I walked.
Not fast. Not slow. Just enough to keep the moment from swallowing me whole. The night air was thick, heavy with that surreal kind of silence that only exists before something monstrous happens.
I knew where she was.
Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade. The Iron-Blooded, Hot-Blooded, Cold-Blooded vampire. An aberration. A tragedy.
A corpse with too much pride to die quietly.
I reached the train station steps—those same cold slabs of concrete where Araragi had found her. And there she was.
Not whole.
Not even close.
Just a torso and a head.
No arms. No legs. Just Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade, lying in a dark pool of her own blood, trembling like a candle about to die out. Her golden hair was matted, sticking to the wet pavement. Her once regal form was reduced to a breathing ruin.
But her eye—only one still open—glowed like a dying star.
She turned it toward me.
"You're... not him," she rasped, voice hollow, brittle. "Not... the boy."
I stood there, trying not to gag. Not from the gore—I'd seen gore before. The internet makes you numb to that. It was the weight. The presence. The feeling that something ancient and cosmic had been brought to its knees.
And it was looking at me.
"You're dying," I said, swallowing dry air.
"You've already lost."
"I... know."
"You fought the three of them. Dramaturgy. Episode. Guillotine Cutter. They each took a limb."
She smiled, weakly. "So you... do know."
I nodded, stepping closer, though part of me wanted to bolt. "You're waiting for someone to show up and give you their blood. A boy who doesn't know what he's doing. But I do."
She blinked slowly. Her voice trembled. "And will you... take his place?"
"No."
Her expression didn't change. Maybe she didn't have the energy to be disappointed.
"Why... come?"
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe I didn't want to watch from a distance this time."
A moment passed. The wind howled down the tunnel behind us.
"I don't want your pity," she said.
"It's not pity," I replied. "It's... recognition."
Her breathing hitched. Not from pain. From amusement, I think.
"You sound like him already."
"Yeah," I said, staring down at her. "That's what scares me."