Outside the castle felt wrong in a way I couldn't quite articulate.
Not wrong like danger,though we'd learned to always expect that,but wrong like displacement. Like stepping from one reality into another that operated under slightly different rules. After hours in those oppressive stone corridors, with walls pressing close and ceilings hanging heavy, with the constant smell of sweet rot and the cold blue flames casting shadows that moved independently, the open air felt like too much space. Too much gray sky stretching endlessly overhead. Too much wind whipping across broken ground. Too much *freedom*, if that was even possible.
The courtyard we'd first entered through looked different in reverse, though nothing had physically changed. The statues seemed more broken somehow, their erosion more pronounced, the missing chunks of stone more deliberate. The dead vines appeared deader, brittle strands cracking under even the gentle wind. And the bones scattered across the gravel,those fragments we'd tried not to think about too hard when we'd first arrived,seemed more numerous now, as if the castle had added to its collection while we'd been inside.
The gates still hung open like a predator's maw, but now instead of appearing to *wait* for us, they seemed satisfied. Sated. Like they'd gotten what they wanted and were content to let us go.
For now.
We stood just beyond the threshold in a loose cluster, none of us quite willing to turn our backs on the castle yet, all of us instinctively keeping weapons within easy reach. The packs we carried felt heavier than they had going in,and not just because of the scroll and Azael's notes and journals we'd salvaged. It was the weight of knowledge. Of understanding things we wished we didn't. Of carrying secrets that might save the world or doom it, and having no way to know which until it was too late.
Lira leaned heavily against Kai, her left arm cradled protectively against her chest where the broken wrist throbbed with each heartbeat. Her ribs were wrapped now,Amie had done it while we'd gathered supplies, using strips torn from someone's spare shirt,but the binding only helped so much. Each breath was shallow, carefully controlled, avoiding the deep inhalations that would make the cracked bones grind together.
Kai supported her weight without complaint, one arm wrapped around her waist, though I could see the strain in how he held his right shoulder. The joint was deeply bruised, probably partially dislocated and popped back into place through sheer force of will. His usual cocky grin was absent, replaced by that grim determination that seemed to have become his default expression. His eyes constantly scanned the horizon,looking for threats, for shelter, for anything that might help or hurt us.
Amie stood slightly apart, methodically checking our supplies with the clinical efficiency she brought to everything. Water,two canteens, both half-empty. Food,dried meat and hard bread, enough for maybe three days if we rationed carefully. Medical supplies,bandages, disinfectant, one remaining healing serum that none of us wanted to think about too hard. Her left arm was wrapped too, covering the gash she'd taken in her fight, blood seeping through the fabric despite her best efforts at field dressing.
Kael planted his staff in the cracked ground and stood with both hands resting on it, staring at nothing, thoughts clearly elsewhere. Both hands. The right one,the one that had been splinted and broken just days ago,flexed unconsciously, testing its strength, still marveling at its complete functionality. The serum had done its work. Too well, maybe. His chest bore four parallel gashes visible through his torn shirt where claws had raked him, the wounds scabbed over but still angry and red.
Nyx perched on the broken base of a fallen statue, wings folded carefully against her back. The left one,the one that had been mangled, membrane torn and bones bent at impossible angles,was still tender. I could see her wince when she adjusted it, see the slight tremor in the wing membrane where new tissue hadn't quite matched old. But it was *healing*. Visibly, impossibly fast. Even as I watched, the translucent patches where torn membrane had regrown were thickening, darkening, becoming indistinguishable from the rest. Another few hours and there'd be no sign she'd been injured at all.
Xenophore regeneration.
The thought should have been comforting,at least one of us could heal quickly,but instead it just reminded me how other Nyx was, no matter how human she acted. How human we all wanted her to be.
