Sissy sat on a flat, frost-covered rock, her large wings tucked tightly to her back to keep the wind off the little ones. She had found a stash of dried mountain jerky and was carefully tearing it into soft, bite-sized strips.
"Here you go, Lukass. Chew it slowly, okay? It's a bit tough," Sissy said, pressing a piece of meat into the boy's small, trembling hand.
Lukass looked up at her with wide, watery eyes.
"Is the loud noise going to come back, Sissy? I'm scared. I heard the mountain screaming earlier."
"It's just the wind, sweetie," Sissy lied, her voice honey-sweet despite the knot in her stomach.
She turned to another boy who was shivering nearby.
"Siegfried, come closer to the huddle. Don't be shy. If you don't eat, you won't have the strength to walk when it's time to go home."
Siegfried took the meat, his teeth chattering.
"I want my mom. Is Lemony coming back with her?"
Sissy felt a pang in her chest. She forced a smile, ruffling his messy hair.
"Lemony is very busy being a hero right now. You know how he is. He's probably grumpy because he hasn't had his nap."
A few miles away, tucked into the shadows of a ridge, Ve and Koro stood watch. The ruins of Fort Rib were nothing more than a dark smudge on the horizon, just as the gunslinger had ordered.
Koro wasn't looking at the fort, though. He was staring at his own hands. They were clean now—the snow had washed away the red—but he could still feel the phantom weight of the blade.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Old Horg's face. His stomach twisted, and he felt a sudden, sharp urge to gag. He rubbed his palms against his trousers until the skin turned raw, trying to erase a memory that was burned into his soul.
"Koro," Ve said softly.
"The air is heavy around you. You're drowning in thoughts."
Koro jerked his head up, his face a mask of forced calm.
"I'm fine, Ve. Just... the cold, that's all."
Ve placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Killing is a poison that stays in the blood. I know that look. But you did what you had to for everyone. Don't let the ghost of a bad man pull you down."
Koro nodded, but his eyes remained hollow.
"Yeah. I know. Let's just focus on surviving."
Suddenly, a thunderous roar echoed from the direction of the fort. A massive, glowing shape descended from the clouds, and even from miles away, they felt the ground shudder.
"The fort! Something just leveled the entire place!" Sissy shrieked, jumping to her feet.
"Sissy, wait! You can't fly there!" Ve shouted, grabbing her arm as she prepared to take off.
"Everyone is in there! I have to—"
Before she could finish, a blue spark tore through the air behind them. A portal spiraled open, and the gunslinger stumbled out. He looked horrific, covered in soot and blood, clutching an unconscious Pippin to his chest.
"Gunslinger!"
Sissy ran to him, her face pale.
"What happened? Where is Lemony? Where is Fiji?"
The gunslinger laid Pippin down gently on a bed of coats.
"A nightmare showed up. A Rank 4 General is at the fort... he's probably fighting Malphas right now, or killing everything that moves. Lemony and Fiji, however, were left behind in the blast."
Sissy's knees buckled.
"Left behind? We have to go back!"
The gunslinger ignored her, his eyes locking onto Ve. His gaze was sharp, like a knife.
"Ve. Tell me. What species are you, exactly?"
Ve flinched, his hand instinctively flying to his chest, clutching at the fabric over his heart.
"I... I am a Skoll-Wolf."
The gunslinger's breath hitched.
"I see. So, he's finding you. Fenris is here for a Skoll-Wolf."
Ve's face went completely bloodless. He looked like he was about to faint.
"No... no, no. He can't... I can't let him catch me..."
The others looked between them, confused and terrified.
"You know him?" the gunslinger pressed.
"How do you know Fenris?"
"I know a lot of things. I know about you, Zhan. We talked once... a long time ago," Ve whispered, trembling.
The gunslinger froze. His hand went to the grip of his revolver.
"You know my name? Was a wolf like you part of the army too?"
Ve looked down at the snow, his voice barely audible.
"Blue... Blue Shores."
The gunslinger's eyes widened until they looked like they would burst.
"No... no way. You're from..."
He stopped himself, his jaw tightening as he forced himself to act calm.
"We aren't talking about this now. If that wolf finds us here, we're all dead. Every single one of us."
"Does anyone have a potion?" the gunslinger barked, turning to Sissy.
"Ours was shattered during the fight," Sissy said.
The gunslinger turned to Koro.
"You. You still have that vial Fiji gave you?"
Koro snapped out of his daze and fumbled with his pouch, pulling out a small glass bottle filled with glowing green fluid.
"Here. I didn't use it."
The gunslinger grabbed it, knelt by Pippin, and forced the boy's mouth open. He poured the liquid in, watching as the scholar's breathing became more rhythmic.
"We need to stay quiet," the gunslinger whispered, looking back at the smoking ruins of the fort.
"If Fenris finishes with Malphas and starts sniffing around... we won't even have time to scream."
Sissy stared at the gunslinger, her wings trembling so hard they flapped against the snow.
