I have some questions for you readers.
What was your favorite chapter?
How can I improve?
And what do you enjoy about this fic?
I want to know so I can improve on my writing?
The cool water against Sunless's skin was exactly what he needed—shockingly cold, startling in its purity, and yet soothing in the way only untouched nature could be. The mineral-rich pool had collected in a natural depression in the stone, like a forgotten offering from the cave itself. It was no more than a shallow crater, rough-edged and ancient, but to him, it might as well have been a bathhouse carved by gods.
Here, in this split of the cave cut off from the others, he finally had space to breathe. Time to be alone. The solitude pressed against him as gently as the water, and he allowed himself the rare luxury of stillness. Leading had been more exhausting than he'd ever imagined—not physically, no. His body, honed and kept in perfect condition, bore the weight with practiced ease. But the stress—the constant vigilance, the lives balanced on every choice—was something no training had ever truly prepared him for.
He'd never been a people's person. That much was obvious to anyone with eyes. Which was why, long before any of this, he'd made sure to surround himself with people who could manage the softer side of survival. Morale, camaraderie, the illusion of safety—he left those duties to others. He didn't need friends. He didn't want them.
Or so he'd thought.
Because not caring would have been easier. Cleaner. But when he'd heard the roar of the Dark Sea flooding into the cavern, when he'd thought—truly thought—that it might swallow all of them whole… he realized how wrong he'd been.
Leadership came with consequences. Every decision made in the name of survival had a cost. And when he closed his eyes, he saw faces. Not nameless pawns, not expendable soldiers—but people. People he might not have laughed with or shared quiet stories beside the fire, but people he had watched bleed and fight and live.
Gods, what had he gotten himself into?
He let his head fall back against the rock edge of the pool, staring up at the jagged ceiling above, mind racing despite the numbness in his limbs. When he peeled away all the cold logic and ruthless survival, only a few names lingered in the silence of his thoughts. Cassie. Nephis.
He hadn't planned to care about them either.
Cassie had simply been a useful prospect—quiet, strange, and sharp in her own way. He'd noticed her potential early and pulled her in with the calm calculation of someone playing a long game. That she had turned out to be kind, brave, and entirely too easy to care about? That had not been part of the plan.
And Nephis… Nephis had forced her way into his trust with sheer tenacity. That silver-haired warrior was a contradiction—awkward, blunt, and bizarrely principled. She'd saved his life more than once, and somewhere along the way, she'd carved out a space in his carefully guarded heart without even trying.
He slid further into the water, letting it rise over his chest, his breath misting softly in the cave's cool air. With a sudden motion, he splashed a handful of cold water into his face, hoping to chase away the warmth rising behind his eyes and the uncomfortable ache pooling in his gut.
Of course he was drawn to them. How could he not be? They were beautiful, capable, and they had survived hell at his side. It was only natural. A product of shared trauma, of adrenaline, of proximity. They were all tangled in this brutal existence together, clinging to each other because there was nothing else.
And perhaps it didn't help that he hadn't had a single moment to himself in months. No privacy. No release. No space to think about anything but survival—and now that he finally had that silence, his thoughts had immediately drifted to the curve of Cassie's soft shoulders, the subtle grace of Nephis's movements, the warmth of their bodies too often pressed against his in cramped shelters.
*Maybe,* he mused bitterly, *I could find another Sleeper. Someone who wouldn't mind…*
But the thought evaporated as quickly as it had come. Idealistic nonsense. No one in their right mind would crawl into a bed with the cold, silent duke of the dark city—especially not someone like him, shrouded in shadow, barely human in the eyes of others. No, that kind of comfort simply wasn't part of the world he'd built.
So he let himself drift, sinking deeper into the stillness. The mineral-rich water soothed his overworked muscles, and the dull ache in his thoughts began to fade into something gentler, quieter.
At the entrance to the chamber, Saint stood sentinel. The Tactum Knight had long since learned the unspoken rule of this particular cave: no one was to enter. Not now. Not while he was like this. And she, ever silent, ever watchful, upheld that boundary like a sacred law.
With that assurance, Sunless let his body relax fully, letting himself drift in the cool water like a corpse suspended in peace. For once, the world didn't demand anything of him. Not yet.
Sleep came slowly, quietly—pulling him under like a second tide.
'*'
Splash.
The sound sliced through the silence like a knife.
His eyes snapped open.
The splash was soft—but enough.
