Chapter 607: The Other Side of It

Isole was the first to move.

She always was.

Before anyone else had properly understood that the fighting was over, Mara was sitting on the fallen trunk with Isole kneeling in front of her.

"Arm."

Mara looked down.

There was a cut along her forearm.

She blinked at it.

"I didn’t notice that."

"I know."

Gold and dark moved together through Isole’s hands.

The wound closed.

Then Ashe.

Ribs.

Then Valerica, whose hands would not stop shaking after holding Event Horizon twenty minutes past the point where she should have released it.

Nobody talked.

There was nothing useful to say yet.

Vane sat in the dirt where his knees had put him.

He stared at the fissure.

Forty meters.

Clean-sided.

Too clean.

The strike had opened the earth from one end of the clearing to the other, a wound so straight it seemed less like destruction than someone had simply decided the ground should no longer continue there.

Far below, something still glowed.

Orange fading toward red.

Heat caught in stone.

That had been meant for a person.

Vane kept looking at it.

His father came and stood over him.

Vane noticed the boots first.

Then the torn shoulder of Varian’s coat.

He had not seen that happen.

There was blood along his father’s jaw.

A thin line.

Barely anything.

The kind of wound that said something had come close enough to matter.

The fox.

Half a second.

That was all she’d held him for.

Half a second had been enough to leave blood on a Transcendent.

Varian extended a hand.

Vane looked at it.

For longer than necessary.

Then he took it.

His legs were not going to manage the first attempt on their own.

Varian pulled him upright.

He did not release immediately.

"You couldn’t move."

"No."

"Which way were you trying to go?"

Vane opened his mouth.

Nothing came.

He honestly did not know.

The Domain had held everything.

His muscles had strained inside it until his whole body hurt, every part of him trying to move against something that had made movement irrelevant.

Toward Lancelot?

Toward his father?

Between them?

Had he been trying to protect one?

Stop the other?

He would have given a great deal to know.

"I don’t know."

Varian studied him.

Something in his expression softened by almost nothing.

Then he released Vane’s hand.

"Good."

Vane frowned.

His father’s voice dropped.

"It should be hard."

That was all.

Varian did not leave.

That surprised Vane more than the conversation.

Transcendents did not stay.

They arrived.

They changed whatever needed changing.

Then they were gone before everyone else finished understanding the new shape of the world.

Instead, Varian walked to the southern edge of the fissure.

The place where the strike had begun.

He sat.

Forearms resting over his knees.

Facing north.

Toward the trees.

He did not move again.

Nyx came to stand beside Vane.

She watched him for a while.

"He’s not going home."

"No."

Nyx tilted her head.

"He’s going to sit there until he knows where that road leads."

Vane glanced at her.

"You think that’s what he’s doing?"

"I think everyone else will."

She folded her arms.

"The Blessed World is going to find out something happened here."

"Obviously."

"No."

Nyx looked toward Varian.

"They’re going to find out what he heard."

Vane was quiet.

Nyx continued.

"Not because he tells them."

Her opal eyes stayed on the man sitting at the edge of the impossible cut.

"Because Varian is sitting beside a hole he made and refusing to leave."

She paused.

"That will scare them more than anything he could say."

Vane suspected she was right.

Ashe had cleaned her odachi twice.

She started a third time.

Stopped with the cloth halfway down the blade.

Vane went to stand beside her.

Neither spoke.

The silence felt familiar.

Eventually Ashe said:

"The toy."

Vane looked at her.

"Yeah."

"You saw one."

It wasn’t a question.

"In Ossara."

Ashe waited.

"First house past the ovals."

He had never told anyone.

He had not understood why he’d kept it to himself.

"I picked it up."

His fingers curled slightly.

"Then I put it back exactly where it was."

Ashe looked down at the odachi.

"Why?"

"It felt wrong to move it."

She nodded once.

Like that answer made sense.

Maybe to her, it did.

She finished wiping the blade.

Sheathed it.

"He’s going to hurt people."

Vane looked at the fissure.

"Yes."

"The bread-cart woman."

"Yes."

"The kids in the Lower Ward."

"Yes."

"Everyone you said."

"Yes."

Ashe’s jaw tightened.

