Sir Adranous and Azazel cut a hole through the dark.
Not with blades or aura, or even jaki—but with time.
Morning found us the way night had left us: scattered across broken stone, wrapped in bandages that smelled like antiseptic and ash, surrounded by walls that would never be clean again. The chamber under the castle no longer felt like a battlefield. It felt like a crime scene—too quiet, too deliberate, every mark asking questions no one had answers to yet.
Above us, light crept in.
At some point—no one could say when—the ceiling had cracked open. Not catastrophically. Not violently. Just enough. A long fracture that let the sky look back in.
A skylight.
Dust motes drifted through it, slow and pale. They caught the sunlight and turned into something almost gentle. It didn't heal anything. It didn't erase what happened.
But it made it visible.
I sat with my back against a fallen pillar, knees drawn up, sword laid across my legs because I didn't know where else to put it yet. Moving hurt. Breathing hurt. Thinking hurt in ways I couldn't fix with rest.
Across the chamber, Sir Aldred spoke with the Newoagan guards who had finally gathered the courage to descend. Their armor was polished. Untouched. Clean.
They didn't meet our eyes.
I didn't blame them. I wasn't sure I could meet mine either.
Liam sat a few paces away, leg braced and unmoving, jaw tight as he wrapped cloth over an already-wrapped wound like repetition might somehow undo damage. He checked on Kai first. Then Seraphyne. Then Aelira. Only after that did he look at his own hands—red-stained, shaking slightly, trying not to.
Varein leaned against the same wall I did, closer than he realized. His ribs were bandaged thickly, breath shallow but steady. Every now and then he tilted his head back, eyes closed, like he was testing whether the world still existed above him.
"It's bright," he muttered. "Did the sun always look that smug?"
I huffed once. That was all I had in me.
Seraphyne sat cross-legged on the floor, daggers set neatly beside her like she'd put them away on purpose. She stared at her palms, turning them slowly, as if expecting something to crawl out of the blood dried into the lines. She noticed me looking and immediately looked away.
Kazen paced.
He couldn't sit still. His arm was splinted, useless for now, and I could tell the loss ate at him more than the pain. He paced anyway, light steps, muttering half-jokes under his breath that no one laughed at. They weren't meant for us. They were meant for himself.
Liraeth sat very still, shield propped upright beside her, fingers curled loosely around the haft of her mace like she'd drop it if she let go. Her plasma aura flickered faintly and unpredictably, like sparks from a dying wire. Too much use. Too little control left.
Arion knelt near her, flowers blooming and withering as he worked through healing what he could. His hands shook the entire time.
Theon hadn't moved since he sat down.
Someone had pulled him free of the rubble, set his greatsword beside him, and left him there staring at the floor. Dust still clung to his hair. His shoulders were hunched, breathing slow and even—but his eyes were empty in a way I hadn't seen before. Not fear. Not pain.
Impact.
The kind that waits to settle later.
And Lumiel—
I looked toward the far side of the chamber, through a half-collapsed archway where the ritual markings thinned.
She lay on a stone dais that was never meant to be a bed.
Wrapped in a cloak someone had draped over her shoulders. Her skin was pale but no longer sickly. The golden symbols carved into the floor beneath her were cracked, severed by Adranous' fire before they could close.
She was breathing.
Shallow. Uneven.
Alive.
I hadn't let myself feel relief yet. I wasn't done making sure.
No one spoke loudly. Voices stayed low, not because we were told to—but because raising them felt wrong, like shouting in a cathedral after it burned.
Footsteps echoed. Newoagan healers arrived. Then scribes. Then officials who asked too many questions and listened too little. They took notes. They argued in whispers. They made plans that assumed everything was over.
I didn't correct them.
They could have their daylight.
What happened down here didn't belong to them yet.
At some point, Sir Aldred came to stand near me. He didn't say anything at first. Just followed my gaze up to the skylight.
"They'll seal this place," he said eventually. "Rewrite it. Call it a collapse. A forgotten vault."
I nodded once. "They always do."
He studied me sidelong. "You all held longer than you had any right to."
That wasn't praise. It wasn't comfort.
It was a fact.
"I didn't," I replied. "I misjudged."
His brow furrowed, but I kept going.
"I kept thinking I could handle it. That if I stayed ahead, it wouldn't swallow us." I exhaled. "I was wrong."
Aldred didn't argue.
That's how I knew he agreed.
The skylight widened slightly as stone shifted again above us. Sunlight spilled farther into the chamber, illuminating the broken murals—the chained kings, the bowed saintesses, the erased names.
Truth always looks smaller in daylight.
Because fear exaggerates everything it touches.
When Lumiel stirred, I was already on my feet.
I regretted that decision immediately—pain flaring, breath hitching—but I didn't sit back down. I reached her side just as her eyes fluttered open.
Gold met blue.
For a moment, she didn't seem to know where she was. Then memory hit her all at once, and her breath caught.
"It's done," I said quietly, before she could panic. "You're safe."
She stared at the cracked symbols beneath her. At the blood stains that no amount of light could hide.
"…He's gone?" she asked.
"Yes."
She closed her eyes.
Not in relief.
In exhaustion so deep it looked like grief.
"They were never going to stop," she whispered. "Not here. Not anywhere."
"I know."
She turned her head slightly, looking past me toward my class—bandaged, broken, alive.
"You shouldn't have been here," she said. Not accusing. Not apologetic. Just honest.
I nodded. "You're right."
She studied me for a long moment.
"…But you came anyway."
"Yes."
The skylight overhead flared brighter as clouds shifted, bathing the chamber in full morning.
Lumiel squinted up at it. "I've seen the sun every day of my life," she murmured. "But never like that."
I followed her gaze.
"It looks different," I said. "After everything burns."
She laughed softly. It surprised both of us.
They moved us slowly after that. Up through corridors no one pretended were normal anymore. Past stairs that felt too narrow for what they'd carried. The castle above was quiet in a way that screamed denial.
When we reached the upper halls, the open sky greeted us fully—no longer filtered through cracks and stone.
The light didn't feel victorious.
It felt indifferent.
And somehow, that helped.
As they brought stretchers and prepared transport, I lingered for just a second longer, letting my eyes adjust. Letting myself memorize the shape of my class standing—leaning, really—under open air again.
Not warriors.
Not heroes.
Just people who survived something that changed them.
I didn't know what came next.
Investigations. Politics. Apologies that didn't mean anything. Orders written by hands that hadn't bled.
But standing there, under a sky that hadn't shattered when the world below it did, one thing was clear.
Nothing overhead had fallen.
The light was still there.
And we were too.
That didn't mean we were saved.
It meant we had to decide what to do with it.