Sunless stirred, the haze of rest slipping from his mind like mist from stone. His body ached. Not from injury, not this time. Just the ache that came from carrying too much for too long. The cold mineral water still clung to his skin in rivulets, each drop a fading echo of quiet peace.
But now the water moved again.
Not from his own stirring.
Someone else had entered the pool.
He blinked up, still dazed, and saw her.
Nephis.
She wasn't looking at him at first. Her gaze swept across the cavern—cool, alert, precise—as though measuring threats that no longer existed. But then she saw him. Their eyes met across the steam-softened space, and something shifted in her expression. Subtle. Almost imperceptible. But it was there.
She moved toward him without a word.
No hesitation. No fear. Just that same quiet grace that made her movements feel less like decisions and more like inevitabilities. The silver hair, damp now, framed her face in glinting strands. Her skin, pale and luminous in the mosslight, looked carved from frost and moonlight and something softer beneath. She was beautiful in that distant, impossible way—like a blade resting in the quiet.
And she was walking straight into his space.
Sunless didn't move. Couldn't, maybe.
He watched as she waded into the pool, the water rising up her thighs, her hips, her waist. The faint ripples reached him before she did—cool laps against his chest, like the cave itself was holding its breath.
She came to him silently and lowered herself into his lap.
Straddled him.
Her thighs bracketed his hips with a firm, slow pressure, deliberate in every inch of contact. She didn't speak. Didn't ask. Didn't need to.
Her body said it all.
She was soaked from the climb, her skin slick with sweat and cave water, and somehow, even that looked like armor on her. Her breathing was quiet. Measured. But her hands found his shoulders—not roughly, not urgently, but with the kind of restraint that made the tension crackle under the surface.
Sunless stared up at her, throat dry, pulse low and slow and loud in his ears.
It wasn't just arousal.
It wasn't just need.
It was the weight of everything they'd survived. The nights without sleep. The blood. The trust they hadn't named. The closeness they'd built like a wall between them and the world.
She was here. With him.
And she hadn't come looking for warmth.
She *was* the warmth.
One hand lifted from his shoulder to his cheek—wet fingers brushing his jaw. Lightly. Testing. Like she didn't quite understand tenderness but wanted to try it anyway. Her thumb traced the line of his mouth, and her eyes didn't leave his. Not even for a second.
He didn't speak. If he had, he would've ruined it.
So he let her lead.
Let her settle onto him like they weren't two broken creatures clawing for survival, but something almost... *normal.* Human. Desperate not just for touch, but for understanding. For someone who could see them without flinching.
Her breath hitched slightly as she shifted her weight—and suddenly they were pressed together, skin to skin, heat on heat. Sunless swallowed hard, jaw clenched.
It would've been easy to give in.
To take.
To let it become something rough, something fast, something desperate.
But he didn't move.
Because despite the hunger curling low in his gut, despite the way her body had fit so perfectly against his, there was more in her eyes than lust. There was vulnerability. Fragile, silent, aching vulnerability.
And he would not be the one to break it.
So he waited.
Watched.
Felt the tension hum between them like a live wire in the quiet.
And slowly, Nephis leaned down—her forehead barely brushing his, breath mingling in the damp cave air.
Not kissing.
Not yet.
Just *close.*
Close enough to steal his breath without needing to try.
And in that stillness—half dream, half want—Sunless let himself believe in it.
That this was real. That it was hers. That it was his.
He'd forgotten what softness felt like. Not physically. But the quiet kind—the stillness in the aftermath. The silence between breaths when nothing demanded his attention, when the world wasn't already burning around the edges.
Her thighs pressed against his flanks. Her stomach, slick with warmth, hovered just above his. The scent of salt, skin, and stone filled his lungs. It was heavy. Cloying. Heavier than he liked. But he didn't turn away.
The serpent tattoo on his back shifted as she moved—a sinuous shadow, alive in the glow, coiling with slow purpose.
And still, Sunless lay there.
Not because he trusted her.
But because something in this moment—this strange, aching stillness—felt like the kind of illusion he could afford to drown in, if only for a minute. One minute. One breath. One—
Her hand touched his throat.
Lightly. Almost absently.
His pulse twitched against her fingers. He barely noticed it. At first.
He stared up at her, and she was looking down at him—not with lust. Not with heat.
With calm. With that unsettling Nephis sort of stillness. As though nothing moved beneath her skin. As though her breath was optional.
And yet she was here. On top of him. All around him.
Her fingers were so small.
So slender.
So sure.
They tightened.
