The pulse drags me forward through the ice plains like a hook lodged behind my ribs.
Shakore's soul keeps whispering inside my skull, not in words but in impulses, in twitching arcs of instinct that keep jerking my attention toward the horizon.
Sage follows beside me, boots crunching through frost that's already trying to reform around our footprints.
She finally breaks the silence. "So you're not going to explain it further? You're really doing all of this because Serkauis killed your father?"
I stop walking.
The world keeps moving anyway.
Thunder crawls under my skin.
"My father," I mutter, "wasn't someone I ever knew. Not as a person. Not as a memory. Not even as a lie someone told me to feel better."
I turn toward her. She looks worried. I don't blame her.
"All I knew was a message Glae froze before she vanished. One sentence."
My jaw tightens.
"That Serkauis ate him."
Sage goes quiet.
I keep walking.
"You asked why I'm doing this," I say. "You asked why I'm tearing down Remnants one by one. The truth's simple. These things carved up Serkauis like a feast. They took pieces of him. Kept them. Hid them."
A streak of lightning cracks through my right arm.
Shakore's afterglow.
"And when I consumed Shakore's soul, I didn't just get power. I got… everything."
Sage looks at me sharply. "Everything like what?"
"Memories. Intent. Fear. Desire. His place in the order. His place in the chaos. The map of the Remnants. Their histories. Their mistakes."
I tap my temple.
"A hundred million years of running. A hundred million years of regret. A hundred million years of knowing you're dying and you can't outrun it."
Sage flinches. "V…"
"It didn't break me," I say quietly.
"It made me focused."
She finally understands what I mean. The shock in her eyes says enough.
"You think you're supposed to do this," she murmurs. "You think you're meant for it."
"Not meant. Required."
Lightning crawls up my neck, flaring in my eyes for a heartbeat.
"I'm not a survivor anymore. I'm a collector. I'm a judge. I'm cleaning up the mess of gods who got too comfortable."
The purple glow in the distance pulses again.
Stronger.
Closer.
I smile, though there's no humor in it.
"That piece out there," I say, pointing. "The one Shakore kept. It's calling for its brothers. The body wants itself back."
"And you're going to take it," Sage says softly.
"No," I correct her. "I'm going to claim it."
The ground shakes beneath us.
A tremor of thunder.
A ripple of magnetism.
A faint sequence of glowing symbols written into the air like ancient runes.
Sage gasps. "V… that's a Remnant signature."
"I know."
"It means one of them is close."
"I know."
She grabs my wrist nervously. "We're not ready."
"We're never ready," I answer. "That's the point."
I feel the fragment ahead.
A mile maybe.
Buried under ruined stone and melted ice.
Shakore's lightning wants it.
Serkauis's memory wants it.
And I want both.
I tighten my grip on the bow case.
"Come on," I say, stepping toward the glowing horizon.
"We've got another god to unmake."
The purple pulse fades into the distant storm, leaving a faint electric taste in the air.
I keep walking. Sage keeps pace, even though her breathing is uneven, even though her aura keeps spiking with nervous magnetism.
After a few minutes, the question slips out of me.
"Why are you still here?"
She blinks. "What?"
I stop again, turning toward her.
The wind drags snow between us like drifting ash.
"You heard what I said," I continue. "You saw what I did to Shakore. You see what I'm becoming. So why are you still walking next to me instead of running the other way?"
Sage folds her arms.
Her knuckles are white.
I wait.
She hesitates long enough that the silence starts to feel like a verdict.
"I don't know," she says finally. "Maybe because… someone has to keep you human."
I laugh.
It's short.
It's dry.
It sounds wrong even to me.
"Human?" I say. "You saw me rip out a Remnant's soul and eat it like it was instinct. You see lightning forming under my skin every time I blink. Humanity isn't part of the math anymore."
Sage steps closer. Her voice drops.
"Maybe not. But I knew you before all this. Before the obsidian skin, before the thunder, before you started killing gods."
She looks me straight in the eye.
"I knew you when you still hesitated."
A flicker runs through me.
A spark of something old.
Something soft.
It pisses me off.
"You think that matters now?" I ask.
She nods.
"Yes," she says. "Because if you lose that part of you, you're not just going to kill the Remnants. You'll kill yourself too."
Thunder crawls through my chest.
Shakore's voice murmurs in the back of my mind, impatient and electric.
I push it down.
"So you're here to save me," I mutter. "Is that it?"
She shakes her head.
"No. I'm here because I made a choice once. To run. To leave you."
Her throat tightens.
"I'm not doing that again."
For a moment, I don't say anything.
Not because I have nothing to say.
But because I don't want to admit the truth.
I like that she stayed.
Even now.
Even after all of this.
"Fine," I say quietly. "Stay."
A vibration trembles through the air before either of us can speak again.
A sound like a heartbeat made of thunder and broken stone.
Shakore's fragment is waking up.
Calling.
Begging to be found.
I turn toward the glow on the horizon.
"Stay close," I say. "This next one won't come quietly."
The pulse grows stronger ahead of us, thundering through the horizon like something buried is trying to claw its way back into reality.
I should keep moving.
I should stay focused.
But Sage is still standing there beside me.
Still choosing this nightmare.
Still choosing me.
I exhale, slow.
Unsteady.
Far too human for the version of myself I pretend to be.
"Thank you," I say
It slips out more quietly than I intended.
More honest than I like.
Sage blinks, startled. "For what?
"For staying," I answer. "For… choosing to stay."
The cold bites at my teeth as I breathe in.
It irritates me how much that admission warms something in my chest.
