Alinda stepped forward, her voice steady but quiet. "I don't think you'd be saying this," she said, "if she were still alive."
Neo turned his head slightly. He didn't speak but he listened.
Across the firelight, Alinda folded her arms. Her gaze never left Fall. "You think Thal's weakness came from mercy. From love. That helping humans made him small. But if Quincy had survived, you'd be the one calling her destiny."
Fall's eyes stayed fixed on the wall. Still. Unmoving. But the hush that followed wasn't dismissal. It was memory.
Neo's brow furrowed. He didn't know what they were talking about. But the weight in their voices told him it mattered more than anything they'd said so far.
Alinda took another step closer. "You believed in her," she said. "We both did." Fall stayed silent. "She wasn't Nephilim," Alinda continued. "She wasn't divine. She wasn't born from the spine of a dying world. She was more than dust and even you saw it."
Neo's heart thudded, slow and sharp. Quincy. He knew her smile. Her steadiness. Her strength. But he had never heard it spoken like this.
Fall turned his head slightly, letting the firelight catch the hollow curve of his face. "She might have survived it," he said at last.
Alinda's voice softened. "She almost did."
"She could have broken it," Fall murmured. Neo's breath caught. Broken what? Fall exhaled, and the air in the room chilled like something sacred had just been named and buried. "She was born into it… that curse."
Neo's chest tightened. He looked at Alinda, but she was watching Fall now, her expression unreadable, distant.
"You said she might overcome it," she said quietly. "That maybe the wound left in the world when it was torn in two… maybe she could've healed it. Even if just a piece."
Fall's jaw clenched. "And now she's dust."
Neo didn't move. Quincy… had a curse? No one had told him. Not Thal, not even Quincy herself. But then he remembered nights when she stayed up late, listening to the wind. Moments when she'd go quiet during storms. When she'd stare out at the Spine like it whispered to her. He thought it was just her way.
Fall's voice dragged him back. "She died like the rest. Crushed beneath fire and steel, under the cruelty of mortals. And Thal…" He looked down. "Thal burned everything."
Alinda's voice cracked faintly. Not from emotion. From restraint. "He broke."
Fall nodded. "He did." Neo didn't speak. His voice had dried up somewhere deep inside, lost between memory and revelation. Fall looked back to Alinda. His tone sharpened not with anger, just cold truth. "She was the only one who might have mattered. And Thal let her die."
Alinda's face twitched barely, but the pain was there in her voice, low and thin. "He didn't let her. He tried."
Fall's reply was a whisper across glass. "He failed." Neo shut his eyes. Not because he couldn't watch but because he couldn't process. The room felt thinner now, stretched by a weight too old to bear.
Fall's presence thickened again not in size, not in volume, but in gravity. "We are not meant to carry their burdens," he said.
"The world is cracked. The dragons tried to mend it with their bones. We Nephilim were not born to serve the will of mortal kings or broken gods."
He turned slowly each step deliberate, as though the earth itself braced beneath him. "Thal was meant to watch the gate," he said. "And he left it. For a war that will not end. For people who will not remember him. For a cause that will fade."
Alinda's shoulders squared. "It matters to him."
Fall's gaze was unflinching. "Then he has already fallen."
Neo looked up. Finally. He wanted to speak. To shout. To defend. But what could he say? That Thal had a reason? That he believed in something more? That Quincy his sister, his memory still mattered?
Fall moved again, and the tension followed him like a second skin. Alinda stepped back once, not in fear but in warning.
"Don't do this," she said, fear slipping into her voice.
Fall didn't stop. "I will find him," he said plainly.
Alinda's voice dropped low. "And if he can't answer?"
Fall didn't hesitate. "Then I will end him."
The fire blinked. Neo braced.
Fall took one final breath and then moved. It wasn't magic. It wasn't teleportation. It was movement made divine: sudden, effortless, devastating. He didn't use the door. He shattered the roof. Wood exploded outward in a storm of splinters and snow. The shockwave slammed into the room, knocking Neo back into the furs. Alinda staggered, shielding her face. The structure groaned but held. Outside, the wind howled.
Neo sat up slowly, throat dry, ears ringing. The hole in the wall smoked faintly not from flame, but from sheer divine force. Fall was gone. Alinda stood frozen for a long breath.
Then softly, barely audible, Alinda murmured, "Shit."
The storm outside hadn't passed. It had only changed. The kind of wind that followed Fall wasn't natural. It didn't howl it trembled, low and constant, like something vast inhaling through the sky.
Inside, the broken wall still smoked. Splinters lay scattered. The fire had dimmed to embers. Neo pushed himself upright, arms trembling. He hadn't been the first to move.
Tor sat up slowly not as if waking, but as if finally willing to move. Her eyes were wide, too wide. Neo realized with a sharp jolt: she hadn't been unconscious. She had been pretending. Pretending to sleep. Because she was afraid.
Alinda was still staring at the wall, at the absence Fall had left, the silhouette burned into her mind like lightning behind closed eyes. Then, sharper, louder, she snapped, "Shit!"
Neo flinched. She wasn't looking at him. Her breath came fast now, like someone on the edge of panic. "He's going to kill him," she said not a question, not a theory. A simple, crushing truth. "He's not going to wait. He's not going to listen. He's just going to find him and…"
She spun toward Neo, eyes glowing faintly in the half light, the intensity like a red eclipse cutting through shadow. "Which way did Thal go?"
Neo blinked. "I… I don't…"
"WHICH WAY, NEO!?" She stepped forward, boots striking the floor like hammers.
Tor flinched. Neo scrambled. "South! He went south, toward the Kruul lands! But I don't know the route they changed plans last minute… Alinda, wait!"
But she wasn't waiting. She was pacing now, tight circles, steps too light for her size, too fast for calm. Her hands twitched like she wanted to draw a sword that wasn't there. "That bastard doesn't know where he went," she muttered.
"But that won't matter. Not to him. He doesn't need maps. Doesn't need tracks." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He'll scour the whole damned world."
Tor raised a trembling hand and signed something simple but its meaning was clear. "Fall… hunt?" Neo gave the smallest nod.
Alinda's face twisted with something deeper than rage. Her grief was jagged now, bleeding into fury. She slammed her hand on the table. A bowl crashed to the floor and shattered. "He's going to find him," she growled. "He's going to find Thal. And if Thal doesn't have the perfect answer waiting on his tongue…" Her voice caught. "…he'll die."
Neo didn't speak. There were no words. Only the weight settling across the room like ash from something ancient burning again. Tor stayed frozen, gaze flicking between them, wide and uncertain, like a child caught between gods. Outside, the wind shifted. The hunt had begun.