Ren took a step forward, slowly. The knife still in her hand, edge glowing faintly from the heat. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
He tilted his head, blood running down his chin. “Enlighten me.”
“I didn’t need him to make me clean.” she raised the blade, steady and sure. “He reminded me I didn’t have to stay dirty.”
The words hit him harder than the cut did. She seen it in the flicker of his stance, that small backward shift, that hint of disbelief.
Then he lunged.
She met him halfway.
The clash is pure noise—steel, rain, bone. Sparks exploded between them as their blades catch, slide, break apart. His strike glanced off her shoulder; hers cuts deep along his ribs. The heat from her skin scorches the air, the dragon pressed close again but not to take over—just to lend.
“You lead,”it murmurs. “I follow.”
Ren drove the knife up under his arm and twisted. He grunted, grabbed her wrist, slammed her back against the guardrail. Her breath ripped out of her. The chain dangled from his fist, inches from her face.
“You think you can kill me?” he growled. “You think he won’t see what you really are after this?”
Ren stared right into his visor—she sees her reflection in it, flame, rain, and fury.
Then she smiles.
“He already has.”
She shoved her knee up hard, drove the knife deeper. His body jerked, a sound between a gasp and a growl. The chain slipped from his fingers, hitting the wet asphalt with a sharp metallic ring.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then his weight went heavy, he slid down the rail until he was on his knees, breathing in short, wet gasps.
The dragon exhaled inside her—long, quiet, almost mournful.
“It is done.”
Ren knelt too, not from weakness but because she won’t stand over this one. Not him. Not anymore.
Rain ran down her face, washing the blood from her hands. Shadow’s head tilted toward her, visor cracked enough to show the faintest glint of his eye.
“You… look like him,” he rasped.
She doesn’t answer.
There was nothing left to say.
She picked up the chain, cold and slick, and hers.
The world finally exhaled.
The storm eased to a steady drizzle, thin veils of steam rose from the wet asphalt where fire and rain made truce. The dragon retreated somewhere deep in my chest, heartbeat slowing until it matched hers.
Everything smelled of smoke, iron, and rain.
Everything felt still.
Ren looked down at him—at Shadow, slumped against the guardrail, visor cracked and dark. There was no satisfaction in it. No victory. Just the quiet truth that it was finally over.
Her fingers tightened around the chain. It was heavy again—the weight of what she’d lost, and what she was still fighting to keep. Tater’s warmth lingers in the metal, faint but steady. She pressed it into her palm until the pain felt real enough to anchor her.