Xeno and I stood closest to the gates, positioned as rear guard almost unconsciously. His shovel rested against his shoulder, grip relaxed but ready to shift to combat stance in an instant. His blindfold sat perfectly straight now,adjusted at some point when I wasn't watching,hiding whatever lay beneath. The photograph the girl had thrown at him was tucked in his pocket, creating a small rectangular bulge against his hip. I could see him touch it occasionally, just a brush of fingers, checking it was still there. Still real.
My own broken wrist throbbed in rhythm with my heartbeat,pulse, throb, pulse, throb,wrapped in makeshift splinting that Amie had fashioned from two straight pieces of wood and more torn cloth. My fingers were swelling, turning purple and black where blood pooled beneath the skin. The dagger I usually gripped so confidently felt awkward in my left hand, the weight distribution all wrong, my control limited.
I was six years old with a broken wrist and bruised ribs, carrying knowledge about curses and ancient bargains and the end of the world.
The absurdity should have been funny.
It just made me tired.
"We need to move," Kael said finally, his voice quiet but carrying clearly in the still air. "Put distance between us and this place. Find shelter before nightfall. We're in no condition to travel after dark."
"North," Amie agreed without looking up from her inventory check. She pulled out the map we'd salvaged from Azael's study,old paper, hand-drawn, showing territories and landmarks that might not exist anymore. "According to this and the scroll's annotations, there are ruins three days' march from here. Pre-Fall city. Possible location for—"
She stopped mid-sentence.
We all heard it.
Music.
Soft at first, barely audible over the wind that rustled dead vines and whistled through broken stone. A violin,single notes being tested, checking tuning, then flowing into melody. Beautiful. Achingly beautiful. A lullaby I almost recognized from fragments of memory, from before the Fall, the kind of song mothers sang to children to help them sleep, to promise them the world was safe even when it wasn't.
The sound was coming from *inside* the castle.
From deeper within those stone walls we'd just escaped.
From a place we'd thought,hoped,was empty of anything living.
My heart, which had just started to slow from its constant panicked racing, kicked back into overdrive. Weapons came up in perfect synchronization,so fast it was almost funny, all those weeks of training paying off in automatic responses that bypassed conscious thought.
Lira's knife, despite the broken wrist, held in her off-hand.
Kai's pistol, ignoring his injured shoulder, aimed at the gates.
Amie's pistol too, inventory forgotten, finger resting carefully beside the trigger.
Kael's staff, gripped in both hands, ready to swing.
Xeno's shovel, sliding from shoulder to two-handed combat grip in one smooth motion.
Nyx's wings spreading despite the pain, claws extending from her fingertips.
My dagger, awkward in my left hand but present, ready.
"Trap?" Kai whispered, voice barely carrying.
"Or survivor," Amie replied just as quietly.
The music continued, growing clearer, notes floating through the open gates like an invitation or a lure. No words, just pure melody. The kind of music that made you remember things you'd lost,people, places, moments of safety and warmth that felt like they'd happened to someone else in another lifetime.
It was soothing. Deliberately so.
Which made it more suspicious, not less.
Xeno tilted his head, blindfolded face turning slightly as if triangulating the source. "Human," he said after a long moment of listening, his voice carrying absolute certainty. "One person. Male. Young. Afraid."
"Afraid people don't play music," Lira countered, though her grip on her knife loosened fractionally.
"Afraid people do lots of things," Kael said. "Especially if they think it might save them."
We exchanged glances,silent communication built from weeks of fighting together, of learning to read each other's expressions and body language. The decision formed without anyone explicitly making it.
We were going back in.
The movement was careful, coordinated, weapons ready as we re-entered the courtyard and approached the gates. The castle seemed to welcome us back, those blue torches along the walls flickering to life one by one, illuminating a path.
Not the main halls we'd explored before,the grand chambers with their vaulted ceilings and disturbing statues. This was a side passage we'd somehow missed, narrow and angled sharply downward, descending into portions of the castle we hadn't known existed. Servant's quarters, maybe? Storage? Prison?