Not much. Not all at once. Just a subtle shift—like a dancer adjusting her posture. It felt... intimate. Not strange. Not yet.
Sunless blinked slowly.
Her palm was cool. Her thumb resting at the base of his throat, just under his jaw. A delicate cradle. A sensual one. Almost a lover's gesture. And maybe that's why he let it happen.
Because something in him wanted to see where it would go.
Where *she* would go.
He remembered fighting monsters. Breaking cities. Killing. And none of that had ever unnerved him. But now?
Now there was a hum behind his ears. A slowing. His breath, which had once been shallow from peace, now struggled to deepen. His chest rose. Didn't quite fall.
The pressure increased.
Still slow. Still quiet.
A little more.
Just a little.
And the softness of the moment shattered.
His vision blurred at the edges. His limbs grew heavy—like the world had thickened, like time was beginning to melt. Her hand—her small, delicate hand—was the center of it all.
The focal point of a closing world.
He tried to move. To speak.
He didn't.
Couldn't.
Because now, he understood.
This wasn't a caress.
This wasn't passion.
This wasn't love.
It was precision.
It was control.
It was the careful, intentional squeeze of a hand that had already decided this was the end.
Nephis wasn't *holding* him.
She was killing him.
And as the light dimmed around the cave, as her form above him became more shadow than flesh, Sunless realized something else—something colder than fear, sharper than instinct.
This wasn't Nephis.
It couldn't be.
The real Nephis would've confronted him with a sword drawn, eyes burning, voice clipped and shrouded in her silver flames. Not like this. Not in silence. Not in skin-on-skin intimacy that twisted so suddenly into a trap. Her blade would've glinted in warning. Her stance would've demanded respect. This… this was *wrong* in every possible way.
And yet she looked like her. Moved like her. Felt like her.
But the moment the doubt took shape in his mind, the illusion began to crack.
He understood, now, how utterly vulnerable he was. Flat on his back, half-submerged in water, with her straddling him like a predator disguised as a lover. He couldn't stand. Couldn't roll. The curved wall of the cave cradled him in place, and the water itself felt thicker than it should have, as if the weight of the moment had seeped into every molecule.
His lungs were screaming.
His muscles surged with that familiar, quiet panic—the kind that didn't scream, but whispered with dreadful certainty: *move, or die.*
Sunless acted.
His right arm struck upward, hard and sharp—a blow aimed directly at the joint of her left shoulder, where leverage was weakest. The false Nephis didn't react in time. She didn't scream, didn't cry out. She didn't feel real.
With that same motion, he twisted, pulling her wrist outward with brute force. At the same time, his left hand hooked upward in a brutal arc, not just a punch—but a shove, a full-body thrust that threw her balance off and sent her toppling sideways in the water.
It was enough.
He slipped free.
Even as the air crashed into his lungs, raw and burning, he didn't waste a breath. The moment his back hit the stone, he called on it—*Mantle of the Underworld.*
The sixth-tier Ascended armor poured onto him like a living thing, blooming from shadow and soul. Dark stone latticed across his body in robust folds, humming with an ancient chill, rising across his chest, shoulders, throat. The water hissed as the enchantments activated. His weight evaporated.
And yet—his mouth opened, and no sound emerged.
No cry. No shout. No *command.*
Silenced.
A Memory, then. Or worse.
There were only two explanations. The first, and most likely: this was a calculated assassination, planned with exacting detail. Someone had used a Memory to still his voice, knowing that his call alone could summon death.
The second possibility chilled him deeper than the water ever could:
A Nightmare Creature.
Of the Demon rank.
But now was not the time for theory. Survival came first.
He wrapped his will around the two shadows that followed him like ghosts—silent companions of void and will. They slid up his legs and arms like oil, fusing with him, tripling his strength in an instant. His movements became sharper, lighter, honed.
His hand reached instinctively for the [Midnight Shard].
And the creature lunged.
No hesitation. No cunning. Just raw, violent speed—mouth open, eyes wide with animal hunger, its body still draped in the illusion of Nephis's form. It pounced like a starving rabbit beast trapped inside the silhouette of a woman.
Sunless didn't flinch.
He moved.
The blade came up in a low arc, swift and soundless, guided not by instinct, but by art. The first step of the [Shadow's Dance] lit up in his mind—a movement not meant to imitate, but to *understand.*
The style wasn't about mimicry. It was about reading the rhythm of the enemy, finding the soul of their movement, and answering it with stillness, then death.
And so he danced.
