The frozen river stretched out before them like a jagged scar of glass, cutting through the snowbound land and winding into a lake that glimmered faintly beneath the pale light. Ashfall tested the surface with his boot, listening for cracks. None came. The ice was solid, ancient, the cold pressing down on it for decades. Without another word, he motioned for Calethia to follow, and together they crossed, their steps echoing like distant gunshots in the stillness.
The suburb they had fled was far behind them now. The skeletal houses, the broken streets, the laughter of the Mythbornes were fading ghosts swallowed by the distance. What stretched ahead was different: untamed land, a barrier of wilderness that separated the husks of the outer districts from the towering silhouette of the metropolis. Trees bent beneath the weight of endless frost. Hills of snow rolled into the horizon. And always, beyond it all, the city waited.
Ashfall found his eyes drawn to it whenever the skyline cleared. The metropolis was colossal. Towers still stabbed into the sky, even if broken and half collapsed, their black outlines dwarfing the world around them. The walls of the city stretched so far and so high that they seemed less like stone and metal and more like the jagged bones of some impossible beast. The closer they walked, the more the weight of it settled on him: no matter what awaited inside, the metropolis was a world of its own.
They trudged through the snow in silence until Calethia finally broke it.
"So," she said, her breath steaming. "Earlier. Before everything with the supermarket. You told me we'd talk later. I think now's the time. What really happened back there in the factory with... were their names Ryn... and Daryl?"
Ashfall slowed. He had expected the question eventually, but that didn't make answering any easier. He stared down at the ice beneath his boots, then at the city that loomed in the distance, as if its ruined spires might give him the right words.
"Ryn," he said flatly, "sacrificed Uka, another Timer Agent. He decided Uka served his purpose... and as it wasn't enough, he tried to kill Daryl too."
Calethia's eyes darkened. She didn't interrupt.
"I used the chaos," Ashfall continued. "Ryn was distracted, drunk on his own desperation. I put him down. Clean and quick."
Her gaze never left him. "And Daryl?"
Ashfall exhaled slowly, his breath curling in the cold. "He didn't move. Didn't respond anymore. I don't know if he was already gone or just… too far to come back. Time was running out, and I left him there."
The words fell heavy, but he didn't flinch. He wasn't apologizing, wasn't asking for understanding. It had been his choice. His burden.
Calethia studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she simply nodded once, like she had expected nothing less.
"You don't even try to justify it," she said.
"What's the point?" Ashfall's voice was sharp, but not raised. "The clocks don't care about reasons. The stars don't care about guilt. I made a choice. That's it."
Her lips curved, not into a smile, but something closer to grim recognition. She seemed to accept his answer, or at least accept that it was all she would get.
After a few more steps, she asked, "How do you do it? All of this. Killing, leaving people behind. You look young, but you act like none of it weighs on you."
Ashfall glanced at her, his eyes narrowing. "Funny. I was about to ask you the same thing."
She raised an eyebrow. "Me?"
"You don't look older than me," he said. "You kill when you need to. You don't hesitate. So tell me... how do you do it?"
Calethia opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Ashfall cut in, his tone bitter.
"Don't bother answering. I already know how. The same way I do. You prepare yourself for so long that it becomes the only thing you know how to do."
She tilted her head. "Prepared? You think that makes it easier?"
"No," Ashfall admitted, his voice dropping lower. "But it makes it survivable. Me and my only friend, we trained for this. Years before the Clock of Apocalypse dragged me here. We knew it was coming... maybe not this, not exactly, but something. We taught ourselves to fight, to shoot, to keep going when there's nothing left worth going for."
Calethia's eyes flicked toward him, searching his face. "Your friend. Where is he now?"
Ashfall's jaw tightened. "Gone. The clock took him before it took me."
The silence that followed was heavier than the cold air. For once, Calethia didn't pry. She simply walked beside him, her knife shifting in her hand as she absently cut down a small Minor Mythborne that scuttled across the snow toward them. Its black flesh hissed as it split, the laughter fading into nothing.
She broke the silence eventually, her voice quieter. "I've lived this before. As a child. That's all I'll say."
Ashfall nodded once, not pressing further. He could see in her eyes that talking about it cost her something. Whatever she had seen, whatever she had endured, it was not his to rip open.
For a while, the only sounds were their boots crunching through the snow and the distant moans of the wind against the frozen trees. The city loomed closer, its shadow stretching wider across the landscape.
When they finally reached the last rise of land before the metropolis, they stopped. At their feet, the snow flattened into a vast plain, and across that plain lay the ruins of a wall.
It rose in jagged slabs, blackened with age and frost, towers shattered but still enormous, gates splintered yet defiant. The wall had once encircled the entire metropolis, a fortress meant to keep the world out or maybe to keep whatever was inside from escaping. Now it was broken, gaps gaping like wounds, but even in ruin it radiated power.
Calethia stared at it, her breath shallow. "So this is it."
Ashfall folded his arms, eyes scanning the horizon. He felt the weight of choice pressing down again, just as it had at the crossroad. Ahead lay the unknown, the promise and the threat of the metropolis. Behind, probably only starvation, monsters, and death.
"Yeah," he said finally. "This is it."
They stood side by side in the snow, two shadows against the vast corpse of a wall, staring at the gates that would decide what came next.