EIGHTEEN
TANITH
Arax materializes beside me once we’ve cleared the nexus’s detection range, his human form coalescing from the ash with the lethal grace that defines him. His attention sweeps over me—cataloging injuries, measuring damage, assessing threat levels with the precision I’ve learned to read in his silences.
“Your shoulder.”
“Stasis spell. Already fading.”
“Your knee.”
“Same. Temporary.”
He doesn’t ask why I went alone. Doesn’t demand explanations or issue recriminations. He processes the information I’ve given him, nods once, and turns to assess our extraction route.
“The strike teams will reach the nexus in four hours. We should intercept them before they encounter whatever survivors left behind.”
“Agreed.”
We move into the ash storm, civilians positioned between us—Arax on point, me guarding the rear. The formation feels natural, a positioning we’ve fallen into without discussion. Eachof us covering the other’s vulnerabilities. Each of us aware of exactly where the other is at all times.
I watch the controlled shift of his shoulders as he navigates the unstable terrain. The constant adjustment of his attention across multiple threat vectors. The way he moves through the world as if it’s a problem to be solved rather than an environment to be survived.
And I feel the choice I’ve been avoiding finally take shape.
We makecontact with the strike teams two hours later. The civilians are transferred to a medical escort—their conditions assessed, their transport to surviving settlements arranged. One of the women keeps thanking me, her voice breaking with each repetition until the medics finally lead her away. The other woman says nothing. She stares at the ash-gray horizon with the thousand-yard gaze of someone who has seen too much and will spend years trying to unsee it.
The child clings to me until the last moment, her small fingers wrapped around mine with desperate strength.
“Thank you.” Her voice is barely audible. “Thank you for coming.”
I crouch down to her level, ignoring the protest from my injured knee. Up close, I see the details the distance had hidden: the tear tracks cutting through the ash on her face, the trembling she can’t quite control, the way her eyes keep darting toward the horizon as if expecting the Choir to emerge from the gray at any moment.
“You’re safe now.” The words feel inadequate. “The medics will take care of you.”
“Will I see you again?”
The question catches me off guard. I don’t know how to answer it—don’t know what promise I can make to a child whose parents are dead and whose world has become a nightmare of ash and erasure.
“I don’t know.” Honesty is all I have to offer. “But I’ll remember you. And I’ll keep fighting so that other people don’t have to go through what you went through.”
She nods once, solemnly, as if I’ve made a sacred vow. Then the medics gently extract her from my grip, and she’s gone, swallowed by the military machinery that will process her into a refugee, a statistic, a survivor.
I came because the alternative was unacceptable—because watching the strike teams arrive after the sacrifice cycle would have been another failure added to a lifetime of failures. I came because I am what I am: a witch who ends things, including the deaths of innocent people when ending them is possible.
I came because that little girl is approximately the age I was when I first understood what my bloodline made me capable of.
The medical escort departs with the civilians. Arax stands beside me, watching them disappear into the gray distance, his expression revealing nothing of whatever is unfolding behind those eyes.
“You left without informing me.”
Not an accusation. An observation.
“Yes.”
“You anticipated that I would prevent you from undertaking this mission.”
“Yes.”
