary." She made a gesture, and Kaelen gasped as his voice returned. "The Distillers think in patterns of perfection. I'm the opposite. Random. Chaotic. Wrong. That's the only advantage we have."
"There has to be another way," he insisted.
"Show me one that works and I'll take it." She sheathed her swords. "But until then, I'll be the monster. Because someone has to be."
She walked away, leaving dead earth in her footsteps. Behind her, Kaelen stood among the wounded, watching corruption spread like ink in water.
In three hours, he'd try to heal them with old magic.
The knowledge would come violently. Not learned but forced into his mind like nails through wood. He'd taste copper and ozone—the flavor of time itself ripping open. Blood would pour from his nose, his ears, his eyes as the Prima Fragment's curse activated. Every truth about corruption would slam into him simultaneously: its origin in the Shapers' failure, its evolution through dragon fire, its perfection in Ora's flesh. The sound of glass breaking in his skull as each comfortable lie shattered.
In six hours, he'd realize the corruption had evolved past healing, the knowledge burning like acid in his brain.
In twelve hours, he'd make a choice that would haunt him forever—mercy or hope.
But right now, he just stood there, sword in hand, wondering if Ora was right. If monsters were all they had left. If becoming wrong was the only way to make things right.
The training ground was a scar in the earth where something holy had died.
It was about to get bigger.
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*End Chapter 11.6*
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