> Perspective: Eve
> Date: February 7, 2018 — 10:34 PM
> Location: Eve's home
I was almost asleep when my ring went hot.
I pulled my hand out from under the blanket and stared at it in the dark. The pink half of the stone spilled over the line that split the gem and wrapped around the blue half, holding it tight. My heartbeat stumbled, then fell into step with the glow.
W-Wait, wait, wait! Why is it doing that?! Kai plushie, you're on guard duty, do something—
The bed tipped out from under me, and I fell into the dark.
---
> Perspective: Christiana
> Date: October 22, 2013 — 12:01 PM
> Location: Unknown
My lungs pulled, and nothing came in.
My chest locked so hard I thought my ribs would crack. The spit on my tongue fizzed, my eyes burned, and I couldn't even scream, because screaming needs air too.
`[LONGINUS: My princess, stop fighting me. I've got your air. Breathe when I tell you to.]`
A thin skin of red light closed over me from my scalp to my boots and squeezed. Air came into my mouth from nowhere, thin and tasting of iron, and I gulped it so fast I choked.
`[LONGINUS: Little sips. Nobody gets to watch you choke, not even the void.]`
I looked for a star.
There wasn't 1. Not a star, not a planet, not a single speck of light. Just empty space on every side, and the longer I stared into it, the closer it felt, creeping in at me with nothing behind it.
Where are the stars? Even the worst night in Pandemonium has stars! Where did she take us?!
Something squeezed my ankle.
Belo hung 3 meters below me, his frostbitten hand still locked around my boot. Grey light crawled over his skin, and red over mine. His left hand was missing 2 fingers.
Thank Lillieth. He's awake!
`[ENTROPY: Yeah, yeah, I've got him, Your Majesty, stop hovering. Lungs are fine. He's just salty.]`
`[LONGINUS: I'm not hovering, slacker. I'm doing the work you'd skip if I let you.]`
`[ENTROPY: Wow. Okay. Anyway, did you see the jump distance on the way in? Tell me I misread it. Please.]`
`[LONGINUS: You didn't.]` A pause. `[LONGINUS: My princess, don't panic. We're 6,340,000,000 light-years from Pandemonium.]`
Don't panic?! Light itself would need longer than our whole history to get home from here!
`[ENTROPY: And no, we can't call your dad. Already tried. She dropped another veil out here, same as the 1 over the city. I think we're cooked. GG.]`
`[LONGINUS: Say "GG" again and I'll destroy you myself.]`
`[ENTROPY: Can't destroy what's wireless, aunty.]`
"Belo." I pushed the thought through the link between our crests, the 1 Father carved into us as children so we'd never lose each other.
"Say something."
"I'm here, Christie." Lazy and slow, even now. The best thing I had ever heard. "Don't let go of me."
"You're the 1 holding my ankle, idiot."
"Mhm. Fair."
Then the dark in front of us glowed.
She floated 20 meters away with her hands folded behind her back. The stars inside her dress were the only light for 6,340,000,000 light-years, and they drifted pink and blue and white while her hair floated up around her shoulders. No red light around her. No grey. She didn't need air at all.
Her voice came from inside my head.
"Is this quiet enough?"
I screamed every curse I knew at her, and not 1 sound came out.
Quiet enough?! You dragged me off my own stage in front of my own people, you crazy little—
She turned her veil toward us, and the black went red. It crept in from the edges of my eyes until everything was the color of fresh blood, and my knees shook with no floor under them.
`[LONGINUS: That's not me, my princess. That's her. She's just looking at you.]`
`[ENTROPY: "Just looking," she says. My guy's heart rate doubled. That's not a debuff I can cleanse, btw.]`
"So you're the ones." Her voice was soft. Almost polite. "To think things like you were the ones who touched him. I'm so disappointed."
She tilted her head.
"He's mine. Only mine. Nobody else gets to touch him." Her voice dropped to almost nothing.
"Nobody."
She's completely insane, and I'm going to die 6,340,000,000 light-years from home listening to a crazy girl talk about her boyfriend.
"Belo. This might be our last fight."
"Probably." He let go of my ankle and rolled his neck.
"So let's be smart about it, Christie. She's stronger. Fine. We figure out how she works and take it apart."
My hands stopped shaking.
"LONGINUS. Everything."
`[LONGINUS: Everything? My princess, if I give you everything, I can't promise I'll be able to bring you back—]`
"EVERYTHING!"
`[LONGINUS: Then hold on to me tight. I'm not letting anyone else have you.]`
The rifle twisted in my hands. The barrel split open along its length, purple fire poured out of the crack, and the black metal stretched and flattened into a sword as long as I was tall. Nothing out here could burn. It burned anyway, on my anger.
`[LONGINUS: Technically, I was a spear long before I was a gun, my princess. Nobody ever remembers that.]`
"I'll remember it if you help me kill her."
`[LONGINUS: Deal.]`
Belo's fists lit up grey.
`[ENTROPY: Fists? Bro. We're so dead. You literally said fists are for try-hards.]`
"Shut up and light them."
`[ENTROPY: Lighting them. Ugh, fine, sweaty mode on. Everybody hold on to something. Oh wait. There's nothing. LOLLL.]`
I pushed off nothing. LONGINUS pushed with me, a burst of red behind my heels, and I moved.
---
Belo went 1st.
He kicked off the dark, spun once, and brought his heel down at the top of her head. I had seen that kick break a gate in Valerion.
She leaned back. His heel passed over her veil close enough to lift the lace, and before he could pull his leg back, her small hand closed around his ankle. A flat wall of white starlight appeared under him out of nothing, and she slammed him down onto it.
I watched his spine hit the wall and his mouth open in a scream, and I heard nothing.
`[ENTROPY: OW. Okay, that's 2 ribs. Boss, her grip stat is actually cracked.]`
Belo got his knees under him on the wall of light and lunged at her face with his fingers hooked, his grey nails glowing. She didn't move. His hand slowed, and a finger's length from her veil, it barely moved at all, his whole arm shaking with the strain.
Same as the knights in the forum. The closer you get, the farther she is.
She drifted back 1 step. His hand jerked forward into empty space, and he whipped a kick at her ribs on the follow-through. She stepped up onto his shin and stood there. His thigh strained, and the leg didn't move.
"Is this all you have?"
She's standing on my brother to see what he's worth. GET OFF HIM!
I came down on her from above with the sword over my head.
She slid off Belo's leg, and my blade cut the dark where she had been. I spun the sword around my wrist and came at her again, low and fast. Throat. Ribs. Hip. Throat. 4 cuts in 1 breath, drilled into me by the old palace swordmaster when I was 9. Every cut missed by a hair, and she wasn't even trying.
`[LONGINUS: Her feet, my princess. She never moves them. She just ends up somewhere else.]`
"I SEE IT!"
I swung for her neck with both hands. She lifted 1 finger, and my sword stopped on the tip of it.
This time, she let me touch her. I felt it through the hilt: soft, warm skin, the skin of a girl my age, pressed against my burning edge. It didn't cut. I pushed with everything I had, and the fire broke against her fingertip and went no further.
