The light that reached the ravine was thin.
Sick.
Violet dawn-cycle filtered weakly through layers of ash-cloud, staining the stone and bone the color of old bruises. Nothing here remembered how to be bright.
Levi woke first.
His body was whole again—but heavy. It always was after resurrection, like something extra had been stitched inside him and forgotten. The cave mouth framed a sky dulled past recognition, clouds dragging low like a ceiling about to collapse.
Across from him, Aria sat with her knees drawn up.
Silver eyes half-lidded.
Her side wound had crusted over in thick shadow scabs—black, glossy, like obsidian veins frozen mid-flow. Between them lay the remains of her mask: pale porcelain shards scattered across gray stone like fallen teeth.
She was watching him.
Not guarding.
Just… watching.
Levi pushed himself upright. Ash slid from his armor in soft cascades.
sshhh…
They shared the last mana crystals without speaking.
Aria broke the small pile cleanly in half and passed him his portion. Her fingers trembled—just slightly—from blood loss.
Levi noticed.
She noticed him noticing.
"Does it bother you?" she asked.
Her face—fully visible now—was a map of survival. Scars crossed her cheeks like torn wing joints, cauterized and healed wrong. One split her left eyebrow, pulling it into a permanent arch of skepticism. Her silver eyes caught the dim light, luminous against exhaustion.
Levi met her gaze.
"No," he said. "It looks like surviving."
A pause.
One corner of her mouth lifted—not quite a smile.
She pushed herself to her feet, hissing as the scabs cracked.
krsssh…
"We can't stay."
Above them, the Fracture Line still burned—violet light pulsing faintly through stone. Far away, legion horns echoed.
WOOOOOO—
Pursuit forming. Or just the endless redistribution of war.
Either way, the bastion was gone.
They were absent without leave.
Deserters.
The word felt strange in Levi's thoughts. Not heavy. Not painful.
Just… new.
Aria reached inside her breastplate and withdrew a cracked map stone. Old. Worn smooth at the edges. As she traced it with one finger, faint glyphs glimmered to life.
"The Ashen Roads," she said. "Old tunnels. Ruins below the Line. Legions don't patrol deep."
She glanced at him.
"Too many dead ends. Too many things that eat patrols."
Not an order.
A question.
"Will you come with me?"
The Protocol stirred—weak. Sluggish. No directive to obey. No command to return.
When Levi nodded, there was no pain.
"Yes."
They left the cave at mid-cycle.
The descent was gradual.
Bone dust gave way to black glass. Black glass to drifts of soft ash that sucked at their boots like mud.
shhk—shhk—
Violet lightning faded to a distant flicker. The ceiling lowered until it felt like a lid pressing down. Sound softened. Even wind died.
When the path narrowed, they walked single file.
But Aria never let the distance grow to three steps.
On the second day, they found a battlefield frozen mid-explosion.
Shadows suspended in black glass—mid-scream, mid-swing. Weapons fused to hands. Armor melted into flesh.
A child-sized Soldier drone hung impaled on its own spear.
Hollow eyes stared forever at the moment of betrayal.
Levi stopped.
Knelt.
Closed those eyes.
click.
Aria waited.
When he stood, she knelt beside a fallen Warrior nearby and did the same—fingers gentle on lids already half-dissolved.
They did not speak.
Conversation came back slowly.
Fragments at first.
Practical.
"Where does the water stay clean?"
"Left fork. The right one tastes of rust."
"How far before the moss starts glowing?"
"Another day. You'll see it in the dark before you smell it."
Then—drift.
One evening, camped in the lee of a toppled obelisk, Aria spoke without looking up from cleaning her wing joints.
"I was a Seraph Paladin once."
The words settled into the ash-heavy air.
Levi sharpened the axe, strokes slow.
krrrsshhk… krrrsshhk…
"I know," he said.
She glanced at him.
"The oaths still fit in my mouth sometimes. The old ones. Before I twisted them."
He nodded.
