Aria catches me.
“Aebon!”
Her voice is sharp, breaking. I feel her hands—warm, shaking—pressed to my side. Blood pulses between her fingers. My blood.
Gods, it’s so hot.
“Stay with me!” she shouts. “You stupid bastard—you took the fucking blade—why would you?—”
“You were...” I cough. Blood spills from my lips. “...distracted.”
“I had it?—”
“No. You didn’t.”
She rips a strip from her armor and presses it to the wound, her movements frantic, furious.
“You’re not dying,” she mutters. “Not here. Not for me.”
But I can’t stop watching her.
The way her jaw’s tight with fury.
The way her eyes are glassed with panic.
I smile.
“Beautiful,” I whisper.
“Shut up.”
Everything goes dim.
But her voice follows me.
Holding me.
Burning through the dark.
Pain is a goddamn wildfire beneath my ribs.
Every breath is a blade—jagged, rusted, and unforgiving. My blood isn’t just hot—it’s lava, pumping out in thick spurts, slicking my side, soaking Aria’s fingers where she’s pressing down with everything she’s got. My vision pulses in and out, rededges curling at the corners like flame eating through the edges of a memory.
But I can still hear them.
The Nine.
Skittering back into the dark like the vermin they are, their stealth fields flickering, retreating. Cowards. They came for precision, for silence. They didn’t expect noise. They didn’t expect me.
They didn’t expect war.
I push off the wall, tearing out of Aria’s grip with a snarl that’s more beast than man. She grabs for me, hissing my name like a plea, like a curse, but I don’t stop. Can’t. Not yet.
I can feel the Reaper in me—deep and old and furious. He’s been pacing inside my chest for years, waiting for this. Waiting for a fight worth howling over. My bones creak, my skin burns, and something ancient cracks open behind my ribs.
And then I sing.
It’s not a song like humans know. No melody, no harmony. Just rage given sound—raw, guttural, a Reaper war cry that’s older than language and louder than death. It bursts from me, primal and deafening, shaking the very walls of the compound.