Then she drew her finger slowly along my blade, from the tip toward my hands. Behind it, the purple fire went out, and tiny flowers of pink and blue light opened along the steel.
`[LONGINUS: My princess, there are FLOWERS on me. Get them off. I don't want her on me. GET HER OFF!]`
Flowers?! She's decorating my sword?!
She was gone.
"CHRISTIE, BEHIND—"
She was behind Belo. Her boot hit his face, his head snapped back, his nose broke, and dark blood floated off him in little round beads as he spun away into the black, head over heels.
`[ENTROPY: Yo, yo, yo, too far, TOO FAR! I'm losing your girl's signal, Your Majesty! Your dumbass!]`
`[LONGINUS: Air runs through the link! Past 30 meters I can't hold him and he can't hold her, and 1 of them blacks out! My princess, GO!]`
I threw everything LONGINUS had behind my heels and shot after him. 20 meters. 25. His grey light flickered. 28. I grabbed the collar of his coat and held on so hard my nails tore the silk.
We spun together and slowed. His nose sat crooked, and his left eye was swelling shut.
"Arm's length, Belo. You hear me?"
"Mhmm. Yes, ma'am. Nice catch, Christie."
"Shut up, you lazy lizard. You almost died."
"Almost."
I looked back at her. She hadn't followed. She waited with her hands behind her back, and I couldn't tell if she looked bored or sad.
Then 12 ribbons opened behind her, pink and blue, the same light as the flowers on my sword. They swayed for a moment, then began to drift toward us.
Toward me.
---
> Perspective: Belphegor
> Date: October 22, 2013 — 12:04 PM
> Location: Unknown
The ribbons were coming for Christie. All 12 leaned toward her, slow and patient, and she was too busy glaring at the girl to notice.
She was never fighting us. She was checking what we could do, and now she's done checking. Someone has to buy time, and it's not gonna be Christie.
`[ENTROPY: Gamer. No.]`
He always knows before I do. He's lived in my head since I was a baby.
`[ENTROPY: Bro, we already did Dead Sun today. You've got 8 fingers left. You tryna speedrun to 0?]`
"Then we'll find out how many I need."
`[ENTROPY: Not funny.]`
"A little funny."
`[ENTROPY: It's not, and I hate that you're doing the calm voice.]` Then, quieter. `[ENTROPY: Fine. If we're doing this, we full send. Past your Step. I'll hold you together as long as I can.]`
"Thanks, buddy."
`[ENTROPY: Don't thank me. Just don't die. I'm not breaking in a new player.]`
I let go of Christie's sleeve and pushed myself 1 arm's length in front of her. Close enough for the link. Far enough to stand between her and the ribbons.
"Belo? What are you doing?"
"My job. You shoot, I'm the defense. Always been that way, Christie."
I opened my hands and took the heat out of everything.
Empty space keeps a little warmth that you never notice until it's gone. I took that. I pulled it out of the ribbons, out of the starlight, out of the space between the girl and my sister, and when there was nothing left out there to take, I took it out of myself.
All 12 ribbons froze with frost creeping along their edges. The stars in her dress stopped drifting. Even the flowers on Christie's sword went stiff and white.
My skin went black. It started at my fingertips and climbed past my wrists and elbows, up my neck, across my cheeks. My eyelashes snapped off and floated away. I couldn't feel my hands or my feet anymore.
"Belo, stop! YOUR FACE IS BLACK!"
`[LONGINUS: Slacker, he's past the limit! Pull him back!]`
`[ENTROPY: I CAN'T, HE'S DRIVING! I'm literally just keeping his heart on! Let HIM cook!]`
Every second I hold this is a second she isn't reaching Christie.
The girl looked at me.
Only me.
She drifted forward through her frozen ribbons, and the frost cracked off them as she passed. She came close enough that I could see the cut on her cheek where Christie touched her.
Already closed.
"You're so cold," she said.
Her voice was soft and sad, nothing like the voice she used on Christie.
"You did all this for her?"
I didn't answer. Holding the cold took everything I had.
She lifted her veil a little, and starlight touched my eyes.
It didn't hurt. The light went quietly down into the middle of me, into the part that was angry, and the anger left. Then the fear. Then the stubbornness. Then the part that kept saying protect her, protect her.
Why was I even angry? Doesn't matter. Something in me nodded. Okay. You win.
The cold I was holding started to slip.
`[ENTROPY: Boss? Your heart's slowing down. You're not even hit there, why is it slowing?]`
I'm fine. Just tired.
`[ENTROPY: You're NOT fine, your soul's logging off! Don't you dare go AFK on me! You never finish anything, you never even finish your tea!]`
"Belo? Belo, answer me!"
Christie was screaming inside my head. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard, and I couldn't answer it.
She sounds scared. I should say something. It's just... a lot of effort.
"Insult me, you lazy lizard! Tell me my hair looks stupid! ANYTHING!"
The girl leaned close to my ear. I felt her breath on my frozen cheek, though there was no air out here to carry it. She hummed something older than any song I knew, and then the words came.
"May your soul rest in eternal slumber."
`[ENTROPY: Boss— I can't find you, I'm looking, I can't—]`
"May the storm lead. May the man who walks this world alone never awake."
`[LONGINUS: Slacker, stay with him! That's an order!]`
"May mercy leave. May no chains bind. May only the hunt find the damned."
`[ENTROPY: Your Majesty... tell the princess I'm sorry. I'm losing— I'm—]`
"May no fleeting soul survive the face of darkness... and its eternal nightmares."
`[ENTROPY: B—]`
And then he was gone.
For as long as I can remember, there has been a lazy voice in the back of my head, complaining about everything, telling me to eat, telling me to get up, telling me to go back to sleep. Now there was a quiet place where it used to be.
`[LONGINUS: ENTROPY? Slacker? Answer me, you lazy, useless— please. Please answer me.]`
Nobody answered him.
"Belo, don't sleep! Don't you dare! DON'T SLEEP!"
The black around me was so soft.
I am sleepy.
---
> Perspective: Belphegor
> Date: Unknown
> Location: Unknown
I was 6 years old, barefoot in the ash garden behind the palace, with the black grass wet and cold around my ankles and a red moon over the caldera. The lazy voice that always lived in the back of my head was gone.
ENTROPY? Where are you?
Thump.
Something soft landed in the grass behind the hedges, then again, a little closer.
Maybe somebody's pet got out. Maybe it wants to play.
Nobody in the palace played with me. Father was busy being Father, Mother kept her door locked, and my brothers and sisters lived in their own wings with their own tutors and guards. None of them ever came out to the ash garden, so I walked toward the sound.
A rabbit sat in the middle of the path. It was the size of 1 of Father's hunting dogs, with matted wet fur and long ears bent in 3 places each. Its eyes were flat gold coins, and the red moon sat in both of them, and so did I.
When I stepped back, it stood up on its hind legs and walked toward me.
I ran. It stayed right behind me without rushing, letting me run myself out, breathing wet and heavy with too many breaths in each 1. It smelled of old coins and dirt.
The ash trees. I always hide in the roots.
