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I deserved it.

The suffering came again, thick and fast, penetrating my skull, turning my bones to sodden parchment. I ached against it, crying out again. And just like that, the touch of the men I loved faded away. I was no longer a corporeal thing – but a mass of the same darkness that surrounded me.

Paradise never lasted long – not for someone who didn’t deserve it. Not for someone like me. I clawed at the remaining scraps of warmth, feeling them fade away like a receding tide. Then, just as the final touch of it disappeared, so did I, down into the belly of the beast that was death.

Jesibel was there to welcome me in the dark. She smiled, clutching not one rose, but a bunch of them, overspilling and red, beautiful as life had been. I knew this was no dream, because when she opened her mouth, I wasn’t greeted with silence. Instead, she offered me words. Words she had long lost to the suffering at Aldrick’s hands.

“Wake up, Robin. The world needs you. Your family need you.”

Voices.Morevoices, coaxing me out of nothing. I was surrounded by all the people who had perished because of my failure. They’d found me in this afterlife to taunt me. I strained to make them out, or who spoke.

“His heart beats stronger today.”

“It has been two days,” Duncan replied to the mysterious speaker. I knew it was him, even in death I’d recognise his voice. Although he was panicked, his words rushed and chaotic, I imagined myself smiling just at the pleasure of hearing him again. “If any more days pass, we will lose him for good.”

“I’m doing my best–”

“Work faster.” Erix growled – my Erix, with his voice of commanding iron – interrupting the unfamiliar voice. “Harder. Just do not fucking stop until you fix him. Please.”

“He isn’t broken. Robin is fighting. But it’s up to him to determine how strong he is.”

“But what of the antidote? You told us there was an antidote, if that is what we need then that is what you must retrieve.” Duncan was calmer, but even beneath his voice I could hear the undercurrent of pure anger, born from fear. His was frightened about something, his voice lifting in pitch on his final word.

“There hasn’t exactly been the time to locate one, not with half the realm being covered by Duwar’s ruin.”

All noise stopped as though a great hand grabbed my head and dumped me in water. The only thing I heard was the long hiss in my ear. Then, as if that same hand tore me back out the water, the voices returned.

I couldn’t work out who spoke, but I listened like a scholar learning the secrets of the universe, clinging onto every little scrap of knowledge.

“We cannot afford to move him until he improves, and yet we also must understand that there will come a time that the option to wait here will be taken from us.”

The voices were becoming muddled, as if my mind was no longer able to determine who said what.

“And you think staying here will help? The ruin is growing by the minute. There is no saying when it will reach here.”

“Robin’s in a too fragile state to risk travel.”

“What about the realms? What about everyone else outside these walls. The world needs us still.”

“My world means nothing without him–”

Crash. I was back beneath the waves of impenetrable dark, limbs helpless and lungs aching for breath. I couldn’t make sense of reality. This twisted hellscape where I could hear the voices of those I loved but couldn’t reach them.

It was like I was dreaming – so deep, and yet my consciousness fought to hold on. This time Jesibel wasn’t here to greet me, and yet I still heard her voice as clear as day, and cold as Icethorn’s winter snow.

Your family needs you.

I exploded back from the dark waters, out into open air as I grasped hold of a sense of my reality.

“Althea, we must not leave. Robin is our only hope of saving the realms.”

My awareness snapped at the name. Althea. Althea Cedarfall. I imagined fire-red hair, wide eyes, a fierce mentality that could go against a gryvern and a Nephilim.

“I’m with Duncan on this,” Erix replied, although it was barely a whisper. I could almost picture him slumped over me, grief stricken and pale.

Althea’s sharp, burden-heavy voice rose up. “We can’t just sit around and wait – what good are our attempts if we are consumed by the ruin.”

“There has to be something which can bring him back to us.”