The false woman's hand reached for his throat again—desperate, savage.
He stepped past her.
The [Midnight Shard] traced a graceful arc through the air, slicing through her arm like silk.
Blood didn't fall. Flesh didn't scatter.
Instead, the glamour shattered.
Where her arm had been was now a clump of brittle twigs, laced together with sinew that looked more like dried roots than muscle. Her form faltered—her stolen beauty burning away in a curl of blue fire. The illusion of Nephis broke, unraveling into smoke.
What remained was no woman.
It was a creature of mud and rot—shaped crudely into the image of a human body. Its face was a mask of melted bark. Its limbs gnarled, malformed. The glamour that had once made it beautiful now flared in flashes of cold, dying magic.
It charged again, screeching—not with a voice, but with the rattle of dead leaves caught in a storm.
He didn't let it reach him.
The [Midnight Shard] sang once more—formless, efficient, lethal. A single horizontal cut, swift and unburdened by hesitation.
The beast's head left its shoulders with barely a sound.
Its body crumpled into the shallow water—silent, twitching, already dissolving into muck and memory.
A flicker of power pulsed through the cave floor as the corpse vanished, devoured by whatever foul echo had summoned it.
The silence returned.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast: Lost Delirium.]
[Your shadow grows stronger.]
Shadow Fragments: [38 / 2000]
Sunless exhaled, shoulders still tense beneath the Mantle. The water around him rippled from the movement.
Not Nephis.
But close enough to make him feel it.
He stayed crouched in the dim, the glow of the moss casting his armor in shades of green fire, and for a long moment, he simply listened—to the quiet. To the blood still rushing in his ears. To the phantom echo of her fingers on his throat.
Whatever that creature had been… it had known *too much.*
'*'
Thanks to his shadow sense, it hadn't taken Sunless long to understand why no one had come. Why the cave had fallen deathly silent around him. Why even Saint, ever-vigilant, had not answered his unspoken call.
The answer awaited him in the main cavern.
And it was pandemonium.
Not just chaos—but *structured madness*, blooming like a fungus from the heart of the earth. The cave had become a war zone, lit by the flickering bioluminescence of moss and Memories alike, and the uncanny silence that the mimics brought,unheard with silent screams, clashes.
Bodies littered the stone floor—some human, some not. Crude imitations of flesh crumpled where they had fallen, misshapen and still oozing. Others—real ones—lay broken, their blood pooling into the shallow grooves of the cavern floor. The air stank of blood,fear, and wet rot.
Two battles unfolded at once, side by side but worlds apart.
The first was a frantic, directionless brawl—half-blind chaos where fear and hesitation reigned. Fighters moved in staggered groups, not charging but *circling*, eyes flicking from face to face with suspicion. No one knew who was real. No one trusted the person beside them.
The horror of mimicry had taken root.
It was survival by instinct, by memory, by intuition. And some fared better than others.
Sunless's gaze found them quickly—Cassie and Effie, holding a ragged perimeter at the edge of the worst of it. Around them lay several collapsed mud-husks, melted forms of false men and women still smoldering from the aftermath of magic and violence.
Effie fought with her usual brutal grace—flashes of he bronze spear, sharp like a curse tossed into the fray. She was fast, fluid, merciless. Next to her, Cassie stood unnervingly calm, her cloak fluttering like a banner of stillness in the frenzy. She didn't see, but she *knew*. Her hand moved before blades were drawn. Her Scavenger Echo obeyed her unspoken commands, its pincer her executioners blade.
Together, they were the reason the mimic numbers had dwindled here. *Two kinds of sight,* Sunless thought. *One born from enhanced senesces , the other from the ability to peer into once soul.*
Gemma, further off, was directing his Echoes—two massive fox-like beasts that prowled the battlefield, sniffing through illusion and dragging falsehoods into the light. One of the mimics had already been torn in half, its body twitching in the jaws of a spirit shaped like fire and bone. Gemma followed in their wake, striking with measured, burning precision.
But it was the second battle that stole Sunless's breath.
Not because of its size. But because of its *weight*.
There, locked in a brutal, wordless clash, stood Saint and Nephis.
Saint, clad in dark stone armor—an imposing silhouette of carved vengeance. Her strikes were cataclysmic, the ground cracking beneath her heels with each blow. She was a fortress in motion.
Nephis beside her was something else entirely.
She didn't fight. She *burned.*
Silver hair ablaze with ethereal light, her body a storm of sharp limbs and Imulation . Every movement was precise. Every strike graceful. She was a silver inferno—no longer just a warrior, but a force of divine heat.