The rabbit was already there, climbing down a trunk headfirst with its claws hooked in the bark and its body bending in places a rabbit doesn't have. It landed in front of me and kept rising until it stood taller than Father. Its pale belly was swollen thin, and something inside it rolled over and pressed a small paw against the skin.
Its mouth opened on too many teeth. I tried to scream for Father, and only a wet click came out.
It took me by the shoulders with hands that were not paws, pushed me down into the grass, and bit my throat. Its front teeth punched in under my jaw, something in my neck crunched, and hot blood ran down my chest into the hollows of my collarbones. Every breath I tried pulled in blood. It held me down and swallowed, and each swallow left me colder.
Father, please. Somebody.
Nobody comes out to the ash garden.
The red moon went dark.
---
I woke up gasping in the palace's east corridor, both hands on a throat with no wound in it.
I died. I felt it swallow.
My teeth clicked. I was 6 and barefoot and alone again.
The walls here were the color of raw meat and gave a little under my hand, and the carpet squelched warm under my feet. None of the doors had the brass plates that every door in the real palace has.
Father's study is on this floor. It has to be.
I knocked on every door I passed and called for Father, then Mother, then anybody. The soft walls swallowed my voice.
Thump.
It came from inside the wall beside me.
It followed me.
I ran until I found an open door and threw myself through it.
The room was full of tall frameless mirrors leaning on each other in a spiral, and each held a different me. Me at 3, with a fat face and a stuffed dragon. Me at 9, alone at the end of a long dinner table. Me older, in a red coat I had never owned. Me with my back turned and a small grey hand pushing out through the back of my head, curling its fingers to call me closer.
When I turned to run, the door was gone, and every reflection turned with me. The 1 at the dinner table spoke in my voice, flat and slow.
"You're not lost if nobody is looking for you."
Nobody ever was.
Cracks crept across the glass, drawn slowly from the other side, and through them came something tall and thin, the same color as the walls, with smooth skin where its face should be and 2 long hands reaching for me.
I ran into the mirrors. They broke around me and under me, and a shard slid in beside my heel and scraped bone, going deeper with every step. I left red footprints across the glass and ran straight into a wall that hadn't been there a second ago.
The wall opened, and the faceless thing was waiting on the other side. That was when I understood it had never been hunting me.
I was the lost 1, and it was the only 1 looking.
It pressed its long fingers between my ribs, and they bent apart with small wet cracks. Its cold hand closed around something inside me and pulled out a small grey thing that quivered in its palm.
The part of me other people could see.
It lifted it to where a mouth should be and ate it.
What's my name? Somebody used to call me something... didn't they?
The corridor folded in on itself and took me with it, down into 1 small meat-colored point, and then not even that.
---
I woke up in my old bed, the small 1 with carved dragons on the headboard at the end of the north wing, with moonlight across the blanket where it always lay.
I'm home. It's over.
Then I felt the wet. I lifted my hand into the moonlight, and it was red. The whole bed was soaked in warm blood, and I didn't know whose.
A man stood at the foot of the bed, tall and too thin, wearing my nightshirt with the yellow stars on the collar. It stretched tight across his shoulders and split at the seams.
His face was on the inside. The outside of his head was smooth and pale, and under the skin a nose, moving lips, and the hollows of eyes pressed outward. 2 small dark holes sat where his eyes should be, and something behind them watched me.
Thump.
It came from under the bed.
I died 2 times. This 1 is the last... I can feel it.
He reached for me with a hand that had too many knuckles.
"Please," I whispered. "I'll be good. I won't go out to the garden again."
He took my hand gently. He pinched the skin at the tip of my finger, and pulled.
It came away in a thin sleeve, and the raw finger underneath burned in the air.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
He peeled the next finger, then my whole hand down to the wrist in 1 slow piece, and I screamed until something tore in my throat.
He kept going, up my arm and across my chest, and under all of it lay another me, younger and red and shaking.
He started on that 1 too. Each layer was smaller and more scared than the last, and each 1 felt everything.
STOP! I'm sorry for whatever I did! I'm sorry I was born with red eyes! I'm sorry nobody wanted to play with me!
He saved my face for last. His thumbs pressed under my jaw and pulled upward, and my lips and cheeks and eyelids came away together.
When all that was left of me was a small bright point of light screaming in a bed full of blood, the face under his skin leaned close, and its lips moved.
He ate the light.
This isn't a dream anymore... This is my eternal nightmare.
Everything went out, and there was no me left to notice.
---
> Perspective: Christiana
> Date: October 22, 2013 — 12:05 PM
> Location: Unknown
Belo was dying, and I couldn't wake him.
He floated beside me at arm's length with my fist knotted in his collar. His fingers clawed at his own throat, then his bare feet kicked, running from something, then his whole body arched, and blood ran from his nose and froze into red beads on his lip.
`[LONGINUS: His heart keeps spiking and stopping, my princess. He's dying in there, over and over.]`
"Belo! BELO, WAKE UP!"
ENTROPY's place in the link stayed cold and silent.
The girl floated 10 meters away with her hands behind her back, watching him sleep.
"Get him out! LONGINUS, get him out of there!"
`[LONGINUS: I can't reach him. His system's dark. There's only 1 way out of a dream like that.]` A pause.
`[LONGINUS: He has to really die.]`
And then what, his system brings him back? His system isn't even there!
`[LONGINUS: I could stop his heart from our side, through the link. If he dies out here, he drops out of the dream, and maybe the slacker wakes up and pulls him back. But I'd have to push half of myself across, and the link runs both ways. If his heart stops, yours might follow.]`
"Do it."
`[LONGINUS: No. I'm not giving half of you away. Not even to him.]`
"DO IT! He's my brother!"
I never saw her move. Her small cold hand was around my throat, lifting me until my boots kicked at nothing, and my sword drifted out of my fingers.
"He is your half-brother. Not blood," she said. "I understand your care, however... I want to save someone too."
Her fingers tightened.
"Give him back."
"I can't." It came out cracked, even in my head.
"That bullet was an Anti-Healing round. I put a piece of my own soul in it so nothing could ever fix what it broke. As long as my soul lives, he stays dead."
"Then I'll take your soul."
She means it.
Father has lived 7,000 years, and I've never beaten him in a single spar. She's stronger than Father. I can feel it in her grip. I was never going to win.
`[LONGINUS: Don't you dare quit on me! You're the best shot this continent ever made! You hit HER! My princess, fight!]`
His voice came from very far away.
"He killed millions," I said.
"25,000,000 people with his own hands, more than our whole army, and he never felt sorry for a single 1 of them."
"You hurt him first."
I flinched, and her hand kept my face turned toward hers.
"Your wars. Your armies. Your father's orders. You left him no choice." Her voice rose, sharp and ugly.
"Every time he came home to me, he was bleeding. A new scar, a new burn, every single time. He had nothing in this world to come home to except me, and he still went back out there so your stupid war would END."
Her hand shook on my throat.
"And when it finally ended, when he finally signed his peace, you shot him. WHY? Why, why, WHY?!"
Tears ran out from under her veil.
"He used to fall asleep on my lap with his bandages still on, too tired to take them off, so I'd take them off for him." Her voice cracked.