The music led us like a thread, growing stronger and richer with each step. The violin was being played with real skill,years of practice evident in the confidence of the bow strokes, the precision of the fingering. Pre-Fall skill. The kind of training that took dedication and resources that didn't exist anymore.
We descended carefully, testing each step before putting weight on it, checking for traps or weak points. The passage twisted, turned, opened into a small corridor lined with doors. Most were open, revealing empty rooms stripped of anything valuable. But one,near the end,was closed.
Wood, surprisingly intact in a castle where most organic material had rotted. Carved with musical notes that had been deliberately defaced, scratched out and marred the same way all the religious imagery had been throughout this place. Pride couldn't stand beauty that wasn't its own creation.
The music stopped abruptly.
Silence hung heavy, broken only by our breathing and the distant whistle of wind through broken stone.
Then a voice,male, definitely young, maybe early twenties, trying to sound confident but unable to quite hide the tremor of fear underneath.
"Hello? Is someone there? Please, please don't be a monster. Or one of those puppet things. Those were horrifying." A pause. "Or Lord Azael. He's dead, right? Please tell me he's dead. I heard screaming and fighting and then nothing and I really, *really* hope that means he's dead and not that he won."
Kai and Lira exchanged glances. Amie nodded slightly. Kael reached forward and pushed the door open slowly, staff ready to block or strike.
The room beyond was small,maybe ten by twelve feet, with a low ceiling that made it feel even more cramped. Once a bedroom or study, now stripped to bare essentials. A bed frame with a rotted mattress, stuffing spilling out. A small table. A single wooden chair. And bars on the window,not decorative, but functional. Thick iron, installed to keep someone in.
A prison.
But a comfortable one, relatively speaking. Clean. Not torture chamber clean, but someone had been maintaining this space. Azael's pride again,keeping useful things in acceptable condition because their suffering should be refined, not crude.
On the chair sat a young man.
Twenty, maybe twenty-two at most. Messy brown hair that fell into dark eyes currently wide with fear. He wore clothes that had once been nice,button-up shirt, decent trousers,but were now worn thin, carefully mended in places with neat stitches. Tall, maybe six feet, but slouched in on himself like he was trying to occupy less space. Handsome in a boyish way,sharp jawline, expressive features that probably smiled easily under normal circumstances.
Currently those features were arranged in an expression of absolute terror.
He clutched a violin to his chest like a shield, bow gripped in his other hand. The instrument was beautiful,rich wood polished to a shine, strings perfectly maintained, clearly a treasured possession.
He saw us,saw the weapons raised, the blood staining our clothes, the grim determination on our faces,and made a sound like a wounded animal, scrambling backward in his chair until it hit the wall with a thump.
"Oh no oh no oh *no* you're going to kill me aren't you?" The words tumbled out rapid-fire, panic overriding any attempt at composure. "I didn't do anything! I was just playing music! That's all! I play lullabies for,wait, are those children?"
His eyes had fixed on me, Nyx, and Xeno. The three of us, clearly kids, standing among the older teens with weapons in our hands and blood on our clothes.
"You're making *children* fight monsters?!" His voice pitched higher. "What kind of evil people are you?! That's,that's terrible! They're babies! Look at them! They should be playing with toys, not,not holding knives and looking like they've seen the inside of hell!"
Nyx's wings flared wide, offense clear on her small face. "We're not babies. We're survivors."
"You're six!" he shot back, then immediately seemed to realize arguing with the child with wings and claws probably wasn't his best survival strategy. His eyes darted between all of us, calculating. "Wait. Wait wait wait. You're not the adults making the kids fight. You're *all* fighting together. You're all—oh gods, you're all children. The oldest of you is what, seventeen? Eighteen?"
"Does it matter?" Lira asked coldly, knife still raised.
"YES!" He was nearly hyperventilating now. "It matters because the world has truly ended if children are the ones fighting the monsters! Where are the adults? Where are the—" He stopped, seemed to process the obvious answer, and his face fell. "Oh. They're dead, aren't they? Most of them. And you're what's left."