And what they fought—what held their blades at bay—was nothing short of a nightmare.
A creature straight from delirium.
A demon, or something close to it. Its form was grotesquely fluid, like the swamp had given birth to something half-monstrous, half-divine. Its tail—at least three meters long—was a writhing mass of bloated leech-flesh and bubbling mud, dragging behind it like the vestige of a drowned corpse.
From that tail rose a thin, tree-like torso, gnarled and sickly, coated in skin that resembled rotted bark. Its arms bent in three unnatural joints, each limb as thick as Sunless's own chest, moving with a boneless, predatory grace.
Its head was a crown of decay—misshapen, fungal, barely humanoid. A blue halo burned behind it, not holy, but mocking. Not light, but fever.
It watched Saint and Nephis through no visible eyes.
The world was muted.
No clash of steel. No roar of fire. No screams.
Only the thunder of blood pounding behind Sunless's eyes.
The **silence** was a lie—a thick, cloying thing that wrapped the battlefield like a wet shroud. It pressed into his skull, dulled the edges of his thoughts, and left his ears ringing with the absence of everything that should have been there. It was unnatural. *Wrong*.
But he understood.
The demon wasn't just strong—it was clever. It had cast a silencing field so thick even the screams of the dying couldn't escape. It wasn't just trying to kill them.
It was trying to **isolate** them.
To make them die alone.
Sunless crouched low behind a crag of stone, watching from the periphery as Saint and Nephis held the line.
Held.
But barely.
Saint was a bulwark of black stone and willpower, her shield cracked, her gauntlets slick with ichor. Each blow she landed sent tremors through the floor—but they weren't enough. The demon's tail moved like a whip of living swamp, lashing in great arcs, forcing her to block high, then low, then twist sideways with a grunt of effort. She held.
And Nephis—
She burned like a dying star.
Silver flame poured from her body in wild pulses. It didn't dance—it **devoured**. Her every movement was heat and fury and momentum, but Sunless could see it in the tremor of her arms. In the flicker of her step.
**She was running out.**
**The pain of her flaw would be her undoing.**
The demon hissed in silence, its malformed arms dragging through the air in wide sweeps. It loomed—**towered**—a walking nightmare of fungus and mud, coiled muscle and ancient rot. A long, pulsing tail swept behind it, flaring with every lunge, hurling globs of slime that sizzled and steamed where they landed.
And still no sound.
Sunless's fingers tightened around the hilt of **Midnight Shard**.
He couldn't use his shadow to enhance it. Gloomy was better of helping Saint.
Happy was with him.
He watched.
Waited.
The demon's attention flicked, barely, toward Saint's staggering stance—readying another blow that would land too fast, too hard.
Sunless moved.
A low, angled sprint, fast and brutal. The **Mantle of the Underworld** sealed around his frame in a pulse of shadow Essens —black stone encasing him lightened like a feather. He didn't try to be clever. Didn't go for the kill.
He just **got in the way.**
His shoulder slammed into the demon's midsection just as the tail reared back. His blade rose, carved deep into the side of the knee—where fungus met muscle, where it would throw off balance. It wasn't a deep cut, but it was precise.
The demon buckled. Roared—**but no sound came.**
Its clawed arm swung toward him in a wide arc.
Sunless caught it on his gauntlet, letting the blow shove him back—but not before he planted one foot against the thing's hip and twisted the joint in the elbow, **exposing the core of its chest.**
And that's when Nephis struck.
Silver flame burst from behind, a blinding surge of heat that turned the air to glass. Her sword—no longer steel, but a pillar of burning vengeance—pierced the demon's chest and **kept going**, carving a clean path through its fungal heart and out the other side.
The demon spasmed.
For a moment, nothing moved.
Then the silver fire caught inside it—**and exploded**.
The silent world shattered in a surge of radiance. The mud hissed, turned to ash. The limbs thrashed once, twice—and then fell limp. The blue halo behind its head flickered, guttered—
And died.
The body collapsed into itself, steam rising from the crumbled ruin of what had once been a demon. Just heat. Just flame. Just bones and rot, turned to soot.
Saint remained standing, chest unmoving, blade lowered. The silence still held—but it was breaking, crumbling at the edges.
Nephis stood at the center of it all, silver flames licking off her skin, her sword buried deep in molten stone.
Sunless knelt a few feet away, hands pressed to his knees, his lungs burning in the quiet.
They didn't speak.