"I'll never get to do that again. You took him away from me."
He was a killer, and I killed him. That's supposed to make me the hero... And she's killing for him, and she's the 1 crying. So which of us is the monster?
Neither of us had an answer.
She snapped my neck. I heard the dry crack inside my skull, and my legs went on kicking below her hand while I felt none of it.
Her ribbons wrapped around my head, and wherever their light touched, something went away. The color red. Belo's lazy voice. My mother's face. The taste of honeyed figs. The name of the swordmaster who taught me at 9. The word for sister. I reached for each 1 as it left, and it was already gone.
Stars filled my head, more than any sky has ever held, turning slowly and taking something with every turn.
I don't remember what I...
I died.
`[LONGINUS: Heart stopped. Spending 1 life.]`
`[LONGINUS: 1 left.]`
`[LONGINUS: Come back to me, my princess. You're mine. You're not allowed to go.]`
I came back screaming with no sound. Air tore into my lungs through the red skin of light, my neck was whole, and my memories crashed back all at once: red, Belo, Mother, honeyed figs, sister.
I sobbed. She had let go of me, and I drifted with both hands on my own throat.
Beside me, Belo's eyes snapped open, and he screamed too, his blackened hands clawing at his face and arms, checking his skin. My death had gone through the link and dragged him out of the dream with it.
`[ENTROPY: —OSS! BOSS! I'M BACK! Oh, thank everything! You died, gamer, your sister's death pulled you clean out of that thing—]` His voice dropped.
`[ENTROPY: That cost a life. You're on your last 1. Please stop dying.]`
`[LONGINUS: You took your sweet time, slacker.]`
`[ENTROPY: Missed you too, aunty.]`
"Christie," Belo said in my head, small and younger than I had ever heard him.
"There was a rabbit. And mirrors. And a man, and he took my skin off, Christie—"
"I know. You're out of her nightmares now... I've got you."
I pulled him close and looked over his head at the girl.
Her veil had slipped when she cried and hung crooked, and for the 1st time I saw her eyes: blue and pink spiraling together, with a pupil at the center of each shaped into a 4-pointed diamond star, turning slowly.
Every temple painting in Pandemonium shows those eyes, on the woman our ancestor Lillieth hanged and burned. The goddess of fortune who came back wrong after the rope.
Celestara. The Hanged Goddess... I shot the 1 thing in the world a god loved, and I never stood a chance.
`[LONGINUS: My princess.]` His voice was very quiet.
`[LONGINUS: Look how she talks to him. Then look how she talks to you.]`
She had a soft voice for Belo, and all her hate for me.
"ENTROPY. Can you hear me?"
`[ENTROPY: Loud and clear, princess.]`
"If he keeps fighting her, he dies for real. Put him to sleep. Deep, the kind he doesn't wake up from until Father finds him."
`[ENTROPY: He won't make it alone out here. Not on his last life, not with half his body frozen.]`
"He won't be alone. LONGINUS, half of you goes with him."
`[LONGINUS: No. Absolutely not. You're MINE. I'm not splitting myself for anybody, I'm not leaving you alone with her—]`
"Please."
He went silent for a long time.
`[LONGINUS: Half of me with him, half of me with you. I hate this so much...]`
`[ENTROPY: I'll take care of him, Your Majesty. Both halves. Promise.]`
`[LONGINUS: You'd better, slacker.]`
Belo's hand closed on my wrist. He had heard all of it.
"Christie. No. I'm not leaving you here with her!"
"You're not leaving me. I'm sending you home."
I pushed half of my system into him, and it hurt more than dying. LONGINUS tore down the middle, half his voice going quiet and half his red light peeling off my skin to wrap around Belo, and what stayed around me thinned until every breath came short.
ENTROPY was already singing him under. I could hear it through the link, off-key and gentle, the worst lullaby in the world.
Belo smiled at me with his face black from frostbite, his nose broken, and 2 fingers gone. The same lazy smile from the parade.
"Thank you," he said.
"For being my 1st friend, Christie."
We're family, you lazy lizard... We grew up in the same palace... But nobody ever came out to the ash garden except me.
"Sleep well, Belo."
His eyes closed.
I pressed my hand to his chest and fired my last Hound through my own palm. It carried him instead of piercing him, and the red light around his body flared as he shot away into the black, shrinking to a single red spark before it vanished.
The girl watched him go without sending a single ribbon after him. Then she turned her veil back to me.
Half a system. Half the light. 1 life left.
Come on, then. Celestara.
She came close and straightened her veil over her eyes with 2 fingers.
"Your brother gets to sleep," she said.
"You don't."
Her hand settled warm on my cheek.
"I'm going to put him back together, piece by piece, for as long as it takes." Her thumb stroked under my eye.
"And I'm going to take you apart the same way. Forever."
She drew a line through the dark behind me, and the dark opened onto a perfect black circle with a thin band of light bending around its edge. The stars nearest to it were stretched into streaks. It was the place where everything else ended.
She pushed me in with 1 finger.
I fell without a sound, not even my own heartbeat. Past the ring waited more black holes, thousands of them in every direction, with rivers of stars pouring between them, and all of it rushed into my head at once. Every star I passed pushed its light and heat into me, its age, how long it had burned and how it would die, until my mind had no room left and kept filling anyway.
My eyelids wouldn't close.
She's making me watch...
I couldn't find my hands, my legs, or my face. All I could feel was the pull, dragging my feet harder than my head. I stretched. My spine came apart 1 bone at a time, and my face drew tight and gaunt, and there was no end to how far it could go.
LONGINUS...
The half that stayed with me was still there in the back of my head, small and warm and curled up tight, holding the red light around me with nothing left to hold it with. It tried to speak and couldn't.
Nobody's coming. Not Father, not Maria, not Belo. Not even you...
The black closed over my head.
> Perspective: Christiana
> Date: Unknown
> Location: Pandemonium — Covenant Forum
Loop 1 · Year 0
I woke up face down on my own stage, with the red carpet under my cheek.
Belo.
I pushed myself up to look for him, and found the forum instead.
The banners still hung from every pole. The feast tables still ran down both sides of the plaza, loaded with black rye and iron pots of broth, and torn debt contracts still lay scattered around the clerk's crate at the market end. 100,000 people had stood here this morning. Every 1 of them was gone. Not a body where the lullaby had dropped them. Not a shoe.
The wind lifted a banner and let it fall. That was the only sound in a plaza built to hold a whole city's noise.
"BELO! MARIA!"
My voice hit the Parliament steps and came back to me alone.
LONGINUS? Hey. Princess is talking to you.
Nothing.
No red light on my skin, no rifle on my back, no voice in my head.
I reached for my magic and found an empty room where it used to be. My hands were the hands of an ordinary 15-year-old girl.
Where did they go?Why would anybody leave the capital?
Behind the stage, the Stone of Debts still carried every carved name and the wet gold line across the top. The hole where Vharos had hung was still there. Vharos wasn't.
I ran to the palace.