She softens. "V… you don't have to thank me for being here."
"Yeah," I mutter. "I do."
Because I know what I am.
What I'm turning into.
What Shakore's soul is doing to me.
What the next Remnant will do.
What the one after that will do.
Something inside me tightens.
Not anger.
Not thunder.
Something smaller.
Meaner.
Vulnerable.
It pisses me off.
Inside my own skull, the thought comes like a punch.
I'm still human.
Still breakable.
Still capable of losing someone.
It's pathetic.
It's infuriating.
And yet…
As we walk again, the pulse dragging us toward the fragmented corpse of another Remnant, a quiet truth settles in my bones.
Sage is my break point.
My last tether.
My final thread of restraint.
Once she's gone…
I know exactly what happens.
No humanity.
No V.
No mercy.
No reasons to stop.
Just the hunt.
Just the kill.
Just the inevitable collapse into the kind of monster even the Remnants fear.
I clench my jaw.
I can't collapse.
Not yet.
I need her.
Hate how true that is.
Hate how much it matters.
But I'm not lying to myself.
If Sage dies…
I lose everything all over again.
The snow quiets again.
Always the snow.
Always this frozen world trying to smother whatever I have left.
But Sage stays close while we move toward the pulse in the distance.
And that is what breaks me.
Not the cold.
Not the Remnants.
Not the thunder still crawling through my veins.
Her.
My mind drags me backward.
Farther than I want to go.
Lucy.
Scarlet.
Every promise they wrapped around my throat.
Every lie they fed me with soft hands and softer smiles.
The manipulation I swallowed because I was young and stupid enough to believe I mattered.
Mercier.
His needles.
His sermons.
His furnace.
His joy when I broke.
The passenger inside me twisting awake for the first time.
Hungry.
Silent.
Watching.
My first kill.
Sasha.
Her blood was warm on my hands.
I remember the sound she made when she realized it was me.
I remember feeling nothing.
The second kill.
The head of the government.
His eyes stayed open long after he died.
I shut them with my thumb.
Then Monroe came.
And the world folded into hell.
That was before Nia.
Before I knew the name Zane.
Before the passenger whispered its true one.
Before Nazz.
I feel all of it hitting at once.
Every version of me clawing for space in my skull.
Every memory twisting like rusted knives.
I stop walking.
Sage turns. "V…?"
My hand lifts without thinking.
I rest it on her shoulder.
She freezes.
Not out of fear, but because she has never seen me like this.
I look her in the eyes.
Not with thunder.
Not with obsidian.
Just me.
Whoever that is now.
"I have nobody," I say.
No rasp.
No power.
Just the truth scraping out of me.
"Nazz is still gone," I add. "Awol or dissolved or whatever the hell he is. And you… you're all I got."
Her breath trembles.
The pulse of Shakore's soul flickers around us in blue and red.
But nothing pulls my attention away from her.
I extend my hand to her.
"Please," I say.
The word tastes like blood.
"I can't have you leave now, Sage. I can't. Not again. Not like everyone else. I… I just can't."
A single tear slides down her cheek.
She doesn't wipe it.
She places her hand in mine.
We walk again.
Slow at first.
The wind cuts, but it is nothing compared to everything clawing inside my head.
Sage keeps her hand in mine until the slope steepens, then lets go, but she stays close enough that her shoulder brushes mine with every step.
Neither of us speaks.
Not because there's nothing to say.
Because there's too much.
After a while she breaks the silence.
"V… you never talk about them."
Her voice is rough, like something scraped her throat raw.
"You said their names. Lucy. Scarlet. Sasha. The head of the government. Monroe. All of that… that's your past. But you never tell me what any of it means."
I exhale slow, watching the air fog out in front of me.
"Because it's ugly," I say.
"Because it's the worst of me. And I figured… you already see enough monsters out here."
"I see you," Sage replies.
"Not a monster."
She stops walking again.
Stands in front of me.
Forces me to look at her.
"You think I stayed three years because I wanted power? Magnetism? Because I was scared of being alone?"
She shakes her head.
"I stayed because you cared. Even when you pretended you didn't."
I look away.
"Care gets you killed."
"No," she says.
"Lies get you killed. Running gets you killed. Being stupid enough to believe you deserve nothing gets you killed."
Her words hit harder than thunder.
We keep moving.
The pulse of Shakore's soul grows stronger, vibrating in the killiden arrow lodged in the earth ahead, pointing the way like a compass made of lightning.
"V?" Sage asks quietly.
"What happens when we find the next one? The next Remnant that took Serkauis's flesh?"
"We kill it," I answer.
My tone is steady.
Cold.
But not empty.
"Then the next. And the next. Until the trail ends at the bastard who touched my father."
"So this is vengeance," she says.
"Not duty.
"It's both. But mostly vengeance."
She nods.
"I understand."
A long silence follows.
Then I speak again.
Not loud.
Not powerful.
Just honest.
"You know… three years ago I would've done this alone. I would've pushed anyone away."
I look at her.
"At you."
"And now?" she asks.
"Now," I say, "if you leave, I fall."
Her cheeks redden from the cold, but she smiles.
Small.
Fragile.
Real.
"I'm here," she says.
"Even if I'm scared. Even if I don't understand half of what you are. I'm here."
We walk in sync.
Two silhouettes against the endless white.
Ahead, the horizon flashes, blue cracks of Shakore's lightning buried in the snowfield.
A signal.
A warning.
A lure.
Another Remnant waits.
Another piece of Serkauis's body.
Another step toward the thing that murdered my father.
And now I do not walk alone.