The monsters weren't stopping.
Kail's blades were slipping in her hands, sweat and blood making everything slick. She kicked one beast back, stabbed another, and screamed at the top of her lungs, "This is f***ing endless! ENDLESS!"
"Keep fighting!" Aiden barked, swinging his sword, his cloak soaked black with ichor. His breathing was ragged, every slash slower than the last.
"I am keeping fighting! What do you think this looks like? A f***ing vacation?" Kail snarled, stabbing down until her arm felt like it would rip from its socket.
Behind them, Lizz twitched again, her chest stuttering with each breath. Her lips moved. "Stop… stop yelling."
Kail nearly dropped her knife. "She's awake! Aiden! She's—she's back!"
"Focus!" Aiden growled, cutting down an insect that nearly got Kail from behind. "You want her to wake up into a massacre?"
"I swear to god, you're impossible!" Kail yelled, slicing wildly. She turned back to Lizz, desperation dripping from every word. "Stay with me, okay? You're not allowed to dip out right now."
Lizz coughed, choking on her own spit. "I can't… I can't be it."
"You don't have to!" Kail said quickly. "Don't you dare try again. Just breathe. Just breathe and I'll handle the rest."
"No…" Lizz's eyes rolled weakly toward Vordi, who was coiled and thrashing, holding back half the horde. "It's her. It wants her."
Kail blinked. "What do you mean it wants her? Who's 'it'? The power?"
"Yes," Lizz whispered, voice nearly gone. "I can't… become. But I can… give. That's all I am. A… a channel."
Kail shook her head, eyes burning. "That's insane. You almost killed yourself last time! You think I'm letting you burn out again? Not happening."
"Kail." Aiden's voice was sharp, cutting between them. "Listen to her."
"You shut up!" Kail snapped. "She's not a battery, she's my friend!"
"She's also the only one who can end this!" Aiden roared back, smashing his sword through a wolf's head. His eyes locked on hers, dark and endless. "Do you want her to die slow while the monsters eat us, or die giving us a chance?"
"Neither!" Kail screamed, stabbing another insect, tears mixing with sweat on her face. "Neither is f***ing allowed!"
Lizz squeezed Kail's hand weakly. "Please… let me try."
Kail's throat closed. She wanted to argue, to scream more, but the words stuck. She looked at Aiden, furious, broken. He just nodded once, grim.
Vordi hissed, smoke rolling from her jaws. "If she gives, I will take. If it kills me, so be it."
"Shut up!" Kail snapped at the serpent too. "Why is everyone so eager to die around me? You're all psychos!"
"Kail," Aiden said softly this time. "It's the only way."
She swallowed hard, then bent down, pressing her forehead to Lizz's. "Fine. But if you die, I'm gonna drag your ghost back and beat your ass, you hear me?"
Lizz smiled faintly, blood on her teeth. "Yeah. I hear you."
Okay. We do this now. No more talk. No more what-ifs. Just do it, now.
Lizz's fingers were almost transparent, like little veins of glass. She put both palms flat against Vordi's flank, breath hitching. "You feel the heat?" she whispered, like it was a prayer and a threat. "Tell me you feel it."
Vordi's eyes were white, pupils blown, and her entire body trembled. "I feel… something. It is not mine. It is—" She made a sound that might have been a word, maybe gratitude, maybe terror. "It wants to be feathers, not scales. It wants to fly and I want to vomit sugar and die."
Kail laughed once, a horrible bark of a sound. "Good. Good, because I'd rather you puke now than later."
Aiden planted his feet and spun, blade a metronome. "Cover me!" he shouted. "Kail, left! Left! Now!" He shoved a wolf aside like it was a ragdoll and put his back to Kail, carving a corridor of blood and teeth.
"Left?" Kail said, turning, voice raw. "I'm not coordinated enough for your choreography, Aiden. Also you smell like regret."
"Not the time!" he snapped, then grinned for half a second, blood and sweat making him look holy and ridiculous at once.
Lizz breathed, a thin curious sound, and then she started talking—not words so much as songs and half-forgotten lines, syllables that had no language but fit together like lock and key. Kail couldn't tell if they were words in a language or just the sound of someone trying to push a lake uphill.
"Is that—are you making up words?" Kail asked, between slashes. She was panting. Her scalp throbbed. Her hands trembled.
Lizz's eyes found hers and for a second the island was gone. "Maybe," she mouthed. "Maybe prayers are made of nonsense."
"Good. Pray nonsense," Kail said, and stabbed. Her blade took one beast in half and she felt no triumph, only the hollow of exhaustion. "Pray nonsense like your life depends on it, because apparently it does."
"Shut up and sing," Aiden said, and his voice sounded like it used to on the worst nights — soft, dangerous, close.
Lizz's palms warmed. The bandages steamed slightly. The air thickened around Vordi. Kail watched scales ripple and then shift. A feather-like filament snagged on the serpent's side and flared then fell away like ash.