The gates stood open with no guards in them. The corridors held their torches and their carpets and their portraits of Father, and nothing else. I ran through the kitchens, the barracks, the council hall, shouting until my throat burned, and every room answered me with the same polite silence.
The throne room was the worst. Father's chair sat on its black dais with nobody in it, and I stopped in the doorway because my feet remembered this room before I did.
I was 6 the 1st time I stood here alone. I had hit 10 targets out of 10 on the palace range, a thing no child my age had done, and I ran all the way here with the scorecard in my fist.
Father was talking to a minister. He looked at the scorecard for the time it takes to blink, and then he looked past my head and kept talking.
I started counting after that. How many seconds he looked at me. How many people looked away.
Count them now, Christiana... Count all the people looking at you...
---
Night came, and the moon came with it.
It was full. It hung in my bedroom window, round and white and close, facing me. I closed the curtains and moved to Maria's room, and the moon was in her window too. I tried the north wing. The moon was there. It was full again the next night, and the next, and it never showed me a different side.
It's watching me.
Don't be stupid. It's a moon.
I lay down in my own bed and closed my eyes, and nothing happened. My body ached from running. My legs throbbed. I was so tired I could cry, and sleep never came close. I lay there until the window turned grey, and I didn't feel hungry when I got up, and I wasn't thirsty either.
On the 9th night, I heard the swing.
Creak. Creak.
It came from the inner courtyard, where an iron swing hangs from the old ash tree. Maria used to push me on it when I was small, so high my feet touched the leaves, while I screamed at her to go higher.
Maria....
I ran down 3 flights of stairs barefoot, screaming her name, and burst into the courtyard.
The swing was moving. Back and forth, slow and even, with nobody on it.
The wind was barely blowing.
I backed away from it until my spine hit the courtyard wall, and then I ran, and I didn't stop until I was inside the big wardrobe in my mother's dressing room with the door pulled shut and my knees against my chest.
It still fit me. I hadn't grown since the stage.
I had hidden in this wardrobe before, on the day my little brother was born.
I wanted a little brother more than anything. I used to tell Maria I would teach him to shoot and let him sleep in my bed when he had nightmares. Mother let us both hold him that morning. He had soft black hair and a tiny face, and when he opened his eyes, they were grey. Mother's grey.
Father came in. He looked at the baby's eyes for the time it takes to blink, exactly as long as he had looked at my scorecard. Then he did it in front of Mother and Maria and me. Mother screamed, and Maria covered my eyes too late, and I ran here and hid in the coats and didn't come out for 2 days.
I didn't leave my room for 2 years after that.
Creak.
I pressed both hands over my ears and stayed in the wardrobe until morning.
---
Loop 1 · Year 1
The bread on the feast tables was still soft.
I tore a loaf open a full year after the celebration, and it was fresh inside, pale and soft. No mold on it. No flies had ever landed on it, because there were no flies.
There were no birds over the caldera, no rats in the palace cellars, not 1 worm in the ash gardens.
Nothing rotted, because nothing was alive to rot it.
Then what am I?
I walked out of the capital to find out where everyone went.
Without magic, I walked everywhere. Across the Phlegethon ash plains, through the empty mining towns, up into the Cocytus frost where the gravel froze under my feet and never hurt me enough to stop. I wrote on the walls of every town I passed, in charcoal, in my own blood when the charcoal ran out.
I'M HERE. CHRISTIANA IS HERE. COME BACK.
Nobody came back.
---
Loop 1 · Year 40
This has to be a test...
I went home and set the dinner table every night. 13 places, plus Father's chair at the head. I put the good silver out for Maria and the chipped cup Belo liked and sat in my old seat at the far end, the 1 farthest from Father, and waited for them to walk in.
I won't break... I won't. I'll pass, and then he'll have to look at me.
I set that table 14,000 times.
---
Loop 1 · Year 900
The sun was bigger.
I had been telling myself for centuries that I was imagining it. I wasn't. It filled more of the sky every 100 years, and the light came down whiter and hotter, until the ash plains glowed at noon and the black stone of the capital ticked and cracked in the heat.
Loop 1 · Year 1,200
It took the whole sky. I stood on the Parliament roof and watched it come, because there was nowhere left to run from it, and the heat peeled my skin off before the light took my eyes.
I burned, and it hurt the whole way down.
---
Loop 2 · Year 0
I woke up face down on my own stage, with the red carpet under my cheek.
I remembered all 1,200 years. The swing. The table. The burning...
Every hour of it was there in my head, clear and complete.
And I was exactly as scared as I had been the 1st morning. My memories had kept every year. My fear had kept none of them, and it started over brand new.
Again. It's going to happen again.
I screamed until my voice gave out on the empty stage.
---
Loop 4 · Year 61
I climbed the Parliament tower and stepped off.
It hurt. My legs broke on the stones, then my hips, then something in my chest, and I lay there for a long time before the dark came.
I felt all of it.
I woke up on the stage.
Loop 9 · Year 112
I built a house.
I hauled stones up onto the Basalt Viaduct, 1 at a time, for 30 years, and built 3 small rooms with a roof.
1 for me. 1 for Maria. 1 for Belo, with the biggest window, because he likes to nap in the sun.
Nobody ever slept in them. I didn't either.
Loop 31 · Year 470
I started answering for Belo.
"Christie, you're being dramatic." I said it in his lazy voice, lying on his bed in the stone house. Then I answered in mine.
"I'm not dramatic. I'm alone." Then his again.
"Mm. Sounds tiring. Take a nap."
I laughed until I was crying, and then I kept doing his voice anyway, because it was the only other voice in the world.
Loop 77 · Year 9
I stood in the middle of the forum at night and screamed at the moon.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?! TELL ME! I'LL DO ANYTHING! I'LL APOLOGIZE! I'LL GIVE BACK THE MEDALS! I'LL LET YOU HAVE MY EYES! JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT!"
The moon didn't answer. It only watched.
I screamed at the stars after that, all of them, until my throat bled.
Loop 340 · Year 0
I stopped walking.
I woke up on the stage, walked straight to the Parliament roof, and stepped off before the fear could find me.
Then I woke up and did it again.
Again.
Again..
Again...
I did it 700 times.
---
Loop 1,041 · Year 0
I was halfway to the roof when I remembered Belo at my door.
I was 10, and I hadn't left my room in 2 years. Belo was 8, a skinny little thing with a tea cup he carried everywhere, and he wasn't even my real brother.
Different mother. He came to my door every single morning anyway, and every single morning I told him to go away.
On the 600th morning, he didn't knock. He came in, sat on the end of my bed, and drank his tea.
"Get up, Christie," he said.
"I found a really good napping spot in the ash garden, and it's no fun if nobody's jealous."
I got up. I followed him out to the ash garden, and he fell asleep in the roots of a tree, and I sat next to him and watched the moon come up, and I didn't hate it.
He was my little brother. He picked me.
I turned around on the stairs, walked back down, and went to the docks.
---
Loop 1,213 · Year 66
Sailing without magic took forever.
I learned to tie the knots by getting them wrong for 3 loops. The wind was real, at least, slow and steady, and the ocean was flat and empty, with not 1 fish under the hull. The crossing to Celestine took me 4 years. I didn't need to eat. I didn't need to sleep. I sat at the tiller and watched the moon, and the moon watched me back.