"You're just going to leave them? Fiji is back there shattered, and Lemony is... we don't even know where Lemony is!"
The gunslinger didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on the horizon, his hand resting on the unconscious Pippin's chest.
"If we go back, Fenris smells the Skoll-Wolf. If he catches Ve, this whole mountain becomes a tomb. We have to sacrifice the few to save the many. We stay here and we pray they're as hard to kill as I think they are."
Sissy looked at the ten children. She saw Lukass clutching his meat, and the other children shivering under a pile of coats. She looked at Ve, who was pale and clutching his heart. Then, she looked back at the smoke rising from Fort Rib.
"I don't care about the many," Sissy whispered.
Before the gunslinger could grab her, she pushed off the ground. Her wings snapped open with a violent crack, and she surged into the sky, heading straight for the ruins.
Lemony... you have to survive. Please, just don't die yet.
----------------------------------------------------------
Inside the damp darkness of the sanctum, Lemony was a mess of fur and broken spirit.
Every time he dragged his body forward, a fresh trail of red smeared across the fleshy floor.
I have to kill him. I'll do everything. Even if I have to bite through these red chains, I'll kill this fake, pathetic god and win the offer.
"ARGHHHHH!"
He let out a scream that tore at his throat. In the corner of his vision, that familiar black void flickered, a silent spectator to his agony. Lemony didn't look at it. He only looked at the massive, throbbing heart in the center of the room.
I'm going to reach it. I'm going to stop that sound.
He tried to push himself up using his legs and his chin. His muscles spasmed, and he crashed back down into the wet darkness.
"ARGHH!"
He tried again. His face slammed into the floor. He tried a third time, and his vision went white with a sudden spike of pain from his shattered shoulders.
I won't stop. I won't! I—
"You're not here to kill me to survive. You're here to prove something to yourself, right?"
The voice didn't come from the air. It felt like it hummed directly out of the red chains and the pulsing walls. It was Malphas.
Outside, Lemony could feel the dull, heavy thuds of Fenris's blows.
Each strike made the sanctum tremble, sending ripples through the pool of gastric acid he had escaped. The god was losing the fight on the outside, but his voice remained calm and ancient inside the heart.
"Why do you struggle so much, little Manul?"
"You tell yourself this is about a contract. You tell yourself it is about the children. But look at you. You are crawling through the guts of a deity with two broken arms."
Lemony coughed, a spray of blood hitting a red chain.
"You don't want to live just to breathe," the voice continued.
"You want to live because you've spent your entire life feeling like a mistake. You think that if you kill a god, you'll finally have a shape. You think the emptiness inside you will fill up with the gold of a higher rank."
Lemony gritted his teeth, his yellow eyes narrowing at the heart.
"But a rank is just a label given by a system that doesn't care about you. You're trying to prove you aren't useless. But tell me... if you kill me and remain a broken, emotionless cat in a cold world, what have you actually won? You are seeking a purpose in death because you are too afraid to find one in life."
Shut up, Lemony thought, his chin digging into the flesh as he lunged forward another inch.
"Just shut up and let me kill you!"
"You think you can kill me with that mindset?" Malphas's voice was a low, vibrating hum that made the red chains rattle against the ceiling.
"Do you truly believe a heart of stone can stop a god? The Great Bestiary is not a tool for the hollow, little Manul. If you strike at me out of a cold, mechanical need to prove your worth, the system itself will turn its teeth on you. You will not kill me. You will simply rot here, adding your name to the ledger of the forgotten."
Lemony's chin scraped against the fleshy floor as he forced himself another inch forward.
"Look at the walls. Look at the shadows of those who came before you."
Lemony turned his head slightly. Along the edges of the sanctum, half-buried in the pulsing tissue, were the remains of things that weren't creatures. Bleached white skeletons of creatures with wings, with scales, with too many limbs.
"Tens of thousands have crawled into this chamber over a hundred thousand years," the god said, the sound echoing from the massive, beating heart.
"Kings, monsters, scholars with swords of light. Every single one of them arrived with a purpose. Every single one of them failed. What makes a broken, nameless cat think he is the exception?"
Lemony let out a ragged, desperate shout.
"I am d—!!!!"
He wanted to scream back that he was different, but his throat was raw from the mountain air. Instead, the silence of the sanctum allowed a memory to bubble up from the dark parts of his mind.
He remembered Sissy's face in the moonlight, hours ago.
You deserve it. You deserve to cry and let go of all that poison you've been drinking. You deserve to feel something other than pain for once.
Forget it, Lemony! Just kill Malphas!
Lemony's eyes stung. He tried to blink it away, but the memory wouldn't leave.
Who are you to say you don't deserve an emotion? You're just the same as me, remember? You told me we were the same. We resonated with each other. If I deserve to hope, you deserve to hurt.
He stared at the pulsing crimson of the heart. For so long, he had treated his own heart like a machine... something that pumped blood and kept him moving, but didn't actually feel.
He thought emotions were a prize he had to earn by being strong enough, or high-ranked enough.