"Is it working?" Kail demanded.
"Maybe," Aiden said, voice flat. Then in a softer tone: "Yes. I think it is."
A phantom of a wing unfurled on Vordi's back, a thin sketch of light, translucent as spun sugar. For a breath, Vordi looked like a joke: a snake with a napkin of a wing. Then the wing flexed, the napkin thickened, veins of ember traced down the shaft. Heat spiked; sand steamed.
"Holy—" Kail started and didn't finish because a beast leapt at her. She threw her body and it slid off her blade. She rolled and got up with blood in her mouth and the world kept moving like that, terrible and mundane.
Aiden's face had gone hard, like a statue carved by someone who'd seen too much. "Keep pushing," he said. "Don't let them touch her hands. Don't let them touch Vordi."
"Who is touching what now, this is romance vs battle field," Kail said, but her fingers tightened around the leather. She could feel Lizz's pulse against her palms and it was faint and perfect and enough.
Lizz's voice rose, a wavery hum that made the air prick like pins. The light that threaded Vordi's scales reached into the serpent's spine and for a split second Kail thought she heard a sound like a bell being cracked. Vordi screamed—no, she sang—a terrible, bright note that made Kail's teeth ache.
"Is she okay?" Kail croaked.
"She's changing," Aiden said. His hand trembled when he raised the sword again. "It will be messy."
"Everything is messy," Kail huffed. "We're allergic to neatness."
Lizz's shoulders shook. Sweat beaded along her temples and mixed with the dirt and blood. She was pouring everything into the transfer — breath, heat, a kind of tender force that wasn't pain exactly but was just as sharp. It looked like love and fury and a stupid child's stubbornness all braided together.
"You sure she wants that?" Kail said suddenly, darting a glance at Vordi. "Maybe snakes don't want wings. Maybe she wants naps."
Vordi's throat worked and she blinked, smoke curling from her nostrils. "I want to fly," she said simply, and it was a tiny, blunt confession that made Kail's chest twist. "I want to feel wind in my feathers. I want to know what it is like to be something other than coil."
"Okay, that is both terrifying and kind of aspirational," Kail muttered, wiping at her face. She stabbed again and again until the motions blurred into a rhythm that steadied her heart.
Lizz's breaths shortened and then elongated, and her voice changed: the nonsense became a cadence, a ritual without rules. Kail recognized the cadence because it was the cadence of her when she read terrible rom-com lines aloud. It made Kail feel like crying and punching something at the same time.
"Almost there," Aiden said, like a prophecy or a prayer. He lunged, he parried, he bled a little more, and then he slammed his sword into a beast that tried to leap on Lizz. The monster shrieked and folded.
Vordi's first proper feather unfurled—long and black and edged with ember, like someone burned the edges of a raven's wing and it still sang. Kail reached out, fingers hovering, and the heat singed the tips of her nails.
"Honestly, that is low key hot," she muttered, because that was all she could think to say when confronted with the miracle of a phoenix-hybrid beginning to be.
Lizz's forehead creased. Her voice broke. "Now," she breathed. "Take it. Take it, Vordi. Take it and run."
Vordi convulsed. Feathers exploded along her sides in a cascade of ash and light. For a moment she looked more like a bonfire than an animal, wings forming in ragged crescents. She beat them once, small, awkward flaps, and the air around them shivered. The creatures nearest them recoiled, hissing as if the world itself burned.
"Holy hell," Kail whispered, laughing through tears. "It worked. It's—she's—wow."
Vordi's eyes were not quite the same. They glowed like embers. She rose, awkward at first, scales sliding into feathers like a costume change gone terrible and gorgeous. Her coils unfurled into long, long limbs that folded and flexed. There was a wobble, a falter; she was half-serpent, half-bird, and everything about her was raw and new.
"Can she fly?" Kail asked, the words small and huge at once.
"She will try," Aiden said. He lowered his sword and both of them watched as Vordi stretched and beat her fledgling wings. The breeze lifted the hair on their arms and sand skittered.
The colossus, who had been watching like a slow god, made a sound like a crack in earth and then moved. It was not patient; it was offended. A thing that large does not consent to being thwarted by human stubbornness and a half-made phoenix. The ground shook and smaller beasts surged forward, drawn like iron to a flame.
"You want to fly?" Kail asked, though she knew better than to expect a coherent answer. "Fly now? Like right now? Because if you fail we die spectacularly."
Vordi opened her beak and it was terrible and beautiful, like a porch door creaking into sunlight. She let out a cry that was more smoke than sound and leapt.
For half a heartbeat she slipped. Then her wings found hold. The wind took her and she rose, clumsy and brilliant, a smear of flame across the sky. She did not soar like some practiced eagle; she flapped, she scrambled, she kicked air and made it obey. It was not graceful. It was furious and dangerous and alive.
