Page 29

Chapter 28

T he shadows circled Kazrek like wolves around prey, their forms liquid and wrong, bending where bodies shouldn't bend. I stood frozen at the edge of this broken battlefield, unable to move forward or retreat. The air tasted like ash and copper, like the aftermath of something that had burned too hot, too fast.

Kazrek didn't look afraid.

That was the worst part. The stillness in him. The acceptance. He held Maeve tight against his chest with one arm, her small form limp but still glowing faintly from within. The compass in her hand pulsed weakly, its light dimming with each beat.

"Don't," I whispered. My voice didn't carry. Couldn't. But I said it anyway. "Kazrek, please—"

He wasn't looking at the shadows. He was looking at her. And then at me—across the impossible distance between us.

And that was when I knew—I’d gotten it all wrong.

All this time, I thought he was holding back because he knew what I was willing to do. Because he saw the path I was already walking, and had decided not to follow. I thought he would let me go. Let me burn myself out trying to save her. And when it came time—he’d leave. Like everyone else always had.

But he wasn’t leaving. He was preparing to stay. To offer up the only thing he had left— himself —so that Maeve and I wouldn’t have to carry this alone.

He was never trying to escape us. He was trying to protect us.

And I hadn’t seen it. I’d pushed him away, convinced it would end the same way it always did: with me, standing alone in the ashes, watching someone I loved walk into the dark without looking back.

But Kazrek wasn’t walking.

He was standing.

Holding Maeve like she was the only thing anchoring him to the world. Looking at me like I was the only thing worth remembering. And the grief in his eyes wasn’t for himself. It was for me. For the cost he knew I’d have to live with.

Because he didn’t expect to come back.

And I—

I had no way to stop him. No magic strong enough. No spell. Just my hands, empty. My voice, lost. My heart breaking open too late to change the shape of what was already in motion.

This is what sacrifice looks like , I thought. Not a grand speech. Not fire and fury. Just a man kneeling in the dark. Choosing love over survival.

And stepping forward anyway.

The shadows moved closer. Taller now. More defined. Their forms solidified into silhouettes I couldn't quite focus on—people who'd once been real, maybe. Or would be. Their hands stretched toward him, not quite touching. Not yet.

And then I heard a voice. A whisper—soft and close and achingly familiar, though I couldn't place it. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, from the ground and the smoke and the hollow places between heartbeats.

"You're tired," it said. Gentle. Understanding. "So tired of carrying it all."

The battlefield around us rippled, then changed.

Not completely—the broken ground remained, the smoke lingered—but now there were bodies. So many bodies. Orcs and humans and elves, sprawled where they'd fallen. Some face-down in the mud. Others staring upward with empty eyes.

And Kazrek—younger, his hair unbound, his hands covered in blood that wasn't his—kneeling beside them. Trying to save them. Failing, again and again and again.

I watched his hands move from wound to wound. Watched the light flicker and fade beneath his palms as he poured magic into broken bodies that wouldn't hold it. His movements grew more desperate with each failure, each lost life leaving another crack in his armor.

"You remember," the voice murmured. "Every face. Every name. Every time you weren't enough."

The scene shifted again. A child this time—small and still in his arms, burns covering half their body. Kazrek's magic flowing uselessly into wounds already gone cold. His shoulders bowed under the weight of it, under the knowledge that he was too late. Always too late.

Another shift. Another memory. An orc warrior calling his name across a field of fallen. The sound of running feet, of desperate breaths. But distance and time won out, and by the time Kazrek reached him, the warrior's eyes were empty, fixed on a sky he couldn't see anymore.

"So much pain," the voice soothed. "So much weight. You don't have to carry it anymore."

The shadows drew closer. Their touch looked gentle now—like comfort. Like absolution. Like everything he'd been denying himself since the war ended.

"Let go," they whispered. "Rest. We'll take the burden. We'll take the memories. You won't have to feel it anymore."

And then—the final vision formed.

Me and Maeve, in the shop. Sunlight streaming through the windows. She was laughing, whole and bright. I was smiling—really smiling, the kind of smile I'd forgotten how to wear. We looked happy. Safe. At peace.

But Kazrek wasn't there.

The vision showed a future where we survived, where we healed—without him. Where he wouldn't have to watch us suffer. Wouldn't have to fail us like he'd failed the others.