My emotions are not a privilege for the worthy, he thought, a single tear carving a path through the soot on his cheek.
They are automatic.
They are natural.
They are... they are human.
He remembered the anger he felt at Lancelot. The desperation to save the children.
It wasn't about the contract.
It wasn't about the Rank.
He realized then that his existence didn't have to be a mountain he climbed. It wasn't a structure built by his achievements or a tower made of the enemies he had killed.
His existence was simply the fact that he was there, breathing, hurting, and wanting.
A man isn't defined by the weight of the sword he carries, but by the weight of the soul that decides to pick it up.
He wasn't a Manul who succeeded; he was Lemony. And that was enough.
The heart's pulsing slowed, becoming a gentle thrum.
"You're tired," Malphas said.
"I know it. Believe me, I am tired as well. But you have to remember why you crawled into the dark. You have to stand up, Lemony."
Lemony took a deep, shuddering breath. He forced his legs under him. His broken arms hung useless, but his spirit finally had a spine.
----------------------------------------------------------
Outside, high above the ruins of Fort Rib, Sissy pushed her wings to the breaking point. The dark purple of the sky was beginning to fray at the edges, replaced by a thin, sharp line of gold on the horizon.
The sun was climbing. It was dawn.
----------------------------------------------------------
"Raise your head. Look in front of you."
Lemony looked up. The walls of the god's body were translucent here, like thin parchment. Through the layers of shadow and muscle, he saw it.
A spark of brilliant, blinding light pierced through the mountain mist. The sun was breaking over the world, painting the inside of the god's heart in shades of gold and fire.
The sun wasn't just rising.
It was screaming across the horizon, a brilliant, piercing white that felt like it was bleaching the very shadows out of Malphas's ribs. Lemony squinted, his yellow eyes watering from the sudden intensity.
Why does it look so bright? It doesn't make any sense...
"The sun has not changed its magnitude, little Manul. You are simply seeing it for the first time without the veil. Today is the highlight of your existence. You are finally awake."
Lemony didn't argue. The beast was right. Since the sun went down the previous night, he had bled, he had broken, and he had hollowed himself out only to find something solid at the bottom. He wasn't the same cat that had entered the mountain.
"So, free me, Manul..." the god whispered.
"ARGHH!"
Lemony let out a guttural sound, a mix of a roar and a sob. He planted his feet into the wet floor of the sanctum. His broken arms hung like dead weights, but he didn't need them. Not for this.
I will rise like that sun, Lemony thought, his teeth bared. I will rise!
He forced his trembling legs to straighten. Every fiber of his muscle felt like it was being shredded, but he kept going.
"Rise, Lemony," Malphas chanted. "Rise like the dawn. Break the shadow. Free me!"
"ARGHHH!"
Lemony finally stood tall. He was swaying, his vision swimming with spots of gold and black, but he was standing on his own two feet in the center of a god.
"Persevere! The chains, Manul! Free me!"
Lemony lunged forward. He didn't have hands to pull the calcified blood-chains, so he used the only weapons he had left. He sunk his teeth into the thick, red links.
CRUNCH.
The iron-tasting residue of the chains filled his mouth. He thrashed his head back and forth, ignoring the way his jaw felt like it was going to unhinge.
Persevere... Lemony!
"Free me!"
"ARGHHH!"
Lemony bit down harder, his gums bleeding, his neck muscles bulging. One by one, the red chains began to hairline fracture and snap.
Persevere! Persevere! Persevere!
"Free me, Manul!"
"ARGHH!"
"FREE ME!"
I HAVE TO PERSEVERE!
With a final, violent jerk of his head, the last of the red tethers shattered.
The massive heart in the center of the room gave one final, thunderous thump and then went still. Lemony leaned in, his face inches from the pulsing crimson surface.
He opened his mouth and bit deep into the heart's center, injecting every drop of his venom into the core of the god's life force.
As the venom took hold, a wave of pure, crystalline relief washed over him.
It wasn't the rush of a kill.
It was the quiet satisfaction of a job finished.
Malphas's voice began to fade into a gentle echo.
"I will give you everything I have left," the god whispered, the walls of the sanctum beginning to glow with a blinding, pearlescent light.
"I give you my biological composition. Let my essence knit your broken limbs. Take my Divine Strand as your own. You have earned your place in the sun."
Everything inside the chamber began to dissolve into shimmering dust.
Lemony felt a strange, cold heat crawling up his shattered shoulders. The fur turned a stony grey, and thin, web-like cracks appeared along his skin, glowing with the same light as the heart. His bones snapped and fused, regrowing with a density that felt like mountain granite.
"Thank you, Manul..."
The voice vanished.
The heart crumbled into light.
Lemony stood in the center of the dissolving god, his new arms strong and heavy at his sides. The black void figure appeared next to him, flickering with a strange, frantic energy.
"You did it! You killed Malphas! You won the offer! So yo—"
Lemony didn't even look at it. He watched the last of the red chains turn to ash in the morning light.
"I didn't kill him. I freed him."