They left Black Hollow behind them and walked into the silence.
The streets between the shop and the cathedral district were emptier than they should have been. The bodies had been pulled to the sides — dragged by survivors, by guards, by people who'd lost everyone and had nothing left to do but clear the road. They lay under tarps and curtains and, once, a torn banner bearing the Church's sigil, the three interlocked rings dark with old blood.
Neo walked behind Thal, behind Alinda, his boots finding the gaps between the cobblestones. The blood had dried on his collar. The bruise on his jaw throbbed with every step. His hand rested on his sword.
Thal walked ahead, bare-chested, the dried gore on his forearms flaking in the grey light. He didn't look back. Alinda walked beside Neo, close enough that her shoulder almost brushed his. Every few minutes her eyes cut toward him and then away.
A hand. A child's hand, pale and still, had slipped out from under a torn sheet near the mouth of an alley. The fingers were curled inward. A wooden horse was clutched in them — chipped paint, worn mane.
Neo stopped walking.
"Neo." Alinda's voice. Quiet.
He looked at the hand. At the horse. At the sheet.
He kept walking.
The cathedral spires rose ahead of them, pale against the smoke-streaked sky. Lights in the high windows. Figures moving behind the glass.
Nyra would be at the cathedral. Valen. Tar. Luken, if he'd made it.
Nyra. He didn't know what he was going to say to her.
They passed through the last barricade. The guards recognized Thal and parted. A young woman with a bandage wrapped around her head started to speak and then stopped, her mouth closing over the words.
The cathedral steps. The doors open. Light spilling across the stone, pale and warm. The murmur of voices. The smell of incense and blood.
Thal reached the top of the steps. Paused. Then he ducked his head and walked through the doors.
Alinda followed. Neo followed Alinda.
Inside, cots in rows. Healers in bloodstained robes. The wounded. Soldiers. Civilians. A woman near the door clutching a child to her chest, both of them wrapped in the same blanket, both breathing.
And then Nyra was there.
She came across the hall — not running, but fast. A cut above her eye. Blood and soot on her armour. Her eyes were moving over him — his face, his collar, the bruise on his jaw — and he was doing the same. The cut. The blood. The way she held herself, coiled and alert, even now.
She stopped in front of him. Close.
Her arms came up around his neck and she pulled him against her.
He felt her breath against his shoulder. The tremble in her hands where they gripped the back of his collar. His arms came up and settled around her back.
One heartbeat. Two. Three.
Then she pulled back. Her hands dropped from his shoulders to his arms, and her eyes found his face and stayed there.
"Are you okay?"
He nodded. "Are you?"
She gave a tight smirk and shrugged her shoulders. "As much as anyone is tonight."
He looked at the cut above her brow. She looked at the bruise on his jaw.
She turned and walked back toward the benches. He followed.
Valen was pushing himself up as they approached. Bandaged leg. Dressings on his ribs. He took in the two of them — the bruise on Neo's jaw, the way Nyra stayed close without quite touching him — and something flickered in his expression.
"Look at you two," he said. "Walking in together like you didn't spend the whole night apart. Anyone would think you actually like each other."
Nyra let out a breath. "Valen."
"I'm just saying. The bruise matches your eyes, Neo. Very coordinated. Did you plan that?"
Neo's mouth twitched. It was barely there — a ghost of something that might have been a smile in another life — but Valen caught it.
"See? He thinks I'm funny."
"He's concussed," Nyra said.
"Both things can be true."
Tar was on the bench behind Valen. Bandaged shoulder. Steady eye. He rumbled something low and shifted, making room. Neo moved past Valen and sat down beside the minotaur. The big shoulder pressed against his.
Nyra sat on the bench across from them. A space between them — a handspan of stone. She didn't look at him. Her hand came to rest on the bench beside her leg. Not reaching. Just there.
His hand was resting on the bench beside his leg. Not reaching. Just there.
Valen watched them for a moment longer, then leaned back with a wince as his leg protested. For a while, no one spoke.
Then Valen started rubbing at his hands — turning them over, working at the dried blood under his nails with his thumb. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Nyra watched him. "Your hands."
"They're fine."
"Valen."
"Just some scratches. Needles. You know how it is." His thumb kept moving. "One of them got me in the leg, too, but the healers already—"
"What happened."
He didn't answer. His thumb stopped moving. His hands went very still in his lap, and for a long moment he just stared at them, at the blood that wouldn't come off, at the nails he'd been rubbing raw.
"I got her out of the basement." His voice was different now — flatter, quieter. "She was nine. Maybe ten. She grabbed my sleeve and wouldn't let go. I told her to stay put. Stay right there, don't move, we'll be right back." His thumb started moving again, a single pass across the dried blood. "She did what I told her. She stayed right there. And he came out of her anyway."
No one spoke.
"She was five feet away. I couldn't even—" He stopped. Swallowed. His hands went still again. "She didn't have time to scream." He stared at the blood under his nails. "I guess we know why they call him the Rupture."
