We ran.

  My Holy Light rolled ahead of us in a narrow cone, washing the tunnel in pallid gold. The stone here was darker than the upper passages, damp enough that the light slid across its surface instead of resting on it. Water beaded along the mortar lines and dripped in slow, patient intervals that echoed ahead of us like distant footsteps.

  The air smelled of iron and rot.

  "This way should take us back up toward the servants' quarters," I said between breaths. "The next anchor point is somewhere above us. We've almost finished the circuit... only two more to go."

  No one answered. Our boots struck wet stone in a steady rhythm, breath and motion settling into a shared cadence born of necessity rather than comfort.

  Then Seraphine stopped suddenly, raising a hand.

  I skidded to her side.

  "What is it?" I asked, lowering my voice instinctively.

  Sir Veyne stilled beside us. He had already turned his head, gaze fixed into the darkness beyond the reach of my light.

  His posture tightened.

  "There's something moving up ahead," he said.

  I held still and listened.

  At first there was only the slow drip of water and the rasp of our breathing.

  Then, faintly—

  A soft, wet compression.

  Squelch.

  The sound traveled through stone rather than air, felt as much through my boots as heard.

  Seraphine exhaled slowly.

  "This section runs through areas we haven't cleared yet," she said. "There's groundwater here. And where there's water, there may be life."

  I grimaced.

  "Let me clear the path ahead," she continued. "Stay for a moment. Catch your breath."

  "I'm fine," I said immediately.

  A hand closed around my wrist. I looked over.

  The face that lifted toward me was Lumiere's.

  The same eyes. The same composed brow. The same earnest gravity that could still a room.

  It was profoundly unfair of Phymera to wear that face.

  My protest died before it reached my mouth.

  "...fine then," I muttered. "Just be careful."

  Seraphine didn't argue further. She lifted Pulseweaver; dim blue light gathered between its prongs with a dry, crackling hiss. Without another word, she slipped past the edge of my Holy Light and vanished into shadow.

  Sir Veyne followed without a moment's hesitation.

  They moved together like they had done so for years: distance measured without words, spacing maintained without signal, trust expressed through absence of hesitation.

  They had been that way for most of the circuit, ever since he'd caught her—the silent accord of talented individuals.

  Something pricked at me as I watched them disappear. Something I couldn't name, yet all the same, it built like pressure behind my eyes.

  Silence settled in their wake.

  Phymera released my wrist and leaned back against the wall, metal limbs folding inward with a faint series of clicks. After a moment she slid down until she sat on the damp stone, legs tucked tight, head bowed.

  The tunnel felt rger without motion to fill it.

  I realized my own legs were trembling, and lowered myself beside her.

  For a while neither of us spoke. Water dripped. Somewhere ahead, stone shifted faintly under distant movement.

  Then Phymera's voice came so softly that for a second I doubted whether I had actually heard it.

  "I'm sorry."

  I straightened.

  She had been unusually quiet this entire circuit. Not merely observant. Withdrawn. Almost brooding.

  Her shoulders drew inward now, her borrowed frame shrinking as if trying to occupy less space.

  "I endangered you," she said. "During the fall. I panicked. I did not believe the Sage's magic would be sufficient to counter my weight."

  I opened my mouth, but she continued, words spilling out with quiet urgency.

  "I am weak," she said. "This is why I am the fragment. Why my main body forsook me and deemed me expendable."

  "Main body?" I tilted my head. "Are you not all one and the same?"

  Her fingers tightened against her metallic sleeves.

  "Yes and no," she said. "We are technically one entity. We share memory, purpose, and design. Until the moment of separation, we are the same consciousness."

  She looked down.

  "So I understand the logic—why a fragment must be sent. We could not risk total compromise." She shuddered. "Because it was all me. Because it was a pn I had devised myself."

  Her voice lowered.

  "And yet... it was I who was sacrificed."

  The words nded heavily in the damp air.

  I bit my lip.

  Phymera was one being—no fragment lesser than another. The division was necessity, not judgment. Had it been any other fragment, it would have felt abandoned all the same.

  Right now, that didn't matter.

  I raised a hand instinctively to rub her back. Because she was wearing Lumiere's face, my habits betrayed me. Comfort rose before analysis.

  "It's all right," I said quietly. "In the end, nobody got hurt, right?"

  Phymera buried her face in her arms.

  "Of course you can say that."

  I blinked. "What does that mean?"

  She lifted her head slowly.

  "I've seen how you act, and I don't understand."

  I felt her tremble through my palm at her back.

  "How is it that you can walk so proudly," she asked, "when you've done nothing but put others in danger?"

  I stared at her. "What—"

  "It has been clear, these past weeks," she continued, "that you possess no talent of note. No strength. You simply speak, and expect others to listen. When action is required, others must compensate your ck."

  The tunnel seemed to narrow.

  I felt as though the air had thinned.

  "You burden them," she said. "Have you truly not realized it?"

  Shock struck me deeper than the fall. It didn't help that the words were coming from Lumiere's mouth, from her voice.