Couldn't.
But it didn't matter.
Their movements had been louder than any scream.
And together, they had won.
'*'
Eleven out of twenty.
Nearly half of them, gone. Just like that.
Sunless stood at the edge of the makeshift camp, staring out into the ruins of the cavern. His face betrayed nothing—but his silence was heavier than words. The aftermath of battle still clung to the air: the sharp iron tang of blood, the acrid bite of burnt bark, the eerie hush that had followed the mimicry and madness. The stillness was not peace.
It was failure.
His failure.
Not just because over half his expedition lay dead—faces he'd chosen, trained, ordered into the dark. That alone would have been damning enough. But worse, the cause of their deaths had been born from the ashes of his own decisions.
The demon, Grand Désirée and the mimic plague—none of it had emerged from nowhere.
Nephis's newest Memory, earned from slaying the twisted creature, spoke of a terrible tale: a legion trapped beneath the earth by their own longing and a tree that devoured the soul. A cruel myth—except he recognized it. The desire, the forgetting, the dream that drowned you in silence. It was the same as the tree he had burned to cinders.
At the time he was purging a threat.
But he had also opened a door to something worse.
There wasn't time to sit in that guilt. He was still a commander. The survivors needed him now more than ever, even if they didn't realize it. He couldn't afford regret.
And yet…
He let himself exhale, slow and long, eyes sweeping over what was left.
Nine, including himself.
Cassie. Effie. Nephis. Sasha-the small girl. Gemma. Three others—Pathfinders loyal to a fault. Tired. Dirty. Frayed. All of them on the edge, like a single spark might set them ablaze.
He didn't give a speech.
Didn't gather them for empty words or hollow comfort.
He gave them space.
Let them grieve in silence, as was their right. In this world, that was mercy enough.
But there was one he couldn't leave to herself.
Sasha Petrov.
The pale girl was curled up against a broken wall of stone, knees hugged tight to her chest, chin tucked behind her arms. Her armor—the one he had given for her—was smeared with streaks of dark red, flecked with gore. Not hers. Human. Friendly. Maybe not. In the chaos, it hardly mattered.
She looked small.
Smaller than usual.
The armor was good—solid, fitted for movement without sacrificing protection. Hardened leather reinforced with steel plates, chainmail tucked where it mattered. Black-dyed, unreflective, built for someone who knew how to stay unseen. No show. No flair.
But none of it had protected her from the part that hurt the most.
Sunless knew that feeling.
The first time you killed someone by mistake. The first time your blade landed in the wrong place. The way your gut twisted, like worms chewing through guilt. And the worst part wasn't the horror—it was the thought that maybe, just maybe, the people around you would think you'd meant to do it.
He walked over without fanfare and dropped to a crouch beside her. Not close enough to crowd her. Just there. Present. Solid.
Sasha didn't look up.
He spoke low, voice carefully neutral. "First time?"
She blinked and turned her head slightly. "Huh?"
"Don't let it get to you," he said simply.
That got a reaction. She looked up at him, her face pale and splotched from crying—but her eyes had the heat of someone angry with herself. "That's easy for you to say."
"You're right." He nodded, unbothered. "But only because I've been where you are."
She stared.
He let out a long sigh—not a theatrical one. Just tired. Then he said, "When I was fifteen, I got one of my brothers killed. Blood brother. We were on a pickup job—run-of-the-mill stuff. Rules were simple: come back to the boss if prices changed. But I thought I could handle it. Thought I knew better. I didn't."
A pause.
"I couldn't look his mother in the eye after that."
Sasha's lips parted. She didn't speak—but her whole posture shifted slightly. Listening now.
Sunless stood, brushing dust off his coat with one gloved hand. "What I'm saying is, yeah. I know what it's like to kill someone you didn't mean to. And the guilt doesn't go away overnight. But don't let it bury you. You didn't mean it. The only way to make it right—if there even is a way—is to keep going."
She finally spoke, voice soft and cracked. "H-How? I mean, how do I just… keep going? Sir."
She blushed again at the formality. It didn't suit her. She was too honest for that kind of rigid distance.
Sunless gave a faint smile. Just a flicker. "Like a shark," he said. "They die if they stop moving. Right now, we're sharks."
Her brows furrowed slightly, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
"Don't think. Just move."
And with that, he turned and left her there—alone, but not abandoned.
There were other things to prepare for. The Guardian of the Moonlight Shard waited somewhere ahead.
And there was no room left for guilt.
Not yet.