Celestine had no monsters left in it. It had the old elven ruins, and the old elven ruins had traps.
I died to a floor that opened under me. I died to a hall of blades that fell when I touched the wrong tile. Once, a door sealed behind me in a stone chamber with no other way out, and I sat there for 11 years before I slammed my head against the wall until it broke, because that was the only door left.
Loop 1,214 · Year 39
I found the orphanage on the Outer Rim.
A wooden sign hung crooked over the gate. ST. JUDE ORPHANAGE. A small stone building, a vegetable garden with cabbages still green in the rows, wash lines with tiny shirts on them, and 45 small beds inside, each made up with a thin blanket.
Children lived here. Poor ones.
In the last room at the end of the hall, a photograph was pinned to the wall above a narrow bed.
Half a photograph. The left side was torn away. On the right side stood a little girl with messy pink hair and a crooked grin, holding up her little finger toward someone who wasn't there anymore.
Pink hair.
The floor tilted under me. I grabbed the bed frame.
It's her. That's her face. Smaller, but it's her.
Under the pillow, a scrap of paper stuck out. I pulled it free. A torn piece of the same photograph, no bigger than my palm, with a boy's face on it. Dark hair. A small, tired smile.
I knew that face. I had seen it through my scope, in the corridor at Asura Academy, the half-second before I pulled the trigger and he stepped into the shot.
The Specter.
The moment my fingers closed on the piece, the room changed.
---
It was night, and the room was full of sleeping children, and I stood in the middle of it, unable to touch anything.
The little pink-haired girl was sitting up in the narrow bed, crying into her blanket without making a sound. A boy sat on the floor next to the bed with a book open on his knees. He was 8, maybe. The same tired face.
"Kai," she whispered. "I'm scared."
"Of what?"
"Everything. The dark. Sister Clara's voice... That you'll get adopted and leave."
He closed the book and looked at her for a long moment. Then he climbed onto the end of the bed and sat with his back against the wall.
"You can stay with me tonight."
She crawled over and put her head on his lap. He didn't pat her hair or tell her it would be fine. He just stayed there, his hand resting on her back, and she was asleep before I could count to 20.
So the monster had someone.
Good for him. He's still a monster.
Then I was alone in an empty room, holding a torn piece of paper.
The memory had shown me more than 1 night. Weeks of nights in that room, his back against the wall, her head on his lap. When it let me go, only a few words stayed with me, and the rest slipped away no matter how hard I held on.
---
Out in the eastern meadow, an old oak stood alone, wide enough to shade half the field. Something white was caught in the bark.
The 2nd piece. The moment I touched it, it was summer.
The girl was older now, maybe 9, sitting between the oak's roots with her shoulder pressed against the boy's arm. He was reading to her out loud, and she wasn't listening. She was looking at him.
"Kai. Will you always stay with me?"
He stopped reading. He didn't answer for a while.
Then he put the book down and hugged her with stiff, awkward arms.
Nobody had ever taught him how.
"Okay."
She hugged him back so hard he winced.
"You better keep that promise..."
Then the meadow was empty again.
I sat down in the roots of the oak with the 2 pieces in my lap, and I held them up to the torn edge of the girl's half. They fit. The boy's face went next to her. His raised little finger went next to hers.
They covered maybe a quarter of his side. The torn shape that was left told me how many pieces were missing. 6 more. 8 in all.
This is it. This is the door!
If I bring him back together, she'll let me out.
I looked up through the leaves, and the moon was there, full, in the middle of the afternoon.
Watching.
---
Loop 1,215 · Year 0
I woke up on the stage with empty hands.
The 2 pieces were gone. I sailed 4 years back to St. Jude, sick with fear the entire way, and found them waiting exactly where they had been: 1 under the pillow, 1 caught in the oak.
They come back. Every loop, they come back to the same places.
And everything I carry dies with me.
So I needed all 8. In 1 loop. Alive.
---
Loop 1,290 · Year 210
The 3rd piece was on the roof of the Asura Academy dormitory, wedged in a crack in the stone.
Asura is across another ocean. I died 3 times trying to cross it: 1 storm that rolled the boat and held me under, and 2 winters of cold. The 4th time, I made it.
When I touched the piece, the sky above the roof opened into a river of stars, and the 2 of them were standing there, older now, 12 or so, both in Academy uniforms. She had just pulled him down out of the sky by the hand. Her cheeks were red from the cold.
"You're so clingy," he said. He didn't let go of her hand.
"I won't let go..."
"Okay..." He looked at the stars instead of her.
"Nothing in this world matters to me more than you, Elfie... Not winning. Not being right. None of it. I tried so hard to let you go... and I failed. I can't do it."
She stared at him with her mouth open. Then she grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him so hard they almost fell over.
Then it was cold and dark, and I was alone on the roof with my hand over my own mouth.
Nobody ever said anything like that to me. Nobody ever looked at me the way he looks at her...
I hated her for it, for a whole loop.
---
Loop 1,377 · Year 80
The 4th piece was on a beach in Elysium, on the far side of the whole world.
It took me 11 years of sailing and walking to reach it, and when I knelt in the white sand and dug it out, the beach filled with sunlight and noise. Waves. Gulls that didn't exist anymore. The 2 of them, barefoot, soaked, chasing each other along the waterline.
She tackled him into a wave. He came up spitting salt water and threw her over his shoulder, and she screamed with laughter, kicking, and he carried her out until the water reached his chest and then dropped her in. They floated there together afterward, holding hands, faces turned up to the sun.
"Let's stay here forever," she said.
"We have class on Monday."
"Forever, Kai."
He laughed. I had never imagined the Specter laughing. It was a small, surprised sound that slipped out of him before he could stop it.
I sat in the empty sand until the sun was too big to look at.
He wasn't the Specter then. He was just a boy... and I still wanted him dead.
---
Loop 1,502 · Year 300
I found the 5th piece on the cliffs of Veyrholm, at the far western edge of Celestine, where the land drops into the sea in a sheer black wall.
When I touched it, it was raining.
They stood at the edge of the cliff, a meter apart. He had a bag on his shoulder. She was holding his sleeve, and he pulled it out of her fingers.
"Kai, what's wrong? You haven't talked to me in 3 days. Did I do something? Tell me what I did, I'll fix it—"
"I can't love you." His voice was flat.
"I can't be with you. When the Academy's over, we separate. That's it."
"You don't mean that... You said on the roof—"
"Your parents." He looked straight at her.
"The monsters that killed them on the north road. That road was mine. I set the monster traps there to loot travelers. They walked into my trap, Elfie. I killed your parents."
She made a sound I had never heard a person make.
"Don't ever talk to me again..."
He walked away down the cliff path. She stood in the rain without moving. I stood next to her, unable to touch her, and I watched her sink down onto her knees in the mud.
He told her the truth so she would hate him. The war starts tomorrow...
Why?Why would anyone push away the only person who loves them?
The memory showed me why before it let go, and I only kept pieces of it.