Kail felt like her heart would break and stitch all at once. "Go, go, go!" she screamed, even as a pack of centipede-segments surged up and one hammered into the beach, sending a wall of sand and shards toward them.
Aiden shoved Kail sideways and his shoulder took the brunt of the blow. He howled, a sound of pain and ridiculous determination, and rolled, and came up with a blade in his hand and a blood-smile.
Vordi beat her wings harder, climbing, and then—then the colossus did something that made Kail's stomach drop. It slapped a limb down and the shadow fell across Vordi. In its motion the beast's finger—huge, like a broken tree—shot forward with impossible speed and clipped Vordi's wing.
"She's hit!" Kail screamed. "No no no no—"
Vordi faltered. For a breath she hung, a smear of feather and fire, and then she dropped like a comet.
"No!" Lizz shrieked and her hands scrabbled in the sand as if she could pluck the sky itself. Kail shoved two beasts off her but they came back like hungry debt collectors.
Aiden roared and launched himself at the colossus with anything like madness. "You will not—" he began and then his sentence dissolved into a physical motion of fury.
Vordi slammed into the sand, a flare of feathers and ash. She rolled, convulsed, and then, impossibly, pushed forward. One wing was broken, ragged, but the other beat and beat, and the feathered-lizard limped, then hopped, then rose a few feet and crashed again.
"Get her up!" Kail said, voice thin. "Move! MOVE!"
They scrambled, claws and hands and hands that were not clean. Blood smeared everywhere. Lizz reached out with what was left of her and placed both palms on Vordi's flank, whispering nonsense and pleas and apologies.
"It's too much," Lizz rasped. Her breath was a wet wind. "I have nothing left."
"You have us," Kail said, and it was truth and a lie. "You have us and you have to— you have to give it all."
Lizz's fingers dug into Vordi's scales and she squeezed, hard enough that Kail saw nails blanch. The air around them flared, not with the gentle light of before but with a terrible, bright pressure that made their teeth ache.
"Now. Now give her everything. Make it not be half. Make it be whole." Aiden's voice was a cracked bell and it sounded like command, like prayer, like plea.
Lizz gave the last of whatever she had. It left her not like a flame being carried away but like a heartbeat that was folded into something else. Her lips moved once in a soft, broken syllable. Vordi's remaining wing burned bright and then dim, and then it ignited fuller than before, and this time the feathers were whole, not jagged. They were made of living ember and dawn.
Vordi rose, a screech that bent the air, and this time she flew true. She climbed, limping but steady, and then soared higher than their camp, higher than the colossus's reach, casting a living comet over the island.
They all collapsed where they were, spent and raw and laughing and crying all at once. The monsters around them backed away, bewildered by the sight of a blazing serpent-bird circling the sky.
"Is she—alive?" Kail whispered, half to Lizz, half to herself.
Lizz's chest moved. Her fingers twitched once around a handful of sand. Her eyes opened, hazy, and she looked up at Vordi with a smile that was both cracked and incandescent. "She's mine," she whispered. "She's ours." Then she coughed, and her head lolled to the side.
Kail wanted to hold her whole, keep the pieces from falling. Instead she laughed, a small helpless sound. "Okay. We did a thing," she said, because humor had to be somewhere in this.
Aiden wiped his face and every line of his had the map of everything they'd done. "We did," he agreed.
Above them, Vordi shrieked a sound of triumph and then dipped toward the coast, wing-sweeping a path of fire against the horizon. For a moment she looked like a god, and for a moment Kail believed they could leave this place and never look back.
Then the ground shook.
The colossus had not finished. It raised its head and let loose a sound that made the little hairs on Kail's arms stand up. The island answered with a low roar and a column of black smoke peeled up from the trees.
Vordi banked hard, a smear of fire against ash, and dove toward them—toward the beach—scales flashing, wings beating like a hundred drums.
Kail grabbed Lizz's hand. "Hold on!" she said. "Hold on and I'll get you the stupid couch eventually, okay? Promise."
Lizz's eyes were wet and gleaming. "Promise," she whispered, and then her lips went slack.
Vordi hit down like a meteor and then folded around them like a hot, feathered shield. The colossus reared, and in its mouth was the promise of everything breaking.
"Run!" Aiden shouted.
They staggered, bleeding, laughing, praying, limping toward a future that might be escape and might be another ending. Vordi launched them like an inferno catapult, wings beating, and for a second Kail felt the sky pull her open.
Then the cliffhanger: as they rose, the island cracked more— a fissure opening directly over the path they'd need to take, spitting fire and something that smelled like old stars. Vordi's wing clipped a falling rock. She faltered.
Kail grabbed Aiden's hand. "If we die, I'm haunting the afterlife," she said, and it was half-joke, half vow.
Aiden squeezed back, teeth bared. "Then haunt me and bring snacks."
They sailed into the unknown, into smoke and light and a future that had no guarantees. The phoenix-bird above them beat an uneven rhythm and the island behind them groaned, alive and angry.