He rises again, slow, graceful, impossible to read. The blades around his throne tremble as if they fear him.
"Well," he says, tone light, amused. "This has been heartwarming. Truly. I feel moved."
I cannot tell if he is mocking us or not.
Sage assumes he is.
I assume he always is.
He steps closer.
One step.
Two.
His presence folds the room inward. The walls lean toward him, like the entire structure wants to bow.
"You two are strange," he says. "Strange enough to be interesting. Strange enough to survive your own stupidity. Strange enough to make me curious."
He looks directly at me, eyes burning with a color that should not exist.
"Goodbye."
Sage blinks. "That is it?"
I take a breath. "Goodbye, then."
He smiles, faint and sharp.
"Good. You at least attempt sincerity. Keep that. Someone will miss it."
He snaps his fingers.
The world vanishes.
We reappear high in the sky, air whipping past us, stomachs lurching. There is no warning. No grace. No chance to react.
We fall.
Faster and faster, until the ground rises like a hammer.
We hit in perfect sync.
Two small craters bloom under our feet, cracked snow and stone spreading outward.
Silence.
Then the wind returns.
The sky above is fractured light, sunlight trying to push through a thinning layer of the dome that once suffocated the world. The snow remains, but thinner than before. Patches of dead earth peek through the frost.
Three years in this nightmare, and finally something changes.
Barely.
But it changes.
Sage dusts herself off, eyes scanning the horizon.
"It is still Nia," she says quietly.
I nod. "It is not over."
The sunlight flickers.
The cold bites our skin.
The shard of Malfious hums inside my palm.
And we walk forward.
"That remnant" Sage says,
"Who, is he?"
I take a moment before i respond, thinking, of something, anything that'll make sense for all of this. "I don't know, he knew so much, yet didn't know anything at all. It's so confusing i don't actually know."
sage sighs. "I figured, is it impotent to find out who it is?"
"Yes, and no" I say blunt
"That Remnant could offer us a magnitude of information, but at the same time we have no clue where it is. But, don't forget we have bigger issues Sage."
"Yeah, you're right V." She says. "We still need the other pieces to malfious. We've only got the one shard, there's countless others we have to collect."
"Yes exactly. We're nowhere near being done." I say, yet the vidid memory of whoever that remnant was stays heavily in thought.
Sage's words trail into the wind, but my mind is still inside that hall of blades.
That Remnant's stare still clings to the inside of my skull like frostbite.
He knew me.
He knew too much.
And somehow, not enough.
I tighten my fist around the shard until I feel bone strain.
"There is something wrong here," I finally say. "Something beyond fragments and rituals. Beyond what Glae told us. Beyond what Malfious wanted."
Sage looks at me, waiting.
The world has gone quiet again, only our breath disturbing the cold.
"That Remnant," I continue, "he was not surprised that I existed. He was… disappointed. Like seeing a face you thought was dead. A secret you thought you buried. I have spent years under this sky, losing myself, finding more of me than I ever asked for."
I breathe out steam.
"He looked at me like I am unfinished."
Sage steps closer. "Nobody 'finishes' you but you. You are not a Remnant. You are not a vessel. You are not someone's failed blueprint."
"That is the issue," I mutter. "I am all three."
Silence again.
Only the cracking ice under our boots.
"I am tired of pieces," I say. "Tired of being cut into halves and thirds. V. Zane. Nazz. Names people carved into me before I could choose."
I look at the distant ruins as if answers live between broken walls.
"Three years of bleeding for survival. Three years of chasing purpose like a star always out of reach. Three years of trying to be someone who deserves to keep breathing."
The shard hums louder against my palm.
Hungry.
Knowing.
"My purpose is simple now. Gather what Malfious scattered.
Make the ones who tore my life apart choke on consequence.
End this hell."
Sage nods, quiet but steady.
"And when Nia falls," I add, "when the sun finally warms a living world again, when every remnant who played puppeteer with my existence is gone… then I decide what I am."
I look at her.
Not above. Not ahead.
Right at her.
"Sage. I know what I said before. I know I promised I would not break. But if I do… you are the one who keeps me from turning into what they want."
She looks away. Her jaw shakes. She hates when I sound human.
That makes two of us.
"What if that Remnant returns?" she asks.
"He will," I answer. "They always come back for their mistakes."
A beat.
Then I keep walking.
"We have work to do."
Sage follows.
Snow crunches behind us like bones refusing to stay buried.
The horizon remains cold, endless.
But we move.
Because moving is the only thing left that feels like winning.
Sage does not look away from me, even when her eyes start to soften.
"Have I ever told you about Mercier?"
She shakes her head once. "No. But, if you are saying the name now, then it matters. A lot."
Smart girl. Sometimes too smart.
I breathe slow, pretend it steadies me. It does not.
"I was a college student. A mess. Brilliant, apparently, but a mess. They said my test scores were the highest since Graves."
"Your father," she says, quiet but certain.
Hearing her say it hits harder than I expect.
"Yeah. Him."
I stare at the snow a second before I keep going.
"Miller approached me after that. Asked if I wanted out of the boring classes and into something bigger. Government work. Special ops. Real missions."
Sage listens like the truth is oxygen.
"They assigned me Scarlett. A professional. Sharp. Cold when she needed to be. She ran recon. Field work. Social manipulation. She kept me alive more times than I kept myself alive."
Sage's jaw tightens. I notice.
Of course I notice.
"And then there was Lucy…"
My voice staggers.
Even saying her name feels like tripping.
"She was my roommate. Writer type. Kind eyes, bad study habits. Everything about her was… uncontrollable. She got dragged in by Anderson Silva. Her boss. My headache. Nothing about that man was redeemable."
Sage's expression shifts again.