  Phymera sighed. It carried no hint of accusation, only exhaustion.

  "I can only say this because I myself am weak," she mumbled. "Because in that way, you and I are kindred."

  She drew herself smaller.

  "We should not be so brazen as to override the voices of those stronger than ourselves. We should be content to let the strong determine our course."

  Water dripped somewhere behind us.

  "That is why the Bishop's words hold coherence to me—why his strength matters. A conscientious individual does not make decisions they cannot execute. You speak of care, of responsibility. Yet you render others accountable for outcomes you yourself cannot enact."

  My pulse beat loud in my ears.

  "I—"

  The word colpsed under the weight of what I did not know how to answer.

  Because she wasn't wrong.

  Seraphine emerged from the darkness.

  Pulseweaver's blue glow preceded her like distant lightning.

  "The path is clear now," she said.

  She looked to me, then Phymera. Her brow furrowed.

  Veyne appeared behind her, bde damp but clean.

  I pushed myself to my feet.

  Phymera did not move.

  For a moment I looked at her—at Lumiere's face, drawn inward with something like grief.

  Then I turned away.

  Rocher saw the false opening and knew it was a trap.

  One of the younger padins broke from the line with a wordless shout, shield raised high, sword lifted for a killing stroke that had no hope of nding.

  "Hold!" Rocher barked.

  If he'd heard him, the man showed no indication.

  The Demon Lord's arm drew back, cws angling forward to skewer him through breastpte and spine.

  Rocher moved.

  He smmed into the padin's shoulder and drove him sideways, boots skidding through dust and broken stone as the cw tore past where the man's chest had been a heartbeat earlier.

  Rocher did not stop there.

  He stepped into the creature's reach before it could recover its extension, and caught the limb at the forearm.

  Impact jarred his bones. Pain shot through his injured side. His grip slipped once, then tightened. Golden light fred along his gauntlets as he locked his stance and bore the weight.

  The creature drove forward, seeking to crush him beneath mass and momentum.

  Rocher pivoted.

  He did not resist the force—he accepted it, turned with it, and dragged the arm across his centerline. The Demon Lord's bance shifted. Its weight overcommitted.

  Rocher roared and completed the motion, driving his hip into the joint and hauling downward.

  The creature hit the stone in a thunderous impact that cracked fgstones and bsted dust outward in a choking ring.

  For one impossible heartbeat, it y prone.

  A cheer erupted behind him.

  Steel rang as the padins surged forward.

  "Wait—!" Rocher shouted, already turning.

  The dust rose thick and blinding around the fallen mass. Boots pounded past him. Shields lifted. Voices cried victory before the strike had nded.

  The tail came out of the dust.

  It moved too fast to follow—a bck arc scything low through the charge.

  Metal shrieked. Bodies lifted and spun. The front rank colpsed in a violent tangle of limbs and shattered shields.

  The bde at its tip gleamed red and wet and newly formed.

  Rocher froze.

  From the dust the Demon Lord rose.

  Its form had filled out, flesh knitting over ruined muscle. Scales spread across its torso in overpping ptes of matte bck. Its eyes burned red through the haze, light pooling in their depths like coals dragged from a furnace. Its teeth, once broken, now gleamed in serrated rows.

  Rocher's breath caught.

  This was supposed to be its most vulnerable state—weakened by centuries of decay, stripped of power, forced into flesh that could finally fail.

  Instead it stood before them almost whole.

  His stomach turned cold.

  "Fall back!" he roared. "Fall back, damn you!"

  The padins did not heed him. Some staggered to their feet, others surged again with desperate fury, shouting prayers and battle hymns through dust-choked lungs.

  He whipped his head around.

  "Halbrecht! Call them back!"

  No answer.

  The bishop was nowhere in sight.

  Through the haze, a pulse of red and green light flickered.

  The Demon Lord turned toward it.

  Evelyn stood in the drifting dust, the Sacred Mask of Xolotl fitted over her face. Its stitching burned—crimson over viridian—casting warped light across the broken courtyard.

  The creature lunged.

  She vanished.

  In her pce, a blinding white fsh erupted.

  Light detonated outward with searing intensity. The Demon Lord convulsed, its surface burning hot-white as if its flesh had been dragged into a forge. Steam and smoke burst from its seams.

  It writhed.

  And even as it writhed, its flesh began to knit.

  Half the padins colpsed, screaming, clutching at their eyes, their knees, their skulls as the bst tore through nerves already frayed by infection and exhaustion.

  Rocher did not let that slow him.

  He ran past the fallen, past the crawling, past the stunned men gasping in the dust.

  If the Demon Lord could feel even a fraction of that pain—

  He leapt.

  Golden light fred along his limbs as he drove himself upward and brought his bde down in a two-handed plunge.

  The sword punched deep into the creature's back, between ptes still soft from regeneration.

  Bck blood burst outward, hissing against the steel.

  The Demon Lord screamed.

  The sound tore through the courtyard, alien and vast, vibrating in Rocher's bones.

  Its wings, still ragged and half-formed, convulsed—

  —and beat.