The moment Caelum’s strike landed, the Vale appeared to breathe. Like blood was the only thing that could satiate it.

The fire stilled, and the walls quieted like it had finally been fed, but it wasn’t satisfied. It was waiting for more.

I turned toward the opposite end of the arena, where Kael and Damien were. They hadn’t moved since the walls sealed them in.

Damien’s jaw was clenched hard, and his breath came fast, but his posture stayed low and ready. He still hadn’t drawn his sword, and I wondered if it was because he already knew the outcome. It didn’t matter whether he used a weapon or shifted; there was no way he could win against Kael.

Instead, slowly, painfully, he shifted. His bones cracked first, but his shift wasn’t fluid like a born wolf. I’d seen Damien shift a hundred times, but this was different.

There was grief in it, and I knew immediately that he knew he was going to lose.

His body expanded as fur rippled over skin, claws extending as his hands vanished into paws. His spine arched, teeth lengthened. And then he stood—massive, dark-furred, a low snarl vibrating from his chest.

Kael hadn’t moved at all. He stood exactly where he’d been when Damien changed. Still in his skin, with his sword still lowered.

He didn’t need to shift; he never had. As Ultima Alpha of the dominion, he was the fight, and we all knew—even Damien—that the moment Kael shifted, it would be over.

Damien lunged first, and I screamed, but no sound came out. The throne swallowed it whole. I thrashed against its grip, nails digging into the stone arms, wrists straining until the cuffs cut deep into my skin. Blood slipped down my nose, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t care.

Let it bleed. Let me break. Just not him. Anyone else. Anyone but Damien.

Kael moved to meet him, blade raised in a clean arc. Steel rang out as it caught Damien’s strike and parried. The edge sliced through fur, splitting flesh, and Damien howled, fury rippling through the arena.

He struck again. Then again. But Kael blocked every blow, and not a single swing was aimed to maim. He was holding back, and gods, it was killing me.

Every time Kael’s sword connected with Damien’s shifting body, something inside me pulled tighter. A thread drawn so close to snapping it felt like breathing on glass. My scream crawled to the edge of my throat, desperately, but the throne stifled it.

I loved them both, and the awful truth was that I was more afraid to lose Kael.

It wasn’t because he was stronger or my first kiss or the Ultima Alpha. It was because some part of me had already wrapped itself around him like he was mine long before the bond ever flared. His restraint, his choice not to hurt Damien even now, shattered me more than Damien’s rage.

I didn’t want to watch either of them fall. But it was Kael’s blood I couldn’t bear to see spill.

I turned to the goddess. Tears slid down my face as I looked up at her unmoving form seated in the crowd above the arena. My blood smeared the arm of the throne, my skin raw, wrists bruised.

“This is cruel,” I tried to say, though no sound left my mouth. “If this is what uniting them costs, then I don’t want it.”

The throne pulsed like it heard me, but it didn’t care.

And then my eyes moved without my choosing. Shifted away from Kael. Away from Damien. Toward the other side of the arena, to Fabian, it was like the goddess herself was redirecting my grief and forcing me to see what came next.

I turned my head too fast and gasped when I saw him hunched over in the corner of the arena, still breathing, but barely. His limbs twitched as his magic flickered at his fingertips like a dying flame. His twin stood above him.

There was no cruelty in Caelum’s expression, but no sorrow either. Only the stillness of someone who had accepted this long before it began. And I hated that. Hated how ready he looked. Had he always known it would come to this? Had he braced for it, trained for it, and simply waited?

Or was it just who he was? Detached and faithful only to the vision.

A breath hitched in my throat—but my eyes flicked back across the arena.

And Damien was still fighting and losing and still too proud to fall on his knees. Kael hadn’t changed pace. He blocked and deflected without aggression or desire. Like Damien’s struggle was heavier than his blade. I could feel the war inside him, dragging this out longer than it needed to be.

And I understood that. It gave me the smallest measure of peace knowing Kael hadn’t rushed to kill him. That even now, he was still holding back.

But then he looked at Damien just once, like a farewell, before he moved in. One clean, fluid arc that was so fast I almost didn’t see it. One heartbeat, he stood in front of Damien; then he was past him as his sword lowered.

And Damien fell.

His body hit the ground with a thud that split something open inside me. The sound buried itself in my chest; I would never forget it.