Silence confirmed it more eloquently than words could have.
The young man's grip on his violin loosened slightly, and I saw something shift in his expression. Still fear,that didn't go away,but mixed with something else now. Sadness. Understanding. "I'm sorry," he said, quieter. "That's not fair. None of this is fair."
"Life's not fair," Kai said, but his pistol lowered fractionally. "Who are you?"
"Luca!" The name burst out like he'd been waiting to say it. "My name is Luca! I play violin! Used to play for children, actually,schools, hospitals, orphanages, anywhere they'd let me. Pre-Fall. Made them smile. Made them forget scary things for a little while." His words were coming faster again, nervous energy looking for an outlet. "That's all I do! I play music! I'm not a fighter, I'm not brave, I'm not,I'm just a musician! Azael kept me here because he said my music was too beautiful to waste on a dead world. Said I should play only for him, for something worthy of appreciation."
His expression twisted with disgust and fear combined. "He was insane. Completely, utterly insane. I thought he was going to kill me every day. Or worse. But he just... made me play. For hours. While he worked on his experiments." A shudder ran through him. "Please tell me you're not planning to do the same thing. Or kill me. Please don't kill me. I have a violin to think of. She's been in my family for generations and she doesn't deserve to die just because I'm a coward."
Amie holstered her pistol, making the decision for all of us. "We're leaving. You can come with us or stay here."
Luca's eyes widened further, darting to the open door behind us. Freedom. The world outside these walls.
Then back to us,to the weapons, the blood, the exhaustion written across every face.
"With you?" His voice cracked slightly. "With the kids who fight monsters?"
"Yes," Amie said simply.
He hesitated for a long moment, clearly warring with himself. Safety of the familiar prison versus the danger of the unknown world.
Then he stood, carefully setting his violin in its case,worn leather, pre-Fall quality, maintained with obvious care. He closed the clasps with shaking fingers.
"Okay," he said, voice steadier than I expected. "Okay. Yes. I'll come. But if we die horribly, I'm blaming all of you."
He slung the case over his shoulder by its strap and took two steps toward the door before stopping and really looking at us for the first time.
His eyes lingered on me, Nyx, and Xeno. "You three are really young," he said, voice softer now. Gentler. "Like... really, really young. Six? Seven?"
"Six," I confirmed.
Something pained crossed his face. "I used to play for kids your age. Birthday parties. School assemblies. Hospital wards when they were sick and scared." His grip tightened on his violin case. "I'd play lullabies and happy songs and watch their faces light up. Watch them forget about being sick or scared or sad, just for a few minutes."
Nyx tilted her head, black-rose eyes studying him with that unblinking intensity that made most people uncomfortable. "Play something now."
Luca blinked. "What? Now? Here?"
"Yes."
He looked around at all of us,at the weapons still loosely held, at the exhaustion and trauma and barely-contained darkness we all carried. Then something in his expression shifted. Softened.
"Okay," he said quietly, and opened his case.
The violin came out reverently, and he checked it over with practiced efficiency,tuning, bow tension, rosin. Then he lifted it to his shoulder, positioned the bow, and began to play.
The first note hung in the air, pure and clear.
Then the melody began.
Soft. Gentle. A lullaby,not the one he'd played to draw our attention, but something older. Simpler. The kind of tune that existed in every culture, passed down through generations, the universal language of comfort.
It wrapped around us like a physical thing, chasing away the castle's cold, the weight of everything we'd seen and done, the fear that had become our constant companion. For just a moment,just this one brief moment,the world didn't feel quite so broken. Quite so dark.
I felt my shoulders relaxing despite myself. Heard Lira's breathing even out slightly. Saw Kai's rigid posture soften fractionally.
Even Xeno's head tilted slightly, blindfolded face turning toward the music like a flower seeking sun.
The song lasted maybe two minutes. When Luca finished, he lowered the violin slowly, and silence fell again.