A spy's letter on his desk, an Elven seal broken open: The Specter has 1 weakness. A girl with pink hair. A stack of assassination contracts taken off dead men, her name written at the top of every 1. Him reading them by lamplight until the paper shook in his hand.
If she stood next to him, every army in the war would aim at her 1st.
And she didn't stop. I watched her knock on his door the next morning anyway, and the morning after that. I watched her wait outside his room at the Academy every night until the lamps went out. He kept pushing her away, and she kept running after him.
He was right to be afraid.
In the end, the 1 who aimed at her was me.
---
Loop 1,633 · Year 507
The 6th piece was under a bridge.
I found it by accident, in Asura, in the capital. A crack in the stone pier of an old bridge, a hidden door behind it, stairs going down into the dark. At the bottom was a bunker the size of a ballroom, packed with weapons. Swords on every wall. Crates of black powder. Chains. Spears. Maps pinned everywhere with red marks on every border, every army, every route.
The piece lay on the table in the middle.
When I touched it, he was there, alone, sharpening a blade by lamplight.
13, maybe. He looked so tired.
On the wall in front of him was a single sheet of paper among all the maps. 1 line, written in his small careful hand.
ELFIE STAYS SAFE.
He finished the blade, set it on the pile, and picked up the next 1.
"Just until it's over," he said to nobody. "Then she's okay. Then it doesn't matter what happens to me."
The memory didn't stop at that night. It showed me the whole war from that room, and afterward I could only keep pieces of it.
He was 13, and he came down those stairs after every battle missing something. An arm. A leg. Fingers, an eye, a hand. Each fight cost him more than the last.
He never went to a healer. He sat on the floor by the lamp and wrapped his own bandages, holding the cloth in his teeth when he had only 1 hand to tie it with. Then he forced down a bottle of bitter grey regrowth medicine, gagged, and forced down another, because the next battle was in 4 days and the arm had to be back by then.
Sometimes it wasn't. I watched him strap a blade to the stump of his elbow and climb the stairs anyway. He fought half that war missing a limb.
The history books in Pandemonium call the Specter a perfect fighter. Untouched. A ghost no blade could find.
I watched him come home in pieces.
When the lamplight went out, I stood in the empty bunker for 3 days without moving.
The war. All of it. 25,000,000 dead, the armies, the burning borders. He did all of it for 1 person.
For her.
It doesn't make it right. Thousands of those dead were mine. Soldiers who carried me on their shoulders at parades. Boys from the outer rings who joined up for the bread. Knowing he bled for it doesn't bring a single 1 of them back.
But I understand him now.
Maria would burn Celestine to the ground for me. She told Father so, to his face. I always thought that was just Maria being Maria.
It's the same thing. He just did it 1st, and he did it at 13, with nobody to wrap his arms.
---
Loop 1,700 · Year 42
I built him.
Out of grain sacks and old army coats, in the middle of the forum, from the same materials my people had used to burn him for 7 nights. 9 meters was too tall for me to make alone, so I made him my size. I gave him a scrap of dark cloth for hair.
I sat him on the steps of my stage.
I didn't burn him.
I sat down next to him and leaned my head on his shoulder, and it smelled of dust and grain.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know you. You did so much. I didn't know."
He didn't answer.
I imagined him smiling, the small tired smile from the bunker, and that was worse.
---
Loop 1,804 · Year 600
The 7th piece was on the burning border between Pandemonium and Asura, in a field of black glass.
When I touched it, the field was on fire, and my father was standing in it.
Father, bleeding from his cracked horns, in his black war armor. And in front of him, the Specter. What was left of him. 1 arm gone at the elbow, his stomach torn open, 2 fingers missing from his last hand, a broken sword in his grip that he was using to stay on his feet. Half his mask was gone. It was the same face from the orphanage.
He was smiling. Blood was running from his eyes.
"As long as Elfie is happy," he said. "Even if it's from far away. That makes me happy."
Father lowered his hand.
I had never seen my father look at anyone that way. Not at Lucifer. Not at Maria. Not at me.
"I will not kill you," Father said.
"Go home, Kaiser. My armies will not march on Asura while you live, and you will not raise a blade against my blood. That is my word. Bring your peace."
The Specter laughed, a broken, wet sound, and nodded.
The fire went out, and I knelt alone in the black glass and couldn't breathe.
Father made a deal with him...
Father gave him his word, and I walked into the Academy and shot him anyway.
That's why Father wouldn't look at me even more... That's why he said it isn't over.
---
Loop 1,871 · Year 0
I had 7 pieces.
I had planned it for 60 loops. Every route, every crossing, every trap. I sailed and walked and climbed for 1,150 years without dying a single time, carrying 7 torn pieces of a boy's photograph sewn into the lining of my coat.
The 8th was in the Academy medical room. I knew it was. It was the only place I hadn't found 1.
The sun swallowed the world while I was still on the ocean, 3 days from Asura's shore.
I watched it come over the horizon, white and endless, and I held my coat closed over the 7 pieces with both hands.
No. No, please, I'm so close, please—
---
Loop 1,872 · Year 0
I woke up on the stage with empty hands, and I was as scared as the 1st morning, and I remembered everything.
I didn't scream. I got up and went to the docks.
---
Loop 1,872 · Year 1,021
The Academy medical room was small and white, with 6 beds in a row and a window over the training yard. The 8th piece lay on the floor beside the bed by the window, in a dry brown stain.
I knelt and picked it up, and this time I didn't watch.
This time I was inside her.
I was Elfie. I was 13, and I was holding his hand, and his hand was getting cold. There was a hole in his chest under the bandages, and the bandages were red all the way through, and the machine beside the bed was beeping, slower and slower.
Kai. Kai, Kai, Kai, please—
"Elfie." He turned his head on the pillow. He was crying.
"I c-can't see you cry. Please. I don't want to see you cry."
"Th-then don't— don't make me—" I couldn't breathe. I couldn't make my mouth work. "I'm here. I'm right here. Just ask me. Ask me anything. I'll do anything, Kai, anything, please—"
"I'm not proud of my life," he whispered.
"I did terrible things. I killed so many people... But I'm happy. Because I met you. That's the only part I'm proud of."
"Stop t-talking like that! It's not over! It's not over, do you hear me?! I'll bring you back! I'll find every piece of you and bring you back!"
He smiled. The small, tired smile from the orphanage, from the oak, from the bunker.
"Please smile for me..."
I tried. My lips twitched and shook and wouldn't hold the shape.
"I c-can't— I'll smile when you get better, so please don't give up, please—"
"Be happy without me, Elfie. Don't think so much. Just smile, okay?" His thumb moved across my knuckles.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't keep my promise."
The beeping stopped.
Something inside me broke, and it didn't break in half. It broke into dust.
I came back to myself on the floor of the empty medical room, on my knees, sobbing so hard I couldn't see.
I did that.
I did that to her.
She found him at an orphanage when she was nothing, and he spent his whole life making her safe, and he made peace with my own father for her, and I walked into that corridor and aimed at her face, and he stepped in front of it.
I killed the only thing she had.