I buckled against the throne, throat raw with silent screams, but it still didn’t loosen. My arms stayed locked in place, wrists seared and trembling. My legs wouldn’t move. My lips, cracked and bloodless, couldn’t form his name.

But everything inside me broke. I didn’t know when the tears began. They came without heat or sobs. They spilled in silence.

Damien. My almost. My first breath of peace in a world that had never made room for softness. The one who guarded every fractured part of me with steady hands and quiet loyalty. The man who had loved me when I didn’t know how to be loved and never asked for more until it was already too late.

I had thought there would be time to fix things and prove to him how truly sorry I was about how things turned out. But time was the first thing the Vale demanded.

And now he lay still. Shifted even in death. Proud to the end.

Kael hadn’t moved. His sword was down, but his spine held rigid. His gaze wasn’t on the body. It was on the wall ahead, as if he couldn’t yet bring himself to look at what he’d done.

He didn’t speak or fall. He endured. The same way he always had.

I wanted to reach for Damien, but I couldn’t. So I sat there trapped and displayed while a piece of me bled out on the floor of an ancient arena that dared to call it justice.

I don’t remember deciding to move. My hand just twitched. A small tremor at first. Then again, more desperate. I strained against the stone grip at my wrist, pushing until my muscles screamed. It still didn’t work.

The throne pulsed, and a surge crawled through my veins, dragging memories with it. Damien’s laugh, the way he used to step between me and danger like it was second nature. The quiet night he finally told me he loved me and the way I hadn’t known what to do with that kind of truth.

All of it was ripped away, and all I could do was reach.

Fingers shaking, teeth clenched, ribs splitting from the inside out—I reached for Kael.

He stood there like a statue carved from loyalty and loss, Damien’s blood still steaming in the space between them. And even from across the arena, he felt it.

His head snapped up, and our eyes locked. The throne responded first. A sound rose from its base. The glyphs carved along the armrests lit in gold, casting shadows that flickered like firelight across my skin. The Vale trembled from knowing.

Kael stepped forward. Only one step, but it was enough.

A single golden thread uncoiled from under the throne, curling through the air like a live nerve. It caught the edge of his boot and held.

My gaze dragged itself to the other side of the arena, where Fabian was on one knee, barely upright. Blood smeared the side of his face, dripping from the corner of his mouth. His shoulders sagged with the effort it took just to stay kneeling. One hand braced the ground. The other still clutched a ceremonial dagger—slender, silver, and useless.

Caelum still stood above him like he’d barely given him any chance to rise. He was silent, and I got the sense that his grief wore the shape of stillness.

And that made it worse.

Each drop of blood that fell from Fabian tugged at the thread binding us. Slower than Damien’s unravelling, but no less final.

Fabian looked up at his twin through lashes stuck together with red. Then spat onto the stone at Caelum’s feet.

“I always hated that look on you,” he rasped. “The quiet god routine.”

“You always needed fire,” Caelum said, voice like ash. “I was made from wind.”

“And yet here we are,” Fabian muttered.

He forced himself up, legs trembling, but he stood.

“Do it then,” he said. “But look me in the eyes when you do.”

Caelum stepped forward until they were almost chest to chest. He didn’t speak right away. When he did, it wasn’t power he showed; it was love.

“I’ll carry this,” he said.

Fabian gave him a crooked smile, teeth bloodied. “You always do.”

The first strike was low, slicing beneath the ribs, but it wasn’t fatal. Fabian staggered, breath catching, but didn’t fall.

“Coward,” he wheezed.

Caelum shook his head. “Mercy.”

The second strike came fast and final, cutting clean through the shoulder, angled toward the heart. Fabian collapsed without sound.

And just like that, I felt our bond flicker” and fade. Like watching a flame shrink to nothing.

I shut my eyes. I tried. But the throne wouldn’t let me look away.

Caelum stood over the body of his brother and didn’t move, and I hated myself for it—for dragging them into this.

None of them asked for this fate. If I hadn’t been born to this role, or they hadn’t been bound to me” Damien wouldn’t be gone, and Caelum wouldn’t be standing in his brother’s blood.

I had thought this grief would be mine to bear alone. That I’d get used to being the centre of prophecy, of sacrifice, of ruin.

But this—this was agony, and I felt it in the marrow of my bones that it was only the beginning.