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“Ragnar, please!” I beg. “Trust me. Please.”

Nine.

“I trusted you at the river, my brother. You are not always right. That is the cost of mortality.” The voice comes from above. Somewhere near the ceiling of the mine this time. He’s not wrong. He put his trust in me during our siege of Agea, and I led them into a trap. Luck preserved me.

Laughing bitterly, Mustang coils her muscles to strike. “See,

Darrow? You start this war, it’ll be beasts like him who finish it and take their revenge.”

Seven.

“This isn’t about revenge!” I try to calm myself. “It’s about justice. It’s about love against an empire built on greed, on cruelty. Remember the Institute. We freed those we were meant to take as slaves. We put our trust in them. That is the lesson. Trust.”

Five.

“Darrow,” she pleads. “How can you be so foolish?”

Her mind is made up.

Four.

“It never foolish to hope.” I strip off my razor, my datapad, and toss them to the ground as I go to my knees. “But if you can’t change, no one can. So shoot me dead and let the worlds be as they may.”

Three.

“You think too much of me, Darrow.”

“Two.”

“Let’s skip the foreplay, Ragnar.” Mustang twirls her razor. Its horrible hum fills the tunnel. “Come at me, dog, and show Darrow what your kind lives for.”

The silence stretches long.

“One,” Mustang growls, stomping out her own lamp. No light, no color but darkness. The silence is deeper than the tunnel. It meanders through the heart of Mars, stretching forever, echoing to places only the lost have ever been.

Ragnar shatters it with his voice.

“I live for my sisters.”

There is no scorcher flash. No scream of the razor. No movement. Just the echoing of the words down and down with the fragments of silence.

“I live for my brother.”

A light blossoms from Ragnar. He steps forward like some wayward pilgrim, white light glowing along the knuckles of his armor. I see no weapons. Mustang tenses, confused.

“I am and always have been son to the people of the Valkyrie Spires. Born free to Alia Snowsparrow on the wild pole of Mars, north of the Dragon’s Spine, south of the Fallen City.”

He walks past Mustang, arms at his side.

“Forty-four scars have I earned for Gold since the slavers of the Weeping Sun came from the stars to take my family to the Chain Islands. Seven scars from others of my kind when they placed me in the nagoge, where I was trained.”

He kneels at my side.

“One from my mother. Five from the talons of the monster who guards Witch Pass. Six from the woman who taught me to love. One from my first master. Fifteen from men and beasts I fought in an arena for the pleasure of the Allmother and her guests. Nine I earned for the Reaper.”

The ground sighs under the weight of his knees.

“For Gold, I have buried three sisters. One brother. Two fathers.” He pauses in sadness. “But … for them I have never earned a scar.”