Nyra didn't push. She just sat with him, the way she'd sat with him in a ruined hut eight years ago, the way she'd always sat with him when the memories got too heavy. After a moment, she looked at Neo. He was staring at the floor between his feet. He could feel her eyes on him. He didn't lift his head. She didn't look away.
"We found the Archon," Alinda said from her pillar. "Black Hollow. Three bodies. Two Eliras and a child. The mother was in the room. She'd been holding her daughter's hand all night."
"Alinda." Neo's voice came out rough.
She stopped. Looked at him. Leaned back against the pillar and didn't continue.
Tar's hand came up and rested on his shoulder.
Nyra shifted on the bench. She didn't look at anyone in particular. "The man in white called me little shadow. That was my brother's name for me." Her hands were clasped in her lap. Her knuckles were pale. "He knew about Jal. How he died. The spear through his chest. He said Jal was trying to reach me when it happened."
Neo watched her. She didn't look at him while she spoke. When she finished, her eyes found his across the handspan of stone, and she held them there.
"He said there were two survivors from the village. Him and me." She paused. "He said Thal has been keeping secrets about what happened the night it fell."
Valen looked up from his hands. "He knew things about my family too. My mother. Eddena. Rose." His thumb moved across the dried blood. "I don't know how. I've never told anyone. Not even you." He looked at Nyra. "He just said their names. Like he was reading them off a page."
"What did he say about them?"
"That they died because of me." His voice was flat. "He wasn't wrong."
Nyra didn't argue with him. After a moment, she turned to Alinda. "The man in white said something about Thal. At the end of the fight. Before Thal left. About permission. About giving permission to something inside him. He said Thal had been lying to himself for years."
Alinda's expression didn't change. But her hands, crossed over her chest, went still.
Nyra caught it. "You know what he meant."
"I wasn't there."
"You reacted."
Alinda held her gaze for a long moment. Then she looked away, her jaw tight. "It's not my thing to tell."
"Then whose is it?"
"His." Alinda nodded toward the chapel, where Thal stood motionless. "And he won't. Not the whole thing. He never does."
Nyra looked at Thal. The broad back. The dried blood. The stillness. "He promised he'd explain. When Luken wakes up."
"On this?" Alinda's voice was sharp. Sharper than it had been all night. "He shouldn't."
Nyra turned. "What?"
"You heard me." Alinda pushed off the pillar and took a step toward the benches. "I've spent four hundred years watching him lock everything inside. Every grief. Every failure. Every thing that ever hurt him. He won't talk about any of it, and I hate it. You know I hate it."
"I know."
"But not this. Not this thing." She looked at Nyra. Her crimson eyes were steady, unblinking. "You don't want to know what he gave permission to. You think you do, but you don't. None of you do. And if he tells you—" She stopped. Her jaw tightened. "If he tells you, it changes things. The way you look at him. The way you trust him. Everything."
Nyra held her gaze. "You know what it is."
"Yes."
"And you're not going to tell us either."
"No." Alinda's voice was quiet now, but there was no give in it. "And for once, Thal's silence isn't cowardice. It's protection. Let him have that."
The silence stretched. Nyra didn't look away. Alinda didn't blink.
Tar's head had lifted during the exchange. His single eye was on Thal — the broad back, the stillness, the dried blood — and he held that gaze for a long moment. Then his head dropped. His eye went to the floor. His hand was still on Neo's shoulder, but his other hand, the one resting on his knee, curled into a fist and stayed there. He turned his head away from the group, toward the far wall, toward nothing.
Nyra saw it. She looked at Tar, at the fist on his knee, at the way he wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. Then she looked back at Alinda.
"Alright," she said.
Alinda didn't go back to her pillar. She crossed the hall instead — past the benches, past the wounded, past the healers who were still working on the ones who hadn't stopped breathing yet. She walked until she reached the side chapel where Thal stood, and then she stopped. She didn't speak. She didn't touch him. She just leaned her shoulder against the stone archway, a few feet from where he stood, and looked at what he was looking at. Luken on the cot. The bandages. The slow rise and fall of his chest.
Thal didn't turn. He didn't acknowledge her. But he didn't move away either.
Neo watched them for a moment — Thal and Alinda, the two people who had been beside each other longer than anyone else in the room had been alive. Then he looked away. His hand was resting on the bench. Nyra's was too, a handspan away.
The conversation drifted. Elira came and went. The grey light crept through the windows. Valen's eyes closed. Tar's breathing deepened, but his fist was still curled on his knee, and he didn't turn back toward the group.
Neo leaned back against the bench. His eyes fell shut.
Beside him, Nyra's hand was still on the stone. He didn't reach for it. He didn't pull away. She hadn't moved her hand either. And she didn't move it now.
At the chapel door, Alinda stood with Thal in the grey light. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved. They just waited.
The cathedral was quiet. Outside, the city was still.