Vierna looked at Lina.
Her eyes were fixed to the floor. Shoulders slumped, as if carrying a weight too old for her age. And then—tears. Falling like drizzle after a long drought.
Then, slowly, Lina reached for her mask.
Her fingers brushed aside a curtain of silver hair, just below the ear. A small runic circle pulsed faintly—then clicked. The sound was quiet, but in the silence, it might as well have been thunder.
She unmasked.
The final mask she wore today.
And Vierna couldn’t help but find it strange.
She had unmasked her feelings first. Then came her face.
Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?
Slowly, Lina lifted her face. But the way she did it—it was clear this was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. Her movements were slow, hesitant. Once, she started to raise the mask—only to flinch and stop halfway, her hand twitching mid-air. It was subtle, but undeniable: whatever lay beneath, her lower face was something she guarded more fiercely than anything else.
Then finally she saw it. Her lower face, from the nose down, was a ruin.
Her skin was a patchwork of collapse—warped and uneven, like candle wax half-melted and left to rot. Flesh clung together in twisted folds, some slick and glistening, as if weeping endlessly, others brittle and cratered like scorched bark. Where skin should’ve smoothed, it puckered—raised ridges hugging recessed gouges, as if her face had been reshaped by claw or flame. A lattice of raw blood vessels glimmered underneath, pulsing faintly with sick yellow light, threading through flesh that never learned how to heal. It wasn’t just scarring. It was a map of suffering carved too deep to fade.
It wasn’t a wound anymore. It had long passed that. It was permanence.
A truth too painful for mirrors.
“It still burns, Vier,” Lina rasped.
Her voice—guttural, broken—didn’t sound like her at all. It sounded like something clawing its way out of a grave. Coarse. Empty. Stripped of all the cheer and lilt she once wore like a second skin.
Now Vierna understood—her mask hadn’t just hidden her face. It had given her a voice. A new one. A borrowed one.
“This is what they did,” Lina whispered.
“Lina, I—”
“My parents were killed by the Imperium,” she said. “Halwen… he’s my uncle. I trusted him. And when our village were attacked by the Imperium, he was already working with the Arkmarschall. We ran from there, all the way to Einhartturm.”
Her tone twisted—bitter, fractured, dry.
“I was angry. I wanted strength. Just like you.” She continued, “That’s why I agreed to come here. I wanted them to change me. I wanted to be stronger. To be something that could fight back.
They told me they could inject Grace—the same cursed thing that murdered my family—into my body. To strengthen me. To fix me. So I let them.
The procedure... I don’t remember all of it. Just flashes. But what I do remember... is what it left behind.”
She touched her face. Lightly. As if any more pressure might tear the skin.
“I told myself it was worth it. If it let me kill them. If it made me strong enough to hurt the Imperium the way they hurt me—then I could accept this.”
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Her voice rose—not loud, but hoarse with fury.
“But then they stopped.
They didn’t finish. Just more stabilizing, more waiting. Said I wasn’t ready. But that’s just a fancy way of saying they were done with me.”
It’s been a year and a half, Vierna. And I’m still weak. Still nothing.”
Her fists clenched, trembling.
“It never stopped burning. The sensation—it always comes back. Like it wants me to remember. Every time I breathe, every time I sleep."
“Do you know why I drink so much?” Her eyes flashed. “It’s not just thirst. It’s because I keep hoping... maybe if I drink enough... maybe I’ll piss out the pain.
I’ve made peace with it, even when Halwen doesn’t talk to me anymore, I am fine” Lina said.
But if there’s nothing left for me here… then I want to go.
I don’t care about revenge anymore. I just want to find something out there—before I die.”
She swallowed, hard.
“But who’d help a masked Faintborn girl like me?
Especially if they saw my face. I—”
Vierna moved.
She didn’t speak. Just stepped forward.
Her hand rose, slow and careful, until her fingertips brushed against Lina’s scarred cheek.
“I want to help you, Lin,” Vierna said.
She said it without pity.
