They walked until the world thinned into silence.
Behind them, the arcane lights of Khipia had faded to pale ghosts on the horizon—no more humming posts or steam-runner wheels, only the raw breath of the wild pressing in. The air had changed. It smelled older out here. Untouched. Unbothered by progress.
Kitana led the way, her boots cracking dry twigs beneath her, cloak whispering with each step. The ruins of Fellspar waited ahead—a graveyard of stone and sorrow—but it was the sky that weighed on her now. Vast, unmoving. The kind of sky that remembered everything. It had watched her fall once. It would watch again.
She glanced back at Lucian.
He walked like always—loose, practiced, relaxed. One hand never far from the elegant blade strapped across his back. His gaze flicked between trees, sharp and calculating. But his eyes... there was something new. A gleam too sharp. A calm too quiet.
Back then, she hadn't known.
Moira drifted behind them, veil low, fingertips skimming the air like she could feel the threads of the world. She didn't make a sound. Sometimes Kitana wondered if she even left footprints.
They crested a low ridge where the forest thinned, revealing a stretch of broken stone half-swallowed by creeping moss.
Fellspar's edge.
The first scattered remains of what had once been a city—before fire and ruin took it.
Kitana slowed, her breath catching in her throat.
There have been wars for years now. Between the kingdoms and the demonkin. Long, brutal conflicts with no end in sight. No one agreed on when it truly began. Some said the demons had always been there, waiting beneath the skin of the world. Others whispered of old sins, of blood spilled in forgotten places. The only certainty was this: the demons came, and cities like Fellspar were the price.
Kitana remembered hearing stories about this place—before. Before the chains. Before the screaming dark. Back when she still believed the world could hold.
Fellspar had resisted.
That was what people said, anyway. That its people had grit in their bones. That they refused to fall, even as other cities burned. She remembered the rumors reaching her ears like fragile hope: that the priests had warded the temple with old magic, that their warriors hadn't fled.
She never would've guessed it would end like this.
Now, there was no sign of resistance. Just silence. Just ruin.
The earth itself seemed to have given up. The air shimmered with heat—unnatural and clinging. No green. No birdsong. Just the brittle crackle of dead leaves and the sound of their footsteps.
A shattered statue slumped at the ridgeline, its face worn smooth by time and rain, one hand reaching up as if to beg the sky for mercy.
Kitana stopped, wind tugging at her hair, her cloak fluttering like a ghost
Behind her, Lucian broke the silence. "We're far enough from the city. It's time."
She didn't look back. "Time for what?"
"To stop pretending you can outrun this."
That made her turn. "I'm not pretending."
"Yes, you are." His voice wasn't cruel, but it cut like a blade. "You've felt it. Every time we're in danger. It's there. Waiting. You're just too afraid to use it."
"I'm not afraid," she snapped.
Lucian stepped closer, voice low. "Then what are you?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it again. The wind filled the silence.
Moira said nothing, watching from the shade of a hollowed tree. Still. Listening. As if tuned to something none of them could hear.
Lucian pressed on. "I get it. You hate what they did to you. What he did to you." His voice flickered—soft, maybe. Almost. "But refusing your power won't undo it. It won't bring Arlo back."
She recoiled like he'd struck her.
"Don't say his name," she said, voice shaking with fury. "You don't get to say his name."
Lucian didn't flinch. "Kitana, you're strong—but not strong enough to carry all this alone. You want to protect Moira? Survive what's coming? Avoid killing someone by mistake? Then you need to train. You both do."
He glanced at Moira, but the so-called angel only tilted her head, like she was hearing a distant melody. Her face unreadable.
Kitana's fists clenched. "No. I don't want it. I never asked for this power. I didn't choose it."
"You think any of us chose what we are?" Lucian's voice sharpened. "You think Moira chose to be caged? That I chose to lose my sister? The world takes. All we can do is decide what we become after."
Kitana's breath caught.
"I'm not like you," she whispered, venom soft and bitter. "I don't want to become anything. I just want to be done."
And for a heartbeat—just a flicker—he cracked. Something real slipped through.
But before she could name it, before the moment could stretch a second longer, a slow, mocking voice drifted from the trees behind them.
"Well, well, well," it drawled, slick with amusement. "What are two pretty girls doing this far from civilization?"
Kitana froze.
Lucian turned at once, hand already on his sword.
Moira stilled.
Three figures stepped from the trees, draped in dust and shadow. The speaker—a man with a jagged grin and gold teeth—spread his arms wide, like they'd wandered into his parlor uninvited. A blade hung at his hip. Something darker glittered in his eyes.
The other two were bigger. Quieter. Watching.
"Dangerous roads this time of year," the man said, chuckling. "Full of wolves and worse. You girls need protection?"
Kitana's instincts surged to the surface. Her hand hovered near her katana. She didn't even glance at Lucian—she could feel the shift in him. He was already reading the fight.
Then one of the men looked directly at Kitana. Saw her clearly.
Saw she wasn't wearing the hood.
And they gasped.
One of the men screamed.
The leader, the one with the gold teeth and arrogant grin, lost his smile all at once. His voice broke as he tried to mask fear with humor.
"Let me rephrase what I said about two beautiful girls," he stammered, eyes flicking to Lucian. "You can keep the demon—we'll take the other. How's that sound?"
Lucian laughed. A short, sharp thing. But Kitana didn't hear it.
Demon?
The word slammed into her like a fist.
I am a demon?
Her breath hitched. Her vision tunneled.
How dare he.
Should she cut out his tongue?
Flay the skin from his bones?
Let him scream until his throat bled dry, then silence him with a whisper?
The heat in her chest surged—no, boiled.
A sound escaped her lips. It wasn't human.
Moira felt it first. A shift in the air.
A tightening. Like the world itself had sucked in a breath. She took a cautious step back, her gaze fixed on Kitana
Lucian didn't notice. He was still speaking, trying to calm the situation, hand halfway to his sword.
But something moved.
A blur. A distortion in the air, like smoke pulled by a gust. A heartbeat later, the man with the gold teeth was no longer standing—
—he was a torn shape on the ground, eyes wide in death, throat opened clean through.
Lucian froze. His hand stopped short of his blade.
He hadn't seen it. Hadn't seen anything.
But the other two had.
They collapsed to their knees, shrieking like children in the dark. One began to sob. The other covered his face with trembling hands, muttering something over and over as if it might protect him.
Lucian turned slowly. Very slowly. And saw her.
Kitana stood behind him ,as if she hadn't moved a inch, head tilted ever so slightly, like a curious predator examining a kill.
But it wasn't Kitana. Not the one he knew.
The right half of her body had changed.
Her arm was no longer flesh but something darker—twisted, veined in red, covered in pulsing, infernal markings that moved beneath her skin like coiling serpents. From her shoulder to her fingertips, her limb looked forged from shadow and fury.
A dark mist curled around her right side, thick and heavy, forming the vague shape of something—a presence—towering behind her. A crouching figure made of smoke and hate. Its eyes glowed, barely visible in the haze.
Her left side was still human… enough.
But even that was unraveling.
Her left eye burned crimson, pupil narrowed to a slit. A single horn curled from the side of her temple, short but sharp, as if breaking through by force. Veins of black traced the side of her neck. Her lips were parted in a breathless snarl.
Lucian's throat tightened. He whispered, barely audible:
"That's exactly what I've been saying…"
Kitana didn't look at him. She was staring down the sobbing men—no, not staring. Studying.