The colossus bled sand and secrets.
Where its stone fingers clenched around the frozen heart, black ice spread like corruption through sandstone veins. Aelric's shadow—half-consumed by the giant's grip—thrashed in silent agony, its chain-links glowing white-hot. Linya's frostblade lay embedded in the colossus' wrist, its sigils now burning with the same feverish light as Aelric's crystallized veins.
"Your madness," Linya snarled, hauling herself onto a crumbling ledge, "has cost me my Order's mark." She ripped open her collar to reveal a brand still smoking between her collarbones—three ravens crossed out by a jagged scar.
Aelric's iron feathers vibrated with stolen energy. "Your hypocrisy," he countered, "still wears my mother's heartbeat as a trophy."
The colossus settled its hollow gaze on them, sand pouring from empty sockets. When it spoke, the desert itself shaped the words:
"WE WERE PROMISED A SACRIFICE. TWO BROKEN THINGS TO MEND ONE."
Linya's blade dislodged itself, flying to her hand with a shriek of tortured metal. "What in the frozen hells does that—"
The heart pulsed.
Memories not their own flooded the air:
Aelric's mother binding her infant's shadow with liquid night...
Linya's initiation ceremony where a frostblade pierced another child's chest...
The colossus standing guard over an altar where the Ravens Three drew first breath...
"Enough!" Linya slashed through the visions, her blade leaving glowing scars in reality itself. "I didn't trek through this damned wasteland to watch shadowblood homevids!"
The colossus laughed with Aelric's stolen voice.
"YOU ARE BOTH THIEF AND THIEF-TAKER. STAINED MIRRORS. PERFECT SACRIFICE."
Aelric's remaining feathers tore free, forming a jagged wing that carried him to Linya's perch. "The heart," he growled, "it's resonating with my corruption."
"No," she corrected, her blade pointed at his throat, "it's rejecting you."
The colossus' chest split open, revealing a vortex of swirling vows where its heart should be. Aelric's shadow screamed—a raw, mechanical sound—as it was dragged toward the void.
Linya moved first.
Her frostblade carved a path through sentient sand, sigils flaring to freeze the colossus' joints. "If you value what's left of your soul," she shouted, "disable that vortex!"
The raven voices chose sides:
"Let the shadow die!" hissed the dark tone.
"Save it to control her!" urged the melodic one.
Aelric's crystalline hand seized Linya's wrist. "We pact."
"Like hell we—"
He pressed their joined hands against his half-metal chest. "My corruption for your purity. Temporary fusion."
The desert held its breath.
Her frost met his shadow.
White and black energies collided, birthing jagged grey flames that scarred the colossus' legs. Linya's brand glowed as their stolen vows intertwined:
"No betrayal for seven steps."
"Shared pain threshold."
"One secret surrendered upon separation."
The colossus staggered. Aelric's wing disintegrated, its feathers reforging into a bridge across the vortex. Linya's frostblade became an anchor, its edge buried in the oath-void.
"Now!" they shouted in unison.
The world inverted.
Inside the vortex, time bled sideways. The colossus' essence unfolded like a malignant origami—layer upon layer of broken promises binding it to the Ravens' will. At its core floated the frozen heart, now beating in sync with Aelric's corruption.
Linya's blade faltered. "That's... that's a cradle. They're rebirthing something."
Aelric's shadow—twisted into a barbed wire mockery of itself—lunged for the heart. "Not something. Someone."
The memory struck them both:
A infant's first breath. A mother's last. Three ravens hatched from a dying god's skull.
The colossus' true purpose crystallized—it wasn't a guardian. It was an incubator.
Linya's oath-flames dimmed. "We need to—"
"Steal the ignition spark," Aelric finished, his remaining eye bleeding liquid vows.
Their pact flared. Linya became ice, Aelric became shadow, their merged form piercing the heart's defenses. As his crystallized fingers closed around the frozen organ, her frostblade severed its connection to the Ravens.
The colossus screamed.
Reality snapped back.
They collapsed in the desert sands, the pact unraveling. Between them lay the heart—no longer frozen, but pulsing with sickly light. Aelric's shadow reknit itself with threads of Linya's frost. Her brand now bore his corruption's jagged edges.
The colossus crumbled, its final whisper lost to the wind:
"THE RAVENS WAKE..."
Linya's blade found Aelric's throat. "Your secret. The pact demands it."
He smiled, iron feathers regrowing. "You first."
Her confession came coated in frost: "I was sent to kill you. The night your family died."
His secret burned hotter: "I remember."
The heart pulsed between them, its rhythm matching the distant thunder of awakening wings.