"I don't remember my first death," he said. "The earliest memory I have is already someone else's. A man who died screaming my name like it meant something."
Silence.
Then—
"That's worse, I think."
Night camps became ritual.
First camp.
Levi sharpened the axe by feel in the dark.
Torren's memory surfaced without warning.
Hands—rough and steady—guiding smaller ones along a shield rim.
"Elbows in, lad. You're not holding the shield—it's holding you."
Levi froze mid-stroke.
Breath caught.
Across the faint glow of mana-crystals, Aria waited.
When the tremor passed, she asked quietly,
"Whose was that?"
"Torren's."
He told her about the shield wall.
About the thirty seconds.
About Don't waste it.
She listened. No judgment. No interruption.
Second camp.
Aria removed her chestplate to clean the side wound properly.
The full map of scars revealed—wing roots burned down to stumps, holy sigils dissolved with acid or fire. Pale tally lines crossed her ribs.
She let Levi help bind it with strips torn from a dead banner.
His touch was careful.
Clinical.
But his fingers lingered a fraction longer than necessary on warm skin.
Neither said anything.
Third camp.
Levi woke gasping.
Lira again.
Tiny hands tugging a cloak.
"Daddy, tell the story about the stars again."
A deeper voice—his, but not—began talking about lights that used to exist above the ceiling.
He came awake with the axe half-raised.
Heart pounding.
Aria was already there.
Hand on his shoulder.
Steady.
"You were saying her name," she whispered.
He lowered the weapon.
"Lira."
He hadn't meant to say it aloud.
Her thumb brushed his armor once—barely pressure.
Then withdrew.
They met others on the road.
A band of six deserters—ragged Warriors and a feral Mage—watched Aria's fractured armor with open hunger.
Levi stepped forward.
Axe loose in one hand.
They backed off when they saw the steadiness in both pairs of eyes.
Later, a lone scavenger traded information for three mana crystals.
"Deeper in," it rasped, "memory eaters hunt. Things that smell stolen pieces on you. They peel souls like fruit."
Its hollow gaze lingered on Levi.
He felt the weight of one hundred and fifteen fragments shift inside him.
The Protocol continued to decay.
Levi tested it.
Walked ahead of Aria down a narrow tunnel.
No pain.
Spoke first at a fork.
No punishment.
When distant legion horns echoed through stone—
WOOOOOO—
—the compulsion flickered.
Then died.
He told Aria that night.
She nodded.
"You're getting heavier," she said.
"Or the chains are getting lighter."
On the seventh day, the moss appeared.
Soft blue light glowing in cracks of stone.
Then whole walls of it—bioluminescent ash-moss pulsing like a slow breath.
thrum… thrum…
The air tasted cleaner.
They reached the ruins.
An ancient watchpost carved into the wall of a vast underground chasm. Half-collapsed spires rose like broken fingers. Stone bridges arched over darkness too deep to measure.
One chamber remained intact.
A spring trickled from the wall—shadow-tainted but drinkable.
They made camp.
Real rest.
For the first time in weeks.
Evening by moss-light.
Aria leaned against the wall, legs stretched out.
Levi sat beside her—not touching, but close enough to share warmth.
She finally asked the question she had carried since the cave.
"How many pieces are you carrying?"
"One hundred and fifteen," he answered. "Now."
She didn't flinch.
Reached out.
Pressed two fingers to his chest—over the heart.
"Then you're the heaviest person I've ever met."
A pause.
Her voice softened.
"I don't want to add to it."
If I die, don't take me.
Levi looked at her hand.
At silver eyes reflecting blue moss-light.
He didn't promise.
Couldn't.
Not yet.
Instead, he shifted—shoulder brushing hers.
They sat like that as the moss pulsed slowly.
thrum… thrum…
Thunder rumbled far above.
Someone else's war.
For the first time in centuries, Levi closed his eyes without waiting for the next death.
And slept.
No orders.
No chains tight enough to cut.
Just the sound of two people breathing in the same darkness.
The road was long.
But for now—
They had chosen it together.