The passage beyond the fissure was narrow and low, carved with no care for comfort. The ceiling dipped just enough to force a hunch. The air was stale and cold in a way that felt untouched by breath.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
Evin staggered forward a few steps before his legs buckled. He caught himself with one hand against the wall, his palm sliding on damp stone. His other hand shook so violently he had to press it against his chest just to keep it from fluttering uselessly.
His shadow lagged behind him on the floor, like it needed a moment to remember it was attached.
He stared down at it, chest heaving.
"Stay," he whispered.
The shadow rippled.
Not obeying.
Not resisting.
Just… delayed.
He swallowed, throat raw.
The remnants inside him wouldn't stop moving. They curled and uncurled beneath his skin, shifting like restless birds trapped in too-small ribs. Every breath came out in ragged bursts.
He wasn't sure how far he'd come from the Outer Ward. Steps blurred together. He only stopped when his body refused to take another without collapsing entirely.
So he let it.
He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the cold stone floor, knees drawn up, arms draped over them. His head fell forward, sweat-damp hair hanging over his eyes.
For a moment, the only sound was his breathing.
Then the walls breathed back.
Just a little.
A low, almost inaudible exhale of cold air.
A subtle flex in the stone.
The Veil pressed against him from the inside.
He pressed back.
"Not now," he whispered. "Please… not now."
His voice echoed faintly down the passage.
And then another echo answered it.
"You are shaking."
Not his voice.
Hers.
Evin's head snapped up.
The Bishop stood at the far end of the passage, framed by the cracked threshold he'd staggered through. She hadn't followed closely. She hadn't rushed.
She had simply… arrived. As if she'd been walking behind him this entire time, unhurried, never losing ground.
Her white and gold robes were unruffled, unmarred by dust or blood. Her hands were folded neatly in front of her. Her expression was almost kind.
"How…?" Evin rasped. "Why are you—"
His words tangled.
Her voice came again, light and almost fond:
"Broken things should not run."
Something in him flinched at that word. Broken.
He gritted his teeth. "Stay away from me."
A second voice spoke the same words at the same time:
"Stay away from me."
It was her voice again—
but not from the end of the corridor.
From inside his head.
From inside the remnants.
The Bishop did not move. She tilted her head slightly, as though studying an interesting fracture in glass.
"You hear them, don't you?" she asked softly. "Their memories of me."
The remnants shivered.
The corridor flickered at the edges of Evin's vision. For a heartbeat, he wasn't in the passage with her. He was somewhere else—kneeling in a sanctified chamber, her hand on his head.
No. Not his head. Someone else's.
Her voice from that memory:
"You did the right thing, coming to me."
Her voice in the present, overlapping:
"You are not alone, Evin. They trusted me, too."
He dug his fingers into his hair, forcing his eyes shut.
"Get out of my head."
Her footsteps echoed once as she took a single step closer.
"I am not in your head."
But her voice inside him disagreed.
She spoke again, softer, from a dozen different memories:
You are so brave.
You are so tired.
Let me take this from you.
He didn't know which words were now and which were then. He didn't know which belonged to which victim. They all sounded like her. They all felt like pity edged with inevitability.
His breathing quickened.
"You can't carry all of them," the Bishop said. "Look at yourself."
He did.
His hands weren't fully his own.
For just a moment, his fingers blurred at the tips, dissolving into shadow, edges fraying like burnt cloth. His forearms were streaked with faint, dark lines beneath the skin—like veins that had forgotten they should be red.
He jerked his sleeves down, as if he could hide it from her.
Her lips curved.
"You're unraveling."
The remnants pushed against his ribs, against his throat, against his skull. Words pressed forward, trying to escape his mouth. Names he didn't know. Pleas he couldn't voice.
He clamped his jaw shut until his teeth hurt.
The Bishop's gaze softened.
"I don't want you to shatter," she said quietly. "I did not want that for Rell, either."
The name hit like a blow.
Evin's head snapped up. "Don't say his name."
"There it is," she murmured. "The fracture that bleeds."
Her eyes glimmered silver in the dim light.
"He is why you cling so desperately," she went on. "Why you fight the inevitable. Why you keep trying to exist as one person instead of what you are becoming."
Her voice from another memory overlapped, a whisper from a remnant's last moments:
"Let go. You don't have to be anything anymore."
Evin squeezed his eyes shut, seeing flashes he didn't want:
Rell in the catacombs, striking the burning remnant with a broken torch.
Rell catching Evin when he collapsed against the wall.
Rell forcing water into Evin's hands, refusing to leave him behind.
Rell dragging Evin up the stairs when his legs failed.
Rell standing between Evin and the cleric's blade in the evaluation chamber.
Rell gasping, "Move!" even as the erasure light swallowed him.
His chest spasmed.
"You took him from me," he whispered.
The Bishop's expression did not harden. It softened further, impossibly.
"He took himself," she replied. "He leapt into a fire that was never meant for him. Do you truly believe I forced him to stand between you and the blade?"
Yes.
No.
Evin's thoughts lurched.
The remnants inside him flared with anger and grief. A dozen echo-memories surfaced at once: people stepping in front of others, sacrificing themselves, praying as they died.
The Bishop's voice, singing softly above their endings.
"You make them sound noble," she said. "You call it sacrifice. Love. Loyalty."
She shook her head, almost sadly.
"It is cruelty. To the self. To those left behind."
Her voice from memory:
"Let me silence the pain. Let me make it stop."
He couldn't tell who she was speaking to — someone in the past, or him.
"You are suffering because you resist," she said. "You resist what you are. You resist what the Veil is making of you."
Her voice from memory:
"Just let go."
"You resist the only ending that spares the world."
"The only ending that spares you," Evin rasped.
"I am not afraid of the Veil," she replied.
He couldn't breathe.
"You are so tired," she said gently. "Let me help you carry it. Give me your grief. Give me Rell. Let me take him from you completely."
His hand rose toward hers—
Not because he wanted to.
Because breaking felt easier than standing.
His fingers brushed hers—
And then the memory hit.
Rell Saving Him in the Catacombs
Rell, breathing hard, blood on his brow, gripping Evin's cloak with both hands:
"Don't shut down on me," he demands.
His voice cracks.
He shakes Evin once, hard.
"You hear me? You don't get to die down here. If I'm on my feet, you're on yours. That's the deal."
The torch sparks weakly beside them.
Rell's eyes burn with fear — not of the remnant, not of the Church, but of losing Evin.
He pulls Evin upright, shoulder under his arm, nearly collapsing from the effort.
"I'm staying," Rell whispers. "Even if it kills me."
Memory fades.
Evin's hand drops sharply away from the Bishop's.
He recoils as though burned.
Her eyes narrow.
"You are making this far worse than it needs to be," she says.
"No," Evin whispers. "I'm keeping my promise."
He forces himself upright.
Every limb trembling.
Every breath a fight.
"I'm not giving him up."
The Veil inside him ripples — not peacefully, but with a sudden clarity. The remnants recoil from the Bishop's presence. The shadow behind him draws close like a cloak.
The Bishop's voice loses its gentleness entirely.
"You will break," she says quietly. "And when you do, you will come to me."
She steps backward into the shadows —
and vanishes.
Evin stands alone in the silence, shaking violently but still standing.
"I remember you, Rell," he breathes. "I'm still here."
And from deep within the Veil, faint and fragile, an echo answers:
"…and I stayed."
He swallows hard, blinking tears, and forces himself to take a step.
Then another.
Toward whatever comes next.