The fire was gone. But its memory lingered.
Wind howled along the ridgeline outside, rattling the frost-coated windows of the hideout. The safehouse, if it could be called that, was a concrete box built into the mountain itself, long since stripped of comfort or oversight. Dust coated the shelves and the old generator Mayu found huffed and puffed as it struggled to stay on.
It was quiet and they were safe, for now.
Ryunosuke sat on the edge of a low bunk, pressing a damp cloth against a burn on his arm. It wasn't bad, it was a reminder of how close they'd come.
Mayu sat, leaning against the doorway, chewing on a protein bar and watched the snow drifting by. Aiko sat in front of an old filing cabinet, sorting through maps and paper tags trying to piece together their exact location.
Lilith, stood near a window and hasn't said a word since they arrived.
Her coat was still stained in soot, but otherwise she looked untouched. The fire was gone from her skin, and the glow from her eyes faded. She seemed dimmer now, like she was tired. She was doing her best to hide.
Ryunosuke looked up at her and noticed how unnaturally still she stood with her back straight and hands folded in front of her.
"Do you sleep?" he asked softly.
The room was quiet enough that even Aiko looked up.
Lilith didn't turn. "Sometimes."
"What about now?"
She shook her head.
Mayu finished her bar and threw the wrapper to the side as she started to walk outside. "I'll take the first watch," she said, wanting to leave the room.
Aiko replied, "Firewatch? Seriously?"
"It's not a choice... Not that it'll help if she decides to blow the place up again."
Aiko followed, clutching the maps. "Okay... I'll help with the perimeter scan. See if there's any leftover drones from Gamma."
Ryunosuke nodded absently, eyes still fixed on Lilith.
The door slid shut behind them and the silence returned.
He stood and walked slowly towards Lilith. She didn't move until he was a few feet away.
"I didn't mean to scare you," she said.
He studied her; she stood calm, too calm. To him, it looked like she was wearing a mask.
"You didn't scare me," he said.
She finally turned to him, just enough that he could see her eyes.
For once, they weren't glowing; they were tired.
He wanted to say something else. To ask what she was, or how she had done what she did back in Gamma, but the words didn't come.
Instead, he stepped closer and gestured back to the bunks. "Do you wanna come sit?"
She blinked, surprised, maybe, but nodded.
They sat together on the bunk and stared aimlessly at the wall. The wind outside had started to pick up, making the room howl.
It felt like the kind of quiet that only came after destruction.
Lilith spoke first, breaking the quiet.
"You want to know the truth."
Ryunosuke looked at her and said nothing because he knew she was right.
He did want to know the truth.
Lilith lifted her legs and hugged her elbows as she looked aimlessly to the floor. Her fire was gone, but something still smoldered beneath her voice.
"I didn't lie," she said, quietly. "I just… didn't tell you everything."
Ryunosuke didn't respond.
She exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the cold air. "There are three relics. You know this already. But what you don't know is that the second one, the one that went missing before your world even began to tear apart, it was never stolen."
She looked up at him.
"It was hidden."
His eyes flickered when Lilith looked up and their eyes met. A bunch of questions raced through his mind but he still couldn't find the words. Who? What? When? Where? Why?
Her hands drifted up to her coat and began to undo the first few buttons then pulled the coat off just enough for him to see just above her heart. There, something glowed pale and violet, pulsing slowly like another heartbeat. To him, it looked like it was embedded, not like a tattoo or a scar.
It was like something that was organic and unnatural.
A delicate sigil, shifting with every breath.
"I'm the vessel," she said. "The second artifact isn't an object. It's a seed. A living essence of something older than language. And it's inside me."
He stared at it, at her.
"How?" he asked, voice low.
"They chose me, I don't really know why... Maybe I was just convenient," she said bitterly. "I don't remember what it was like to not have this... Not even when it happened. I just remember waking up and it was there."
She dropped her legs and leaned back with a thousand-yard stare. "This is why I'm able to move the way I do... You felt it, haven't you? The way the air shifts when I'm near. The way the city tilts. That's not chance, Ryunosuke. It's design."
He nodded slowly. "I know... a little too well..."
"They're all side effects," she said. "It's the artifact keeping me real... Partially, at least. It lets me exist, but the more I use it, like I did today..." her voice became small, "the more fragile it becomes."
"And if it breaks?"
She hesitated.
"If it breaks… I don't know if I'd... survive what's left behind."
He rubbed his hand across his face, trying to process everything. "You've been carrying this… this thing, without telling me, without telling anyone—"
"I told Aiko... Earlier," Lilith interrupted. "I don't know how, but she figured it out..."
