The Forest of the Three Suns stretched around her like a waking nightmare.
Twisted trees whose branches resembled accusing fingers.
Snow fouled with mud and blood.
The scent of death saturated every breath she drew.
From time to time, a surviving rogue burst from the shadows.
Leonia answered with instinct alone.
Her sword found flesh.
Her body found more pain.
Her soul found only more emptiness.
— Filthy beast!
she roared, every strike accompanied by either a curse or a prayer.
But her roar was growing weaker.
Her strength was fading.
Every muscle screamed in protest.
Every tendon stretched to its breaking point.
When at last the final enemy fell...
Or perhaps they had simply retreated.
Or perhaps they had only withdrawn into the shadows to regroup...
Leonia found herself standing before a cavern.
Its mouth yawned open in the face of a cliff draped with frozen moss and ice.
All around it lay a landscape of slaughter.
Mutilated corpses littered the cave's entrance like some grotesque offering.
Severed limbs lay piled into obscene heaps.
Split-open torsos exposed frozen entrails.
Heads stared into nothingness with eyes forever locked in expressions of eternal surprise.
Blood had flowed in thick streams that were now freezing into dark crimson crystals across the stone.
Leonia had no idea how she had reached this place.
She could not remember killing so many.
Her arms trembled beneath the weight of exhaustion.
The sword slipped from her fingers, burying itself in the frozen ground before her like an improvised cross.
She leaned against its hilt.
The cold steel pressed into her blood-soaked palm.
She surrendered her weight to the blade.
Her body gave way.
She slid downward until both knees struck the stained snow.
Blood poured more freely now from the wound at her neck.
Hotter.
Faster.
Her left hand rose instinctively to her throat.
Her trembling fingers found the wound.
A deep tear.
It had pierced the great vein.
Nearly reached her windpipe.
Blood bubbled between her fingers.
Flowing over her hand.
Down her arm.
Dripping into the snow below.
But her right hand still held something.
Her fingers clung to it with impossible strength.
With a desperation that surpassed flesh itself.
Elizabeth's medallion.
The small silver pendant, forged into the shape of a full moon, bore her princess's crest.
A white wolf standing within a field of crimson camellias.
Above them...
a griffin soaring across the heavens.
The silver was stained with blood.
Leonia's blood.
Her enemies' blood.
Yet it still gleamed between her fingers like a promise.
— Princess...
The whisper escaped as little more than a dying breath.
The cold had begun creeping through her limbs.
A treacherous numbness promising peace.
— I... did not fail...
The words were difficult.
Every syllable demanded another fragment of her soul.
The medallion felt warm against her skin.
Almost burning.
Leonia could have sworn she could still smell Elizabeth through it.
Lavender.
Scorched wood.
The scent of her princess.
The scent of home.
— You're alive... I know you are...
Her voice weakened further.
— I will... find you...
The sound of footsteps crunching through snow.
Many footsteps.
Leonia forced her head upward.
Through the crimson haze clouding her vision, she saw figures approaching.
More rogues?
More traitors?
She could no longer tell the difference.
Then...
A voice.
Familiar.
Cutting through the darkness like a falling star.
— LEONIA!
She smiled.
Without seeing.
Without understanding.
She smiled.
Her lips moved, shaping the words she had longed to say.
But no sound emerged.
Only a faint sigh.
A cloud of white mist that vanished into the freezing air.
The medallion slipped from her fingers.
Falling into the snow beside her.
Yet Leonia could still see it.
Still feel its warmth.
Still hear Elizabeth's voice echoing through her mind like a sacred prayer.
Then, at last...
darkness embraced her.
Soft as the wings of night.
Warm as the moon's embrace.
But even as she fell.
Even within the void.
A part of Leonia remained awake.
A single spark.
A single promise.
She would find Elizabeth.
She always did.
Even if she had to walk through death itself to reach her.