Rage? No. Rage is hot. What pours off him is colder than the ice in my gut. More absolute. More final.
The Herald tries to reform as he tears it apart. His power won’t let it. Each piece he rips free dies permanently, the Herald’s magic unraveling under the pressure of his will. He’s destroying it with his bare hands now, the claws that hint at his other form shredding divine ice like rotted fabric.
But I can’t watch anymore.
My vision is narrowing. Contracting to a tunnel that shows only gray at the edges. The cold has spread from the blade through my entire body, and I can’t feel my hands, my feet, my face.
This is dying, I observe with clinical detachment that’s probably shock.This is what it’s like. Not dramatic. Not meaningful. Just… fading.
I’ve always wondered. Now I know.
The stone beneath my cheek is freezing. I don’t remember falling all the way down. The blade shifts in my gut as I move, and fresh pain lances through the numbness—a reminder that I’m still alive enough to hurt.
Still alive. For now.
The Auric Veildoesn’t abandon me even now.
Lying on the frozen stone, blade still embedded in my stomach, I see everything. The divine architecture of my death. The patterns of the Arbiter’s magic designed to ensure I don’t survive this.
I see the deeper design—how the Arbiter planned this moment, orchestrated it, herded us here specifically so I could die in front of Tyr. My death isn’t the goal. His destruction is. They want him to watch me die. They want to break him with it.
Clever, I think, and the admiration is genuine if bitter.Use attachment as a weapon. Turn his strength into vulnerability.
Across the chamber, Tyr is still destroying the Herald. He’s covered in divine blood—silvery-black and corrosive—and he hasn’t stopped, won’t stop, even though the Herald is clearly dying.
He’s going to be too late.
My lifespan has collapsed beyond recovery. Even if he kills the Herald in the next heartbeat, even if he reaches me instantly, there’s nothing left to save. The divine ice has consumed too much.
I should accept this.
I don’t.
No.
The refusal rises from somewhere deeper than thought. Deeper than the cold. Deeper than the detached observation of my own death.
I refuse.
I’ve never begged. Never bargained from weakness. Never let fear dictate my choices. I’m not going to start now, not even with a blade through my stomach and years burning away like kindling.
I refuse to die here, in this place the gods designed for my ending. I refuse to be leverage. I refuse to let my death break him.
I refuse to die alone.
My hand moves.
I don’t consciously command it. The motion comes from somewhere beyond conscious thought—instinct, maybe, or that deeper refusal that won’t accept the ending the Arbiter has written.
My fingers drag across frozen stone. Leaving bloody trails. Reaching toward the chaos of combat, toward the sound of a dragon tearing divinity apart.
Toward Tyr.
The distance is impossible. He’s twenty feet away. Thirty. I can barely see anymore—the world has dissolved to smeared shapes and flickers of gold where his eyes burn through the darkness.
But my hand keeps moving.
Not because I think he can save me. The math hasn’t changed. I’m dying. Lifespan collapsed. Minutes remaining. The divine ice has consumed too much for any mortal intervention to reverse.