Her hand lingered.
Vierna touched them like they meant something. Like they were proof of survival — a testament carved in fire and will. Each finger moved not to comfort, but to witness.
As if every ridge of burnt flesh was a verse in a song only she could hear. She traced the scar like a painter brushing oil onto canvas — not to hide the wound, but to frame it, to give it meaning. The heat beneath the skin didn’t repel her. It drew her in.
It was the warmth of a forge, pyre burning inside of her in defiance of what she should’ve become. The rise and fall of damaged tissue, the shimmer of blood-veined skin — to her, it was not grotesque.
It was beautiful. A flower burned into bloom. A story written in pain.
The twitch of nerves beneath her thumb felt like music. Like the trembling note before the crescendo — the breath held before a vow. And in her touch, there was no fear. Only reverence. Only the truth that no mask could match the grace written in scars.
“Lina… I can’t justify what they did to you. I won’t even try.”
Vierna’s voice was quiet. Not soft. Just… level.
“I just got here. And maybe I was being selfish when I opened up to you—like your pain didn’t matter.” She said, “But if what you want is someone who’ll care and accepted you—
Then let me try. The same way you chose to talk to me first.”
Her hand still cupped Lina’s cheek.
“If you can’t stay here because you don’t believe in them anymore... then stay for me.”
Lina’s breath hitched. Pure acceptance—from someone she had only just met—was the last thing she expected. Her uncle, her only remaining family, had abandoned her. How could a stranger, who barely knew her, so readily declare they wanted to stay by her side? Especially when Lina’s own reason for approaching them had been selfish at best.
“But, Vierna… I wasn’t even trying to be your friend. I just— I just wanted to forget. That’s the only reason I talked to you.”
“That’s okay,” Vierna said, “Because it means I was useful to you.”
Lina was stunned.
Vierna’s face was like carved stone left untouched by wind or time.
No flicker crossed her brow. No shift in her lips. Only her gaze, steady as moonlight on a calm water.
And yet… Lina felt it.
Not through words. Not through motion.
But through the silence itself—thick, weighty, pulsing with something unspoken.
Something that said: you are not broken to me.
That even in this room of blood and secrets, she had found one hand that wouldn’t flinch.
It wasn’t kindness that lived behind Vierna’s eyes.
It was something fiercer.
A vow made not with warmth, but with gravity.
She wasn’t worth it. She’d approached Vierna to use her — but instead of anger, she’d found meaning. Forgiveness.
I was scarred. Not just the face—the soul too.
Even when I helped her… it wasn’t kindness.
I was just looking for a way out.
To escape this abysmal mockery of life.
She didn’t know what she was to Vierna. A burden? A crack in the wall?
But seeing her reach out—gently, without flinching— she wanted that steadiness. That comfort. Even if she didn’t deserve it. Even if it wasn’t hers to keep.
And if you think about it, was it truly sinful — even blasphemous — to want it?
Hadn’t she endured enough?
Treated like a thing. Spliced. Injected. Rewritten. Then casted aside completely
Didn’t she deserve that black light?
Like a drop of water after thirst?
Like a crust of bread after starvation?
Like a breath of sleep after nights of terror— even if it meant snuffing out the last breath of sanity, and walking straight into the dark.
Then suddenly, Vierna stopped caressing her. Her hand dropped, and in the silence that followed, she stepped forward and pulled Lina into an embrace.
For a moment, everything stopped. The burn was still there — the ruined flesh, the half-dead nerves. But pressed into Vierna’s shoulder, it felt distant. Blurred. As if the weight of it had lifted, not by magic, but by presence. By being held. And for that single breath, Lina didn’t feel disfigured. She just felt... human.
Lina hugged her back, this time it was sure. Everywhere Vierna was is where she wanted to be. If Vierna chose to walk deeper into the same hell that gave Lina this face... then so be it. Lina would follow.
In that embrace, they made no promises.
Only choices. And maybe, in this place, that was the same thing.
Should Lina use her mask again in the future?
