The battlefield was quiet.
Only the wind moved—carrying with it the ashes of the fallen, the scent of scorched stone, and the faint whispers of the dead.
The Queen of Naga staggered, her body failing. Her scales were cracked, leaking poison and blood. Her breaths came in rasps, her once-proud crown now fallen at her feet.
But her eyes still held fury. Hatred. Grief.
"You took everything…" she growled.
"We lost everything too," Haben said, stepping forward.
He wasn't supposed to be standing.
His right leg had a massive gash. His left hand clutched Kristine's scarf—now stained with blood and mud. He looked at the Queen, then turned slightly, gazing at the ruins behind them. Where the towers once stood. Where Dorothy fell. Where the acolytes screamed their final prayers.
Haben let out a soft, broken breath.
"…It's funny," he murmured, looking at the others. "I used to be scared of this place… the cold, the walls, the dark halls. It always felt like we were trapped."
He chuckled weakly. "But… then there were moments."
He looked at Vanthelis. "When Kristine gave me her last piece of bread even when she was starving, even though I don't need to eat one."
At Ishlar. "When you stayed up all night sharpening broken swords just so we wouldn't die the next day…"
At Jayson. "When you made stupid jokes even when everyone cried, just to make the kids laugh."
And then… his eyes settled on Vanthelis again.
"When you stood in front of the murlocs. When you failed, but you still stood up again and again…"
A long silence.
Haben smiled, but there were tears streaming down his bloodied cheek.
"I was happy," he said. "For the first time, I felt like I had a home. Even if it was broken."
The Queen hissed, raising her hand. A faint glow of green mana surged.
But Haben didn't flinch.
He took a step forward.
"Haben—" Vanthelis reached out, voice cracking.
"Tell Kristine… tell Dorothy…" he paused. "No, never mind. They'll know when I see them."
He dropped the scarf.
And then, he ran.
The Queen tried to fire—but her arm shook.
In that final moment, Haben's memories flooded him—sitting by the cold fire pit, Kristine wrapping a blanket over his shoulders, Dorothy chastising him for stealing berries, the younger acolytes climbing on his back, Vanthelis laughing quietly for the first time—
It all passed in a blink.
Then—he slammed into the Queen, plunging a broken blade into her heart.
She screamed.
They both went down in a tangle of bodies and blood.
Her poison arrows fell from her grasp.
Her tail twitched once.
And then she stopped.
Silence.
A silence that stretched into eternity.
Vanthelis dropped to his knees.
He couldn't cry. Not anymore.
He picked up Kristine's scarf and wrapped it gently around Haben's limp fingers.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice breaking.
Memories burned in his chest—Kristine's tiny hands tugging on his cloak when she was scared… Dorothy laughing as she cooked with acolytes… the nights when they sat beside the fire, just whispering stories into the dark.
All gone.
All of it.
But here, in the ashes of death, stood four survivors—no, now three.
The Queen was dead.
But at what cost?
Vanthelis closed his eyes.
And for the first time in months, he felt the cold again.
A cold that warmth would never return to.