But it was a different kind of silence than before. Lighter. Easier to breathe through.
"That was beautiful," Amie said quietly.
Luca smiled,tentative but genuine. "Thank you. That's... that's why I'm still here. Still alive. Music makes things bearable. For me and for whoever's listening."
Kai nodded once, decisive. "You're with us then."
"I am?" Luca blinked. "Really? You're not worried I'll slow you down? Because I will. I'm terrible in fights. I faint at the sight of blood sometimes. I'm probably the least useful person you could add to your group."
"You make music," Nyx said simply, as if that explained everything.
And maybe it did.
We turned to leave, and Luca fell into step behind us, violin case clutched tight. But as we moved through the corridor, I heard him talking,nervous chatter that seemed to be his default state.
"So how long have you been traveling? Where are you heading? Is the world outside as bad as Azael said? He told me cities were just rubble and Xenophores everywhere and humans barely surviving but he was crazy so maybe he was lying? Oh god, what if he wasn't lying—"
We emerged into the courtyard again, and Luca stopped dead, staring at the gray sky with an expression of wonder mixed with fear. "It's really real," he whispered. "I'm really outside. I thought,for a while I thought maybe I'd die in that room."
We gave him a moment to process, to breathe free air, to realize he was out.
Then we started walking,nine now instead of eight, our group expanded in a way none of us had expected.
As we put distance between ourselves and the castle, I heard Luca's running commentary continue, his nervousness manifesting in constant words.
"So you're heading north? What's north? More ruins? Are we looking for something? Oh gods, we're looking for something dangerous, aren't we? Why is it always dangerous things—"
He paused mid-sentence as Amie turned slightly, giving him a better view of her profile. His breath caught audibly.
"Oh," he said, and there was something different in his voice now. Appreciation without being crude. "Oh, madam Amie, if I may say,your skin is absolutely radiant.
That rich dark tone, like polished mahogany, catching the light just so. And your hair!" He gestured to her neat braids. "The way you've plaited it, the precision and care, it's like art. Functional art. Beautiful and practical."
Amie raised an eyebrow, hand moving closer to her pistol. "Are you hitting on me?"
"No! Maybe? I—" Luca flushed. "I just appreciate beauty wherever I find it! Music, art, people, it's all the same! The world is so broken and ugly and when I see something beautiful I feel compelled to acknowledge it! Is that wrong? That's probably wrong. I'm making it weird, aren't I? I'm definitely making it weird—"
"You talk a lot," Kai observed, amused despite himself.
"I'm nervous!" Luca defended. "I ramble when I'm nervous! And I've been trapped in a castle with a madman for months with only my violin for company, so excuse me if my social skills are a bit rusty!"
We kept walking, and Luca kept talking, and somewhere in his nervous chatter and musical talent and obvious cowardice and genuine appreciation for beauty, I realized something.
He was exactly what we needed.
Not a fighter. Not a strategist. Not someone who'd make us stronger in combat.
But someone who remembered beauty. Who could make music in dark places. Who saw worth in things beyond survival.
Someone who, despite his fear and his flaws and his tendency to say inappropriate things, was fundamentally good.
As we crested a hill and the castle disappeared behind us, Luca was still talking.
"—and I swear I'm usually braver than this, it's just been a really stressful few months, you understand, and I think I'm entitled to be a bit of a coward under the circumstances, don't you think? Oh gods, is that a Xenophore in the distance? Please tell me that's not a Xenophore—"
Nyx's wings flared. "Where?!"
"There! No wait, that's a rock. False alarm. See? This is why I need you all. I'm terrible at survival."
Despite everything,the pain, the exhaustion, the weight of knowledge about curses and ancient bargains,I found myself smiling.
We walked into the gray together.
Eight now.
The road ahead still long and dark and dangerous.
But accompanied by violin music and nervous chatter and genuine humanity.
And maybe, just maybe, that made all the difference.