I saw him hesitate. Just for a moment—a tremor in his shoulders, a catch in his breath. The exhaustion written into every line of his body spoke of how much he wanted it. How deeply he ached to put down this weight he'd carried for so long.

My throat burned. Not from the smoke—from recognition.

I knew that kind of ache. The kind that lived in the spine. In the jaw. In the weight behind your eyes when the day was almost over and you still hadn’t put it all down. That hunger to stop. To rest. To let someone else carry it, just for a moment.

I’d felt it every day since Maeve came into my life. Since the war. Since Finn vanished. Since I started pretending that if I worked hard enough, loved fiercely enough, hurt quietly enough, maybe it would be enough to keep everyone safe.

It never was.

But I couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t ask. Because if I stopped—if I let myself lean—I might fall.

And now I saw that same fight in him.

Not fear. Not pride. Just the bone-deep weariness of someone who'd carried too much for too long. Who had been the last one standing too many times.

The mark on my throat—where he'd bitten me that last night—pulsed with warmth. With memory. The way he'd held me after, like I was something precious. Something worth keeping. And now he was going to leave. Just like everyone else.

Except...

He wasn't running.

He wasn't choosing himself over us. He was choosing what he thought would save us—even if it destroyed him. Even if it meant becoming nothing but shadow and forgotten names.

Sylwen's words echoed in my head: "Are you willing to pay what it costs, healer? Are you willing to carry what comes after?"

And I knew, suddenly, horribly, that he was.

I'd spent so long being strong. So long holding everything together. So long telling myself I didn't need anyone—because needing people meant watching them walk away. But Kazrek had never walked away. He'd stayed. Steady. Present. Even when I pushed him back. He'd seen me at my worst—exhausted, broken, afraid—and hadn't flinched. And now...

Now I could see him. Really see him. The cracks in his armor. The weight he carried. The guilt he’d hidden behind that quiet strength. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't untouchable. He was just as scarred as I was—maybe more.

But he was real.

The shadows reached for him again, promising peace, promising forgetting. Their whispers grew louder, more insistent. The vision of me and Maeve safe and happy without him flickered like a beacon in the dark.

I didn't scream. Didn't beg. Didn't try to run to him. I just stayed. Watched. Let him know he wasn't alone. Because that's what I'd needed all along—not someone to fix me, not someone to save me.

Someone to stay.

Kazrek looked down at Maeve one last time. His thumb brushed a curl from her forehead, trembling slightly. She didn’t stir. Her light was nearly gone, but he still held her like she was more than a vessel. Like she was a child. A girl. A life worth every ounce of what he was about to give.

The shadows pressed closer, their promises growing sweeter, more desperate. But his grip on her tightened, and when he spoke, his voice was rough but steady:

"No."

The battlefield trembled.

"I don't run anymore."

The compass in Maeve's hand flared—sudden and bright, like a star catching fire. Golden light spilled through her fingers, through the cracks in the metal, spreading across her skin in delicate patterns. Not marks of binding. Lines of connection.

Kazrek's magic answered. It flowed into her as he pulled the darkness from inside of her.

It wasn’t a wrenching. It wasn’t clean. It was slow—like unspooling a thread embedded too deep. The runes on her body dimmed. The red light receded, strand by strand, burned out by something warmer. Gentler.

His healing magic.

The kind that listened. The kind that soothed. The kind that stayed.

But it cost him.

I saw it in the way his back arched, in the tremble of his hands, in the flash of pain across his face. Every second the darkness stayed in him, it hollowed him out. Searched for somewhere to root. Somewhere to grow.

But he didn’t let it. He didn’t bind it to himself. Instead, he turned—arms flung wide—and drove it into the earth beneath them.

The ground pulsed. Once. Twice. A rhythm like breathing.

The roots that had been wrong before—twisted and hungry—began to shift. To remember what they were meant to be. Living things. Growing things. Ancient and patient and willing to hold what needed holding. The corruption twisted, coiled, tried to resist—but the earth took it. Drew it in. Held it.

A conduit.

Not a container.

Kazrek gave it somewhere to go.

And when it was done—when the final thread of red light vanished into the soil—he crumpled.

Like a tree felled at the root.

Like a man with nothing left to give.