Valen pressed his palms against Luken's wound. The blood came through his fingers in hot pulses, each one weaker than the last. Luken's face was grey now, his lips bloodless, his breath so shallow Valen had to lean close to feel it. The alley around them was silent except for the distant screaming and the wet sound of air moving through a hole it shouldn't.
"Don't you fucking die on me," Valen whispered. He'd been saying it for minutes now. Hours. He didn't know anymore. "Don't you dare."
Luken didn't answer. His eyes were closed. His hands had fallen away from the wound, too weak to hold themselves in place, and Valen had replaced them with his own, pressing down with everything he had left. It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.
He looked up. The alley was empty. The two boys were long gone — fled into the dark, probably still running. The girl's body lay in two pieces near the wall, her blood mixing with Luken's in the channels between the cobblestones. The man who had been the doorway was a heap of cooling meat further up the street. No one else. No help. No healer.
"Help!" he shouted again. His voice cracked on the word. "Someone help! Please!"
Nothing. The city kept screaming somewhere in the distance, but no one came. No one was coming. Everyone who could run had run. Everyone who could hide was hiding. The only people left in this quarter were the dead and the dying, and Valen couldn't tell which category they were in anymore.
He looked down at Luken's face. At the blood crusting at the corner of his mouth. At the stillness of his chest between shallow breaths. At the horn — the horn Luken had hidden for years, the horn he'd buried under illusions and shame, now visible because his magic had failed and he was too far gone to bring it back.
Valen had never seen it before. Not fully. Not in the light.
It was beautiful. Curved and dark, ridged like something that had grown with purpose rather than accident. It didn't make Luken look like a monster. It made him look like what he was — something that had survived being torn apart and put back together wrong, and kept living anyway.
"Hey," Valen said. His voice was raw. "Your horn's showing. You're going to be pissed when you wake up."
Luken didn't wake up.
Valen shifted his weight, trying to press harder without moving his hands. His leg screamed where the needle had buried itself. His shoulder was on fire. Blood was still running from a dozen small wounds across his ribs and arms, mixing with Luken's on the cobblestones. None of it mattered. None of it was enough.
He threw his head back and screamed.
"HELP! SOMEONE! ANYONE!"
His voice echoed off the stone walls and died. The city screamed back at him from a dozen directions, and none of it was help. None of it was coming.
He looked down again. Luken's chest was barely moving.
"Please," Valen whispered. He didn't know who he was talking to. The gods, maybe. The Three. Anyone who might be listening. "Please. Not him. Not like this."
Something shifted in the air above him.
Not a sound. Not a shadow. A pressure — absolute, like the moment before a storm breaks. Valen felt it in his chest before he understood what it was. The hairs on his arms stood up. The blood in the gutters rippled once.
He looked up.
Thal filled the rooftop above the alley like a god descending.
He stood at the edge of the tiles, his silhouette blocking out the stars, his golden eyes burning in the dark. The new clothes Merek and Joren had made for him — the dark trousers, the sleeveless hooded chest piece, the steel-banded boots — were already streaked with blood and ash. His hands were at his sides. His chest was still. He looked down at the alley, at the bodies, at Valen kneeling in a pool of Luken's blood.
Then he stepped off the roof.
He fell three stories and landed in silence. The cobblestones didn't crack. The blood didn't splash. He simply arrived, his knees bending slightly to absorb the impact, and then he was walking toward them with long, deliberate strides. His shadow fell over Valen first. Then over Luken.
He stopped.
He looked at Luken's face. At the horn. At the hole in his stomach. At the blood pooling beneath him, still spreading, still warm. He looked for a long moment.
"Thal," Valen said. His voice broke on the name. "He's dying. I can't — I can't stop the bleeding. I tried. I've been trying. I—"
"How long." Thal's voice was flat. Controlled.
"I don't know. Minutes. Ten. Fifteen. I don't—"
Thal knelt. He didn't push Valen aside. He simply placed his hands over Valen's, pressing down with a weight that was somehow both immense and perfectly controlled. Valen felt the pressure increase — not crushing, but absolute. The blood slowed.
"Alinda," Valen said. "We need to find Alinda. Her potion — the one she used on you after the Harbinger. It can heal him. It can—"
"No."
The word was absolute. Valen stared at him.
"The potion is her blood," Thal said. He didn't look up from the wound. "What she is. What runs through her. I don't know what it would do to him. His Node is already corrupted — Kruul essence fused with human. Adding her blood to that could save him. It could also burn him out from the inside." He pressed harder, and Luken's body jerked. "I won't risk it."
Valen's mind raced. "Then we find a healer. The Church. Rikia — she was at the cathedral. She'll be there now, they'll have set up triage, they'll—"
"Yes." Thal looked at Valen's leg. At the blood soaking through his boot. At the needles still embedded in his flesh. "You need healing too."
"I can walk."
"You can't." Thal said it flatly, without judgment. "And even if Alinda were here, you couldn't take the potion. You're not like her. You're not like me. It would kill you."
Valen looked down at his leg. At the blood running into his boot. At the needles still shifting under his skin. He hadn't thought about it. He'd been too focused on Luken to think about himself.
Thal bent and lifted Luken with both hands, one arm beneath the mage's shoulders, the other under his knees. Luken's head lolled against Thal's chest, his face grey, his breath so shallow it barely fogged the air. The wound in his stomach leaked through Thal's fingers despite the pressure. The horn — dark, ridged, unmistakable — caught the faint lamplight from somewhere down the street.
"Get on," Thal said.
Valen blinked. "What?"
"Your leg won't hold. Climb onto my back."
"I'm not a child."
"You're bleeding into your boot and there's a needle in your calf. Get on."
Valen gripped Thal's shoulders and hauled himself up. His leg screamed. His ribs screamed. He locked his arms around Thal's neck, his legs hooked over the Nephilim's hips, and clung there.
Thal shifted his grip on Luken, one hand pressing flat against the wound in his stomach, the other braced against the exit wound in his lower back. The mage's body was limp between his palms, held together by nothing but pressure and the slow, stubborn refusal of his heart to stop beating.
Then Thal ran.
The city blurred. His strides were enormous — ten feet, fifteen feet, each footfall cracking the cobblestones beneath him. Valen clung to his back, his fingers digging into the fabric of Thal's tunic, his leg screaming with every impact. The wind tore at his face. The needles shifted under his skin like live coals. He didn't make a sound.
A cart overturned in the street ahead — refugees, fleeing, their faces pale with terror. Thal didn't slow. He planted one foot on the cart's wheel and launched himself upward, clearing the crowd, clearing the street, landing on a rooftop two stories up. The tiles cracked beneath his boots. He was already moving, already running, already leaping to the next roof.
"The man in white," Valen shouted over the wind. "He knew things. About Luken's Node. About my family. Things I've never told anyone. He said he was testing us."
Thal didn't answer. He jumped a gap between buildings, landed hard, kept running.
"He had red eyes," Valen said. "White sclera. Bronze skin. Silver hair. Like Nyra."
Thal's stride hitched. Just for a heartbeat — a stutter in the rhythm of his running that Valen felt through his whole body. Then he was moving again, faster than before.
"Red eyes," Thal said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes. The same shade. The same shape. Everything. I've been staring at Nyra's eyes for eight years and I'm telling you — they were the same." A pause hit him. "Thal. What does that mean?"
"I don't know." His voice was tight.
The cathedral spires rose ahead through the smoke. Thal ran toward them, carrying a dying mage in his hands and a bleeding swordsman on his back, the city screaming beneath them both.