The pier rocked under the assault of another wave, timbers groaning like ribs ready to split. Salt stung Ira's eyes, though he could not tell if it was the sea or the heat boiling from the object at his side. His blood sang in time with the tide—rising, crashing, devouring. Every breath seemed to carry with it the scream of something buried too deep to silence.
Zadie's blade hovered, a silver line trembling in the mist. Her voice cut through the chaos. "Yield. Before you become something neither of us can stop."
The whisper rose in fury. She will break you, Ira. She will bind your throat and call it mercy. End her now—prove you are not a coward hiding behind another's pity.
His hand tightened on the hilt, knuckles bone-white. He wanted to answer her, to shout her name, but the words slid in his mouth like oil. Instead, he staggered forward, blade slashing in a savage arc. Zadie parried and spun away, the force rattling her arm to the shoulder.
Rust shouted from the sidelines, helpless. "You're going to kill each other! Gods damn it, stop!"
But the pier was shrinking around them. The mist pressed close, walling them in, until the world was only blade and breath and blood.
The whisper shifted. No longer a thousand cackling voices, but one deep, deliberate tone—patient, ancient.
Choose, bearer.
Ira blinked. For a moment the pier vanished, replaced by black water that stretched to infinity. Zadie stood before him, her reflection fractured in the tide. But behind her, another vision flickered—himself, standing over her body, her lifeblood sinking into the planks. His face in that vision was serene, untroubled, as though by killing her he had silenced the storm forever.
The map burned against his ribs, pulsing like a second heart.
Submit, and she dies. The path clears. Power without resistance. Or… resist, and prove yourself by will alone. Then we may walk as one.
The sea hissed. The vision wavered. The choice pressed down like a millstone.
Ira grit his teeth, dragging himself back into the clash. He parried another of Zadie's strikes, but too hard—her blade spun wide, nearly leaving her hand. She caught it just in time, sweat streaking her temple.
"You're losing yourself!" she cried, darting forward. Her boot slammed against his chest, forcing him back a step. The pier creaked, spray rising between them.
He should have finished it then. The whisper told him where to aim, how to slide the blade between her ribs, how to twist until she bled her last. His body leaned into it, his arms twitching to obey.
But Ira saw the fear in her eyes—not of death, but of him. Of what he would become if he gave in. That fear pierced deeper than any blade.
The fight turned vicious.
Steel rang against steel, every strike a drumbeat of desperation. Ira lunged with furious speed, but Zadie met him, her blade bending the tide of each attack by inches. Sparks spat into the mist as they locked. She shoved him off and struck at his legs; he leapt clear, boots splintering the boards. His counter came heavy, overhead, meant to crush. She rolled aside, cloak flaring, the blow smashing through wood where she had stood.
The pier shuddered. Rust flinched but dared not intervene.
"You're fighting me, not it," Zadie gasped, circling. Her breath came ragged, chest heaving. "Which one of us wins doesn't matter, Ira. Only whether you are the one holding that blade when it ends."
The whisper howled in his skull. Kill her. Or I will make you.
His body moved too fast, the string-puppet lurch of borrowed strength. He rained blows—high, low, a feint to her right. She slipped, barely catching herself on one knee. He surged forward, blade descending.
Zadie raised her weapon in time, steel locking with a scream. Their faces hung inches apart, sweat and salt stinging their eyes.
"Fight it!" she snarled. "Damn you, Ira, fight!"
And for the first time, he pushed back.
He did not push against her blade, but against the whisper itself. Against the threads tugging his wrist, the voice curling around his tongue. He pulled inward, toward the pain in his cut palm, toward the warmth of his own blood.
The whisper roared. Black water surged in his vision, choking, dragging him down into the familiar drowning. He saw Zadie's death again, saw his blade piercing her throat. For a heartbeat the weight of it pressed on him—command, inevitability, fate.
But this time he didn't yield.
He tightened his grip. His muscles screamed, but he twisted his blade free from her guard, not flinging it aside, not surrendering, but turning the bind into a strike. His movements were sharp, disciplined, no longer driven by the Shard's pull but by his own will. Zadie staggered back under the force of him—her boot skidding against the damp planks, her wrist jolted until her weapon rattled from her hand.
Ira's cloak snapped in the sea-wind as he stepped forward, blade angled just enough that she saw the promise of his strength, the reality that he could end it here, if he chose.
Her eyes widened—not in fear, but in recognition. A memory lingered there, between them, of other duels, other nights when she had been the one to test his mettle. And though she did not speak it, he saw the trace of a half-forgotten smile at the corner of her mouth, faint as the mist.
But the triumph lasted only a breath. The burn in his ribs flared white-hot, a chain yanking tight around his lungs. His vision blurred, body collapsing under the weight of his own defiance. The pier tilted sideways and the world crashed down.
Darkness.
He came to not on the pier, but standing once again in the drowned silence where it had first spoken to him—the place of still water and endless horizon. No gulls, no mist, no tide. Only that vast, black mirror stretching forever.
He staggered, blood still wet on his lips. And he wasn't alone. Zadie was there too—or rather, the echo of her. Not the warrior with her blade raised, but the shadow of the woman she had been to him once, leaning against a railing, hair damp with rain, her laugh sharp enough to cut through the years. Her eyes in that memory softened when they looked at him, not sharp and judging, but steady, familiar. It was not real, he knew. And yet the map used her shape, her presence, to press its truth deeper into him.
The water rippled. A voice rose.
You are Worthy to have bent your fate, not by surrender, but by your own hand. You have teeth, Finch. You have will.
The black expanse trembled, waves forming words.
Then take what is mine. Take it not as thrall, but as bearer.
It pressed around him, not crushing now, but close, intimate, like a mantle laid across his shoulders.
Do not waste this, Ira Finch.
The name echoed outward, swallowed by the endless water.
And then silence.
When he woke, the dawn was rising. Zadie stood a few feet away, her blade sheathed, watching him. Her face unreadable, but something in her gaze lingered—something softer than mistrust, though fleeting as the sea-mist that clung to them.
Rust muttered curses behind her, but Ira barely heard him. His chest heaved, his veins thrummed with that steady patient beat—not a chain, but a bond.
He had not been broken. He had been chosen.