Pov: Nylessa's Brother
I didn't expect him to be crying.
Grimpel was on his knees when I entered the broken observatory, his hands shaking as if he still held some innocence between his fingers. The circle around him pulsed with otherworldly light—not magic anymore, not the way it once was. It was alive, hungry, warping the world with every flicker.
"You shouldn't have come," he whispered, barely lifting his eyes.
And I said what had been boiling in me since the first scream rang out in the streets.
"You don't get to cry. Not now. Not after what you did."
He flinched like the words struck him. I wanted them to. I needed them to.
"I tried to—"
"You tried? You let your grief poison your judgment. You let murderers wrap their cause in your weakness and now the sky is bleeding! My people are dead. My mother is dead. And Nylessa is out there, alone, fighting to fix the hole you tore open with your cowardice."
His face crumbled like the dome above us had.
"I thought I could hold it together," he murmured. "I thought if I gave enough of myself, no one else would have to."
"Then you were a fool," I hissed. "And it cost us everything."
Silence pressed down like a second sky. The circle hummed.
"Can we stop it?" he finally asked. His voice was barely audible.
I turned toward the veil—that gash in the air, bleeding shadow and wind. Creatures beyond it twisted, half-born and whispering, clawing for the edges of our world.
"How do we close it?"
Grimpel's voice cracked. "It feeds on supernatural essence. It needs something tied to the Veil to be shut again... Not an object. A soul."
My chest tightened.
"A Shade Walker," I said, dread forming around the words.
Grimpel nodded. His face said the rest. No magic, no circle, no ancient relic. Just sacrifice.
"We can't ask her to do it," I said. "We won't."
I stepped into the edge of the circle. The light licked at my boots like fireflies made of knives.
"Then I will."
His eyes widened. "No... You can't. Your blood is mixed, you were never trained. You don't even know if it will work."
"It has to."
I stared at the breach, at the thing the city had become, at the monsters that fed on wings and horns and soulfire. I thought of Nylessa, running through that chaos. I thought of my mother's final breath.
"I won't let her die, too."
The door slammed open behind us.
Boots echoed.
Smoke poured in like it had been waiting.
Thorne entered slowly, blade gleaming red-black, his mask cracked. Behind him, a wind stirred, carrying the scent of burnt flesh and old bones.
He looked around the room and smiled. Not joy. Just... completion.
"How poetic," he said. "Two monsters. A failed mage and a halfbreed child."
Grimpel stood slowly, between me and the ritual. "You're too late."
"Am I?"
He took a step forward.
I raised my blade.
Thorne didn't stop.
"You know, I dreamed of this. Not this room. But this moment. The end of all the twisted things hiding among us."
He turned his eyes to me.
"You know what she looked like? My sister?"
His voice cracked.
"Alira had green eyes. She was barely fourteen. She was picking duskberries when your kind came through the orchard. She laughed when she saw them. She laughed. Like they were part of the stories our grandmother told. Then they cut her throat and used her blood to bind a summoning circle."
Grimpel froze. My breath caught.
"Do you understand what grief makes of a man?"
Thorne stepped forward. His sword gleamed like moonlight over a casket.
"This? This isn't a mistake. This is the price."
He lunged.
Grimpel moved faster than I thought he could. Steel clashed. Magic burned. I struck from the side, and the three of us became a knot of fury and breath.
But Thorne was tired. And old. And not as fast as he had been in the dark.
Grimpel's blast caught him in the chest.
My blade cut his leg.
He dropped to one knee.
The mask fell from his face.
He was crying.
"I don't care about dying," he rasped. "As long as I dragged enough of you with me. As long as I made you feel what I felt."
Grimpel stepped back. His face was stricken.
Thorne coughed. Blood flecked his lips.
"She had a song," he whispered. "A dumb one. About the stars and... cats."
His eyes turned to the circle, then the sky beyond it.
"Alira. I'm coming."
He collapsed. And the room was quiet again.
Grimpel wiped his face. I stood frozen.
We had killed a man. But it felt like we had buried something.
A long silence stretched between us.
Then I turned toward the circle.
"It's time."
Grimpel moved to stop me. "We can find another way. There has to be—"
"There isn't."
The wind stirred. The Veil crackled.
I took another step. Then another.
And far behind us, in the crumbling streets of Darswich...
Nylessa was still running.
Her hands were slick with blood.
Her lungs burned. Her vision swam.
She didn't know why the ache in her chest was worse now. She didn't know that I had made the choice for her.
But she was close.
Too close.
And maybe... just maybe... she'd be in time to stop me.