"And the woman on the other side of the boundary who owned that toy is already dead."

Vane said nothing.

There was nothing clean enough to answer with.

Ashe looked across the fissure.

At the trees.

At the place where Lancelot had disappeared.

Then at Varian, still sitting on the edge.

She did not say Lancelot was wrong.

Vane noticed that.

She did not say he was right either.

She stepped closer until her shoulder almost touched his.

The same distance she had kept from him in Ryuken’s outer ring for twelve weeks.

Near enough that neither of them had to ask whether the other was still there.

She stayed.

That was all she had.

For now, it was enough.

Anastasia had not moved from the fissure.

She stood where the Domain had released her.

Rapier still in hand.

Its point rested against the dirt.

Her mana was gone.

Completely.

Vane had never once seen that.

Anastasia’s mana was usually a fact of the environment.

Contained.

Controlled.

Present.

Now there was nothing.

Valerica approached first.

"You should sit down, Your Highness."

Anastasia did not look at her.

"He was going to say something to me."

Valerica stayed silent.

"He turned around."

Her fingers tightened on the rapier.

"He looked at me."

A pause.

"He opened his mouth."

Still Valerica said nothing.

Anastasia’s jaw worked.

"And then my—"

She stopped.

For the first time, whatever word she had almost used seemed to frighten her more than anything else that had happened.

She tried again.

"Then a Transcendent came out of the trees and tried to kill him for telling the truth."

Her voice stayed level.

Barely.

"And the thing that saved him..."

She looked toward the northern forest.

"...is something every history I was raised on calls a monster."

Valerica’s expression shifted.

Anastasia did not seem to see it.

"I’ll never know what he was going to say."

That was the part that broke through.

Not the battle.

Not the betrayal.

That.

One unfinished sentence.

The light turned orange.

Then grey.

Isole patched everyone who would let her.

Mara fell asleep against her shoulder with the ledger closed in her lap.

Isole did not move her.

Varian remained at the fissure.

The clearing darkened around him.

It was almost night when Nyx went rigid.

Vane followed her gaze.

The fox was standing on the far side.

Nobody had seen her arrive.

Of course.

Two of the nine presences around her felt wrong.

Thinner.

Still reforming.

She stood with the posture of someone who had spent more than intended and refused to acknowledge the cost.

At the southern edge, Varian lifted his head.

The fox looked at him.

He looked at her.

Neither moved.

Forty meters of ruined earth lay between them.

It seemed sufficient.

Then the fox looked toward Anastasia.

"He asked for you."

Anastasia’s hand closed around the rapier.

Nobody spoke.

"Alone."

The fox’s voice carried easily over the gap.

"Past the boundary."

Anastasia stared at her.

"He won’t cross back."

A beat.

"He decided that too."

The words landed heavily.

The fox’s amber eyes remained on her.

"I won’t make you come."

Anastasia said nothing.

"And your father won’t forgive you."

That did it.

Not fear.

Clarity.

Anastasia looked down into the fissure.

Then toward the trees beyond it.

Toward Lancelot.

Finally, she sheathed the rapier.

Valerica caught her sleeve.

"Your Highness—"

Anastasia stopped.

She looked at the hand.

Then at Valerica.

"I sat in that compound for three weeks."

Her voice was quiet now.

"Asking a man a question he could not answer."

Valerica’s grip loosened.

Anastasia gently pulled the fabric free.

"I am not going to spend the rest of my life asking one nobody can."

She walked toward the narrowest part of the fissure.

Nobody stopped her.

The fox extended one hand.

Behind her, one of the nine presences moved.

Light gathered.

A tail unfolded across the broken earth.

Long.

Pale gold.

Solid enough to hold weight.

A bridge made of something that had never needed to explain itself to the Blessed World’s taxonomy.

Anastasia stepped onto it.

She did not look down.

One step.

Then another.

Behind her stood the Empire.

Her father.

Her name.

Every protection she had been born with.

Every expectation attached to it.

Ahead waited the man she had crossed a continent to find.

Anastasia reached the other side.

The fox lowered her hand.

The bridge vanished.

For one second, Anastasia stood at the edge of the trees.

Vane thought she might turn.

She didn’t.

She walked north.

And disappeared into them.