A adjusted the straps of her pack, her gaze following the hurried movements of the Ghost Corp soldiers. Meanwhile, Le Frey articulated his thoughts, the minutest curvature of her lips hinting at the emergence of a smile—his voice even wavered, betraying more emotion than she expected of the man. The thought of leaving behind someone who had, in his own way, looked out for them left a bittersweet taste in her mouth.

She nodded at him, her voice soft but sincere. “Thanks… you kept us alive, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of people.”

Then, pivoting toward VV, A delved into her pack, her fingertips skimming the haphazard assemblage of provisions until they encountered the familiar shape of the pill bottle. She withdrew it briefly, letting it rotate between her fingers before consigning it again to the depths of her bag. A muted rattle emanated as it settled into place.

“Yeah, I’ve got them,” she said, though her grip lingered on the pack's zipper for a moment longer than necessary. “I’m… I’m good.” A conjured a fragile semblance of a smile, yet a flicker of trepidation shimmered in her eyes.

After everything—her blackout, the vision—'good' felt like a word she didn’t quite own anymore.

---

A clenched her fingertips around the extremity of her seat, her knuckles devoid of colour, as the atmosphere inside the jeep became increasingly suffocating, mirroring the sweltering desert heat outside. The acrid emissions from the smouldering barrels infiltrated the fissured windows, assailing her eyes and constricting her lungs with a noxious bite. Her hands twitched at her sides, a subtle tremor betraying the volatile energy simmering just beneath the surface of her skin, but unleashing it now would be a fatal misstep—a flare in the dark that would mark her and her friends for slaughter.

As Val's voice sliced through the stifling aura of silence, his nonchalant demeanour struck A as disconcertingly assured. A’s head snapped toward him, her gaze narrowing as she studied the careful arrangement of his features. It dawned on her then that this demeanour was but a façade, one she frequently donned to mask her own trepidations. Handing his rifle to Ebony only confirmed it for her.

He wasn’t just preparing for a fight—he was bracing for the worst.

A’s throat felt parched, akin to arid earth, as she contemplated their dwindling alternatives. They could flee, but not without leaving someone behind. They could stand their ground, but the inevitable bloodshed would be chaotic, their firepower no match for what awaited them. And surrender? That meant putting their lives in the hands of men who more than likely viewed mercy as a foreign concept, a weakness to be exploited.

She inched closer to VV, her voice a taut whisper threaded with urgency. “If this goes south,” she murmured, feeling the faint pulse of power coiling in her veins like a caged animal, “I’m not going down without a fight.”

But deep down, A knew the fight she feared most wasn’t with the men outside—it was with herself.

D.

The memory struck like a sledgehammer to the ribs, driving the breath from her lungs. The way D had slumped, his breaths shallow. The look in his eyes when he told them to leave him behind. The escape pod door sealing shut, cutting off any hope that he would somehow crawl his way back to them. The regret, sharp as glass, still lodged itself deep in her chest.

She forced herself to focus on the present. On VV’s hand, shaking against her arm.

A turned her head slightly, locking eyes with VV. The hardened edge in her friend’s voice was one she knew well—it mirrored the same bitterness coiled inside of her. But there was something else beneath it, something A wasn’t sure VV even realized. Fear. Not just of Vin, not just of the situation, but of losing again.

A swallowed hard. “I remember,” she murmured, the words heavy, ironclad. “I won’t forget.” Taking a breath, A lowered her voice just enough that only she could hear. “We take Vin down, but we do it smartly. No mistakes.”

Because the last time they made one, they left someone behind.

And this time, A wasn’t leaving anyone.

Then, the offer was made, tempting in its simplicity: if they stood down and abandoned the mission, they would be spared. The Wild King would extend his mercy.

But at what cost?

“We’re not actually considering this, are we?” She could already anticipate VV’s answer, but she needed to hear it aloud. She needed the confirmation that they weren’t about to make a mistake that would cost them everything.

A barely had time to parse the discord before the world around her unravelled into sheer bedlam.

The shriek of AE rifles detonated through the air, each shot punctuated by bursts of searing light. Ghost Corps answered in kind, their retaliation swift and brutal. Bodies crumpled on both sides, lifeblood spilling onto scorched earth as the acrid stench of burning flesh and spent gunpowder thickened the air. The heat clung to her skin, feverish and suffocating, as if the very atmosphere recoiled from the carnage.

She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath until VV moved.

Her friend’s parting glance and words struck like a verdict.

We’re definitely not.

Then VV was gone—peeling away from the vehicle, her presence unravelling into something vast and insidious. Shadows coiled around her, slithering toward Vin like living tendrils, responding to her outstretched hand with eerie sentience. In an instant, the darkness closed around him, unyielding, an executioner’s grip made manifest.