---
Loop 1,872 · Year 1,090
I sailed back to St. Jude with all 8 pieces sewn into my coat.
The last room at the end of the hall was the same as always: the narrow bed, the pillow, the pink-haired girl on the wall holding up her little finger. I took her down gently and laid her on the bed.
I glued him back together with sap from the oak, 1 piece at a time. His tired smile. His dark hair. His shoulder. His raised little finger. When the last piece went in, I pressed his half against hers along the torn edge, and they met, and the picture was whole.
A boy and a girl, standing together in the eastern meadow, little fingers hooked together. Promising.
I held my breath.
Come back. Please come back. I put you back together. I did it... Please.
Nothing happened.
The room stayed empty. The bed stayed empty. No boy walked through the door.
Outside the window, the moon hung over the meadow in the middle of the afternoon, full and white, as it had for every 1 of 1,872 loops.
It turned away.
For the 1st time in all those years, it showed me its back, and the window went dark and ordinary.
That was all.
It was never a door...
Putting him back together doesn't bring him back. Nothing brings him back. That's the whole lesson...
---
Loop 1,872 · Year 1,100
The sun had always taken 1,200 years.
This time, it slowed down.
I sat on the narrow bed with the picture in my lap and waited for the fire, and it didn't come. The light grew a little, then stopped growing for a century, then grew a little more. I watched it through the window. I didn't leave the room. I didn't try to die.
I talked to the picture instead.
"I'm sorry," I told him.
"I aimed at her. I wanted to hurt your heart, so I aimed at her. I didn't know you would step in front of it. I didn't know you were a boy who reads to her under a tree. I didn't know Father gave you his word. I didn't know anything."
"I'm sorry I cheered. I'm sorry I signed my shells and threw them to the crowd. I'm sorry I made them carry me through the streets for killing you."
Year by year, the light came closer. It took 1,200 years to reach the window.
When the 1st white edge of it touched the glass, I lifted my face from the picture and spoke to the empty air, the moon's back, the girl who had been watching me for 1,872 loops.
"I want to know his name."
The room was silent.
"Please... I killed him, and I never even learned it."
A voice answered me. Soft. The voice from the sky over the forum, the voice from the void, the voice that sang my people to death.
"Kaiser Everhart."
Kaiser Everhart.
That's... a beautiful name...
The sun came through the window, and the picture in my lap went white, and the room went white, and the whole world went white and burned away.
It didn't hurt.
I fell into the black between the stars, and this time I didn't wake up on the stage. I floated there for longer than I could count, my feet reaching for a floor that wasn't there.
She let me go.
She forgave me.
I don't know why.
---
> Perspective: Christiana
> Date: November 22, 2013
> Location: Pandemonium — Royal Palace (Malphas's Chambers)
Something was holding my heart.
A hand was inside my chest, warm and enormous, closed around my heart and squeezing it. Every squeeze pushed hot blood through veins that had been cold for a long time.
I opened my eyes.
Father's face was above me. His glowing red eyes were fixed on mine, and his arm was buried in my chest up to the wrist, and he was crying.
I had never seen my father cry.
"Breathe," he said. "Christiana. Breathe for me."
I breathed.
He pulled his hand out of my chest, and the wound closed behind it, and then he did something he had never done in my entire life.
He picked me up and held me.
He pressed my head against his shoulder and held on so hard it hurt, and he never looked away from me.
Maria was at the foot of the bed, sobbing into her hands. Mother was behind her, crying silently, holding Maria's shoulders. Lucifer stood in the doorway with his jaw clenched. Liliath was there, and Satan, and more of my brothers and sisters crowded in the hall behind them, all of them staring at me.
A voice spoke in the back of my head, cracked and small and familiar.
`[LONGINUS: Welcome back, my princess. It's been a month.]`
A month.
It was 1,872 loops.
`[LONGINUS: Your father found Belphegor 1st. He's asleep in the next room. He's alive. Then Malphas went back out into the dark and looked for you for 3 more weeks. He found you drifting near a black hole. Your heart had stopped.]` His voice went quieter.
`[LONGINUS: He spent your last life to bring you back. You don't have any left.]`
0 lives.
My right hand was a fist. I couldn't open it at first. When I finally did, there was a scrap of paper inside, torn and creased, no bigger than my thumb.
A corner of a photograph. A boy's small, tired smile.
Father saw it. He looked at it for a long time. Then he looked at me, and I knew he knew.
He didn't say a word about it.
"Christie," Maria whispered. "What happened? What did she do to you?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
I closed my hand around the corner again and held it against my chest.
I'm going to draw it. The whole picture. Him and her in the meadow. I remember every line...
I'm going to be better. Somehow. For him. For her.
If I ever see them again, either of them, I want to stand in front of them without being afraid.
But I never got used to the stars. Not in 1,872 loops. Every night they came out over a world with no sound in it, and every night they reminded me how alone I was.
The curtains behind Father were open, and outside the window, it was night.
The moon was rising...
My whole body locked. I couldn't scream. I grabbed Father's sleeve with both hands, and my nails tore the cloth, and I couldn't look away from the window.
This time, my fear didn't reset. I had kept every second of it. All 1,872 loops of it, all at once, in a 15-year-old body that couldn't hold it.
"Close them," I whispered. "Maria, close the curtains. Please... If the moon sees me, she'll take me back."
Maria ran to the window and pulled the curtains shut.
I didn't let go of Father's sleeve until morning.
---
> Perspective: Eve
> Date: February 8, 2018 — 6:12 AM
> Location: Sylvaris — Eve's Home
"AHHHHHH"
I woke up screaming.
The sheets were soaked with sweat, and the Kai plushie was crushed against my chest so hard its stitches had popped. Grey morning light came through the gap in the curtains. My face was wet.
Kaiser Everhart.
The bed. The machine. The beeping stopped. His hand went cold in mine—
No. No, that wasn't my hand. That was hers. That was a dream. It was a dream, Eve, it was just a—
I looked down at my ring.
The pink half was glowing so hard it hurt to look at, wrapped all the way around the other half.
And the blue half was black. Pitch black, with no color left in it at all.
"NO!"
"No, no, no, no..."
It's always been blue. Even when it was cold, it was blue. It was waiting for him. If it's black, then he's—
I couldn't breathe. My chest locked, and my hands shook so badly I couldn't hold the blanket.
"K-Kai?" My voice came out tiny.
"Kai, you're okay, right? You're okay. You're— you're at home, and you're okay, and you're probably asleep, right? Right?!"
Nobody answered. The plushie stared at me with 1 button eye hanging by a thread...
He's dead. He's dead and I wasn't there and nobody held his hand and he died alone and I was asleep—
STOP IT. You don't know that. You don't know anything. Go. Go and see him. GO!
I was out of bed before I decided to be. I didn't change out of my nightgown. I didn't find my shoes. I ran down the stairs barefoot and out into the frozen street, through the empty lanes toward Kai's house, and the frost cut my feet, and I didn't care.
I'm coming, Kai. Please be okay. I'll never be annoying again, I'll never push, I'll be good, just please be there—
Please be there when I open the door.
I'll find you.
And this time, I'm not letting go.