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He’s not just doubting Aoife now.

He’s doubting the ground beneath him.

The air he breathes.

His own mind.

And in that splintered second, the pit seems to close tighter around him, as if it, too, can smell his weakening hope.

"Enough," Ruairi growls."You’ve made your fucking point."

She tilts her head, considering."Have I?"

Ruairi grits his teeth, every muscle in his body straining against the fear rising faster than the water.He clings to the illusion of control, to the lie that he can outlast this.That he can outlast her.

Aoife stands unmoving at the edge of the pit, framed by stone and shadow, as cold and unyielding as the walls closing in around him.Her eyes, once vibrant with life, are hollow now—bottomless wells that reflect nothing back.

When she speaks, her voice carries not rage or cruelty, but something far worse.

Certainty.

“My lips are not thin with judgment," she says, the words falling like iron into the void."They’re firm with resolution.You’ll break before I do.”

The water surges higher, a black tide swallowing his chest, pressing against his ribs, making every breath a labor.His hands grasp at the stone, desperate, instinctive, leaving streaks of blood where his nails tear against the rock.

"Aoife," he gasps, and this time, her name is an invocation, a prayer to something that no longer listens.His voice is tight, cracking under the weight of inevitability.

But there’s no answer.

She doesn’t move.

She doesn’t blink.

She doesn’t exist in the same way anymore.

She stands there as if she’s already stepped beyond the mortal world and become something else entirely—an executioner carved from grief, forged in betrayal, crowned in silence.

Time fractures.Seconds stretch and fold, each heartbeat a lifetime, each breath a battleground.The walls breathe with him.The water hums with a hunger older than memory.

There’s nothing left but this.

The sister who will not yield.

The brother who will not endure.

And the pit, waiting to devour them both.

If I were a better man, I’d stop this.But I’m not.And I don't.Because I need to know how far she’s willing to go before she can’t look herself in the eye.

Ruairi shifts, panic stealing the last of his strength.

The water keeps climbing until his heels lift off the floor.For a heartbeat, he floats suspended between the surface and the abyss.

Then, the current catches him.It shoves him backward, spinning him helplessly toward the grate, toward the place where the pit swallows the broken and the drowned.

He flails instinctively, reaching for the stone walls, but the slick surface slides away from his fingers.There’s no purchase here.No mercy.

"Aoife," he calls out, voice splintering under the weight of terror.