A’s pulse thundered against her ribs, her body caught between instinct and hesitation. But before reason could intervene—before doubt could sink its teeth into her resolve—she was moving too.

Her boots struck the ground hard as she vaulted from the jeep, her body coiled tight with urgency. Gunfire split the air, hot metal slicing past her ears in erratic, deadly whines. Savio’s inferno pulsed outward in waves of molten gold and black, distorting the battlefield into a shifting hellscape. Every breath felt like inhaling embers, scorching her throat as she pushed forward.

Her gaze locked onto VV through the chaos, and she sprinted, weaving between wreckage and fallen bodies.

A twisted her wrist, feeling the hum of her power in her veins, restless, waiting. She skidded to a stop near VV, voice cutting through the chaos with fierce urgency. “How long can you hold him?” she asked, sparing a glance at Vin’s struggling form as he twitched against the suffocating grip of the shadows.

Before VV could answer, another hail of bullets rained toward them. A reacted on instinct, her power surging forward before she could second-guess it. The effort sent a lance of pain through her skull, but she gritted her teeth against the dizziness that followed.

She barely had time to steady herself before speaking again.

“We need to end this. Fast.”

A stood rooted to the spot, her breath a staccato against the sound and suffering around her. The battlefield was no longer a place of mere conflict—it had become a grotesque theater of war where bodies convulsed like marionettes with their strings severed, their final, gurgling gasps swallowed by the fog of burning flesh. The metallic sting of blood clung to the air, thick enough to taste. Distant screams punctuated the din, a cacophony of despair from men who had, until this moment, believed themselves invincible. And yet, none of it held A’s focus. Her gaze was fixed, unblinking, on VV.

The darkness around Vin writhed, its tendrils slithering and constricting with a slow cruelty as if savouring the agony they inflicted. His cries tore through the battlefield, each snap of breaking bone reverberating through A like the strike of a hammer against brittle glass. Violence had sculpted this landscape into something unrecognizable, a hellish tableau painted in fire and ruin.

And in the midst of it stood VV, grinning as if this slaughter was nothing more than a game.

Her words—“Your powers are damn scary, A”—were meant as praise, yet they struck A like a cold hand wrapping around her throat. Was this what they had become? Was this the price of strength? The blood she had commanded, the pain she had exacted—it had all felt necessary, a grim toll demanded by survival. But now, watching Vin’s body fracture under VV’s merciless grip, she felt something insidious creep into her bones. A sickness, a slow-sinking horror at the reflection of what they had done.

They were winning. They were unstoppable.

And that realization, more than the carnage, more than the screams, sent a chill through her that no fire could burn away.

These feelings,

this pain,

Opens the doors to my domain.

Opens the doors to me.

Her gaze flickered back to Vin, his features a grim mask of anguish, twisted and taut with pain—but not surrender. No, his damned eyes still burned in defiance despite the wrecking of his body. He felt no remorse. No regret. Not for D, not for anything. A could see it in the slight upturn of his mouth. He would carry his sins like a banner, revel in them, never once flinching at the weight of what he had done to them.

And yet.

“VV,” A’s voice cut through the chaos, “Stop.”

The word startled even her. It had been reflexive, surfacing before she could crush it down, before she could weigh the consequences of saying it. The battlefield churned around them, but in this moment, all she could hear was the pounding of her own pulse. Because she knew why she’d spoken up. She saw it—the precipice VV stood on now, the void yawning beneath her feet. A had stood there once herself. And she knew what it felt like to fall.

Blood had always been the conduit of A’s power, but it had never come without cost. The first time she had truly felt its insidious strength had been the night of the accident. Her best friend’s body, limp and broken in the wreckage, the scent of copper thick in the air, the helplessness clawing at her ribs as she pressed trembling hands to cooling skin. That moment had been an awakening, the lock broken, the floodgates thrown open. The power had surged in answer to her desperation, an ancient thing roused from slumber, and with it had come the realization that it had always been there, waiting for her to break enough to let it in.

And every time she called upon it now—every time she reached into the red and bent it to her will—she felt that same presence, lurking at the edges of her mind. Watching. Waiting. Wanting. A quiet, insatiable hunger, whispering of how much easier it would be to give in, to take more, to stop fighting the tide and simply let it drag her under. But she’d resisted, despite the hunger she’d felt.

She wasn’t going to let VV drown in that insatiableness, too.

A swallowed hard and forced herself to meet VV’s gaze head-on.

“I want him to suffer just as much as you do,” she admitted, voice with a slight tremor. “But this isn’t justice. This is just more of what he wants.” Her eyes flickered toward Vin’s trembling form, toward the dark tendrils coiling tighter, eager to snap him apart like brittle bone. “We’ll… find another way.”

They had to.

Because the more pain they inflicted, the more power they fed.

And they both knew what that could do to someone.