"And me?" His voice sharpened.
She turned to face him again.
"You weren't ready."
He frowned. "And what? You get to decide when I'm ready? When to pull me through nightmares? When to use me as bait? You keep calling me important, like I'm some key to something you won't explain but all you do is hide more of yourself. Every time I think I understand you, you do something weird and it changes everything I thought I knew."
Lilith didn't look away.
"I never wanted to use you."
"But you did."
"I had to."
He stood and started to pace around the room as he became more and more frustrated. "You dragged me through my dreams, left me in the dark, and still expected me to follow you like no of this matters."
"No," she said, rising with him. "I expected you to make your own choices. I never forced you to do anything or follow me. You did that on your own every single time."
His fists clenched. "Because you couldn't just let me walk away."
Lilith's expression softened, not in defense, but in pain.
"No," she said, quieter now. "Because I didn't want you to."
She stepped closer.
"I don't want to do this alone..."
The wind outside rattled the old building
Ryunosuke turned his back and crossed his arms to look outside the window. His chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths.
"If you didn't want to do this alone then maybe you should have trusted me," he mutterered. "Instead, you kept secrets and treated me like I was some kind of placeholder."
"No... I never thought of you like that," she said softly behind him.
"Then how?" He turned to face her again. "How did you see me?"
Lilith didn't answer right away. Her hands were at her sides, fingers twitching like they were trying to find something to hold on to.
"You were a way forward," she said finally. "A constant in a world I didn't understand. You saw me. Not the artifact or the shadow I cast... Me... And the more I felt that… the more I wanted to protect it."
"By using me."
"I keep telling you that I never wanted to use you." Her voice cracked, barely audible. "But I didn't have a choice. Every time I stood still, the world started to slip."
He paced again, running a hand through his hair.
"This whole time," he said. "You were never trying to end anything. You were just trying to hold it together."
Lilith nodded. "Yes... I don't want to win, Ryunosuke. I don't care about defeating anyone or claiming power or rewriting fate."
"Then what do you want?"
She took a step forward.
"To protect what we still have..."
Her voice shook, not with weakness, but with something more honest than anything.
"I've seen too many worlds collapse," she continued. "Too many people destroyed by what they tried to control... and I'm tired of watching stories end before they ever had the chance to mean something."
Ryunosuke stared at her, the woman who'd burned through soldiers, who could warp steel and speak in echoes and leave nothing but dust behind.
But now, as she stood in front of him, she looked like someone who never wanted to hurt anyone. Like she was forced against her will to be here.
"You weren't supposed to matter this much to me," she whispered. "But you do."
He felt his cheeks blush and the anger, grief, and confusion he had melted away under the heat of her voice.
"You make it really hard to stay mad at you," he said.
Her lip trembled as he stepped closer.
"Then don't."
And in that moment, neither of them moved.
Lilith stood frozen as her words hung between them like a rope tying them together. Ryunosuke looked at her, not as the mystery or riddle he had to solve but as a girl who didn't know how to ask for help. Someone who decided to finally stop running.
The fire beside them crackled softly, casting a warm orange glow that brushed their faces. Outside, snow continued to fall in the dark, muffling the world like a blanket of silence.
Ryunosuke inched closer to her, slow and carefully, as if he was giving her every chance to back away.
But she didn't
His voice was low and tired. "You don't have to do this alone anymore, Lilith..."
"I don't know how..." she whispered.
"Then... you should let me show you how."
Her breath caught as he leaned in and kissed her. It was soft, slow, and deliberate. A long moment in a world where everything else had been fleeting.
Lilith didn't resist.
Instead, she leaned into him, one hand rising to rest against his chest as the other trembled at her side. She closed her eyes and slowly began to cry.
It started with a single tear, then another, then her breath hitched. Something inside her finally cracked, but it wasn't pain. It was release. Her hand gripped the back of his jacket like a drowning person clinging to driftwood.
"I'm not supposed to be loved," she murmured against his lips.
Their foreheads pressed together. "Too bad," he said softly. "You are."
She pulled back just enough to look at him, her eyes shimmering with tears, rimmed in violet. "I don't know what I am without the artifact."
"Then let's find out together."
A small light flicked on and caught the side of her face, painting her in a soft gold. Her breath was shallow against his and her shoulders shook slightly. And still, she smiled through the tears.
They sat back down on the bunk, side by side, without a word and the weight of the world crept back to them slowly.
But for a few minutes... they let it wait