I hate that she is jealous.
I hate that I almost like that she is.
I keep going before I lose the thread.
"We hunted whispers for months. Mercier. Always Mercier. The infection in the system. The puppet-master. We found one of his bases offshore and went there. Me and Scarlett. We barely made it home. With intel. Nothing else mattered to them. Not the scars. Not the nightmares."
My hands clench without me telling them to.
"Lucy joined us. Monroe came in and took control. Miller hated it. Power struggle between two men who didn't deserve power at all."
The memories start blurring, the way trauma likes to smear the edges.
"Another mission. Another island. Except this time… I didn't come back the same."
I look away.
"They captured me. Converted me. They carved me into the mold they wanted. They made Zane. The Weapon. Threw me against others like me and expected only one of us to survive."
The cold makes Sage shiver.
My voice makes me shiver.
"Scarlett. Lucy. They were like me too. They… lost. I killed them. I didn't know what I was doing. My body moved and I was just watching from somewhere else. Someone else. He was already inside me. The thing I called 'the passenger'. Nazz before I knew the name."
The air changes around us. Heavy.
Even the wind stops moving.
"I killed Mercier after that. He deserved worse. I killed Steele before him. He let soldiers die because paperwork was easier than fixing anything."
I feel Sage's eyes dig into me like nails.
"Sasha was first. She hurt kids. I hurt her. I thought it made me righteous."
I shake my head slow.
"No righteousness. Just blood."
"And when the bodies stacked too high, Nazz stopped hiding. He took my hands. My pulse. My will. He helped me tear the island apart. The explosion wiped out the rot… and everything near it."
She swallows hard.
Her hands tremble.
"I woke up half-dead on a raft. Monroe found me. He thought he saved me. But he only witnessed survival. Chaos kept me breathing. Not him."
A breath.
One that hurts.
"He and I split when war hit. The gas cloud. The cold. The mutations. The end of everything familiar."
I look at her.
No armor.
No walls.
"And then there was you. Injured. Alone. And despite every reason to abandon you, I stayed. Because something in me knew what you were. Knew that if I let you die, I'd lose the last thing in me that wasn't already ash."
She blinks fast, trying not to fall apart.
"I didn't want you to see the monster. So I pretended to be human. Pathetic attempt."
Silence again.
The ugly kind.
"When we split, I hunted Mercier's memory. I found what was left. I made sure he stays gone this time."
My voice dries up, raw and cracked.
"But he still owns space in my skull. Still claws through my sleep. Still ruins every morning I wake up."
I look forward so I don't have to see the pity.
"That is who Mercier is. That is what he made me. That is why I don't get to rest."
I force myself to breathe.
"And why I refuse to let you die the way they did."
The wind returns.
Sage wipes her face.
I do not.
Sage stands in front of me.
Arms folded tight.
Trying to look strong.
Failing.
"V," she says.
Quiet.
Like she is afraid her voice might break if she tries louder.
"Did you… ever love them?"
There it is.
The question I never wanted to hear.
I stare at the frost under my boots.
"I don't know if love is the right word," I say.
"Lucy cared about me. Scarlett trusted me. That was enough. I ruined both."
Sage bites her lip.
Hard.
"And you think you will ruin me too."
"No."
Too fast.
Too defensive.
A lie trying to be truth.
She steps closer.
"Then why do you push me away? Every time I get close. Every time I try to stay. You act like you want distance more than anything."
I feel every word like a blade.
"Because I do not deserve closeness," I say.
"Everyone who believes in me dies. Or changes. Or disappears. And I do not have the strength to watch that happen to you."
She shakes her head.
"You never let me decide that," she whispers.
My chest tightens.
Of course she is right.
She is always right.
She wipes tears away before they freeze on her cheeks.
"You talk like you are alone," she says.
"But I am standing right here."
I look at her.
Really look.
Her hair tangled from the fall.
Her hands shaking.
Her eyes furious at the world for hurting me.
She wants to be stronger than my past.
"You want to save me," I say.
I almost laugh.
It comes out as a breath, sharp and broken.
"I want to fight with you," she fires back.
"Not behind you. Not after you. With you."
I shake my head.
"Do you have any idea what this path is?"
"Yes. You kill Remnants and consume their souls."
She doesn't flinch.
That should terrify me.
Instead, it anchors something inside.
"You know that every step forward gets uglier," I warn.
"You know that I am not coming back from this."
She steps closer until her breath mixes with mine in the cold.
"Then I will follow you forward. Not backward."
I almost speak.
Words catch.
Burn.
She places her hand over my chest.
Right where my heart refuses to die.
"You think I am fragile," she says.
"You think I break easy. But I am still here. Every time you try to push me away, I stay."
Her voice cracks.
Barely.
"I stay because you stayed for me."
I look down.
Not at her hand.
At mine.
How it trembles to hold something so alive.
"You are my last line," I say.
"If you fall, I fall."
"Then do not let me fall," she answers.
Simple.
Unfair.
True.
She squeezes my hand.
Once.
"You survived Mercier," she says.
"You survived Nazz. You survived yourself. You will survive whatever comes next."
Her fingers slip between mine.
"And I will be there. Even if you hate it."
A breath escapes me.
Almost a laugh.
Almost a sob.
"I do not hate it," I tell her.
Her eyes lift to mine.
Searching.
Hoping.
"What do you feel?" she asks.
I swallow.
"Fear," I admit.
"Fear of losing you. Fear of needing you."
She leans her forehead against mine.
"Then you feel something," she whispers.
"And that is enough."
I close my eyes.
For one impossible moment…
The world is not broken.
Not doomed.
Not etched in blood and loss.
It is her.
And me.
Still standing.
Even if it hurts.