The ice shard melted in my hand the moment it touched his heart. It should have shattered. It should have broken against his chest like every other sword had broken for ten thousand years. My ice sword was already gone. I had used every drop of devil power my mother gave me to make that last sword and it broke when I saved Nickolas. So all I had left was this. A small dirty shard from Jessica's broken ice door. A piece of her own prison. It did not stab like steel. It sank like water. I watched my own hand disappear into his chest. There was no resistance. No blood. Just a cold that burned so deep it stopped being cold. The Devil's eyes went wide. For the first time since I met him he looked surprised. He looked down at the hole in his chest where black smoke was pouring out.
"Impossible..." he whispered. His voice was no longer the voice of a thousand souls. It was just one voice. Old. Tired. Cracked. "I am the beginning... I am the end... I am the fire that burned your world... you cannot kill me with... with a broken piece of nothing... with a human girl's trash..." Behind me Jessica was still on the ground. I could hear her breathing. For ten years I never heard her breathe. The Ice Queen did not need to breathe. Now I could hear every broken breath she took. Every hiccup. Every small gasp like a child who has cried too much. She was not crying anymore. She was just staring at her empty hands. No power left. No frost crawling up her arms. No blue light in her veins. Just a human girl who just killed her little sister for the second time. I turned my back to the Devil. Let him choke. Let him watch his kingdom fall. I walked to Jessica. My own power was gone too. The devil blood in me was quiet. After I made that last ice sword it went silent. Maybe it died. Maybe it finally left me alone. My hands were shaking. Not from cold. From being human again.
Nickolas was already kneeling beside her. His white shirt was torn, his wings were bleeding black blood. The Devil's claws had ripped deep into his back. He tried to touch her shoulder but she moved away from him. She did not want light. She did not want comfort. She wanted the dark. "Jessica," I called her name softly. The way I used to call her when we were kids and she was hiding in the closet because she was scared of thunder. She looked up at me. Her brown eyes were red. Not ice blue anymore. Just brown. Ordinary brown. Red from tears. Swollen. Human. "I did it Tadashi," she said. Her voice was hoarse. Like she had been screaming for hours. "I killed her. Again. I felt her. Inside the door. I felt her hands. She was so small. She was so cold." I pulled her closer but she kept staring at the place where the door was. The place where the black door used to float. Now there was only ash and a faint circle of melted ice on the ground. "I heard her," she whispered. "Maya. She called her big sister. She called me nee-chan. Ten years I did not hear that voice. And the first time I hear am again na inside Devil door. And I still close am. I crush my own sister with my own hands." She called her big sister. After ten years locked in a dark door cold and alone the first thing Maya said was not help me or I hate you or why did you leave me. She called her big sister. Like she still trusted her. Like she still loved her even after ten years in darkness. And Jessica had to be the one to shut that door forever. That is what broke her. Not the Devil. Not the war. Not losing her powers. It was that one sentence.
Her whole body shake for my chest. No ice again just human tears wey hot like fire. I hold her tight. I felt her tears soak my shirt. For ten years her tears were ice. They froze on her cheeks before they could fall. Now they were hot. They burned. "He lied to me for ten years," she whispered into my shirt. Her tears were warm. Her voice vibrating against my chest. "I thought I left her in the fire. When our house burned. I thought I ran and left her. I thought it was my fault. I lived every day hating myself. I became a monster because I thought I was already a monster. I told myself if I am already a demon who leaves her sister to die, then I will be the best demon. I will be the coldest. I will be the Ice Queen. And he was the one who took her. He was there in the fire. He took her soul and kept her inside that door for ten years just to make me stronger... He fed me her screams for ten years and called it power..."
Behind us the Devil made a noise. A crack. Like a mountain breaking from inside. Like a dam breaking after ten thousand years of holding too much water. We both turned. The hole in his chest was getting bigger. The black smoke was being pulled out violently now. And in that smoke I saw faces. Millions of them. The souls he had collected for ten thousand years. Men. Women. Children. Devils. Angels. Dragons. All swirling out of his chest like a storm. They were flying out and into the sky. And as each one left the Devil got smaller. His shadow got shorter. The red sky above us started to crack. The clouds he made for ten thousand years started to break.
The Devil fell to his knees. His body was shrinking fast now. His tall body that touched the clouds was collapsing. His horns broke off and fell into the ash with a heavy thud. His skin cracked like dry mud under the sun. His claws broke. His armor fell. "No... I collected you for ten thousand years... you are mine... you are my power... you cannot leave me... I gave you purpose..." he begged them reaching his shaking hands up to the sky trying to grab the souls back. But they did not listen. They flew past him without looking. One soul stopped though. A very small soul. A little girl with short black hair just like Jessica's when she was small. She floated in front of him for a second. The Devil tried to grab her. But she looked at him and I swear she smiled. Then she flew away too. Straight up into the blue. Nickolas stood up. His white wings opened wide despite the pain. Blood was still dripping but light was coming out of the wounds now instead of blood. The light from his wings made the fleeing souls glow brighter. Like stars being born.
"Look what you built your kingdom on," Nickolas said to him. His voice was soft but it carried across the whole ash field. "Stolen lives. Stolen sisters. Stolen children who called for their big sisters. Of course it will collapse. No wall built on stolen bricks stands forever." The Devil looked up at me one last time. His eyes were no longer black pits full of fire. They were just empty holes. Empty and scared. Like a child who is alone for the first time. "Tell me... Tadashi... half-devil boy... was it worth it? To lose your sword... to lose your mother's gift... to lose your power... to become weak... to become human... for one girl? For one lost sis who already killed her own blood?" I looked down at Jessica in my arms. Weak. Human. Broken. Shaking from cold because she had no ice to protect her anymore. But alive. And free for the first time in ten years. Her brown eyes looking up at me waiting for my answer too.
"Yes," I said to the Devil. I said it loud so Jessica could hear it too. "It was worth every drop. Every sword. Every power. I would lose it all again tomorrow if it means she gets to be weak again." As the last soul left his body his body turned to ash. Black ash that the wind carried away. Nothing left. Ten thousand years of fear gone in ten seconds. No explosion. No big final attack. Just ash. Like he was never there. Silence. The red sky was turning blue again. I could see the real sun for the first time in my life. Not the red sun he made. The real white sun. Warm. Jessica tried to stand but her legs failed. They were not used to being human legs. They were used to floating on ice. I caught her before she hit the ground. Her body was so light.
"I can't... I can't feel my legs," she whispered panicked. Her hands grabbing my arms tight. "My ice... I can't... Tadashi I can't feel my ice anymore. It's gone. I am empty. There is nothing inside me. I am hollow." "You are human now," Nickolas said softly behind us. He walked over and knelt with us. He put his bleeding hand over her heart. Light came out. Warm light. "You will be cold. You will be tired. You will be weak. You will get sick. You will get hungry. You will grow old. That is what you wanted ten years ago Jessica. When you sat in your room and prayed to not be special. To be normal. To be weak like other girls. You prayed for this." Jessica looked at her shaking hands. Human hands. No frost. Just skin that was turning red from the cold wind. Veins that were red not blue. Nails that were broken. She laughed. It was a broken laugh mixed with tears and snot and ash. A completely un-beautiful human laugh. No longer the perfect laugh of the Ice Queen.
"I am weak again..." she whispered and she was smiling while crying at the same time. "I am so weak... Tadashi I am so cold... I have not been cold in ten years... I forgot how cold feels... I forgot how pain feels... I can feel my heart beating... it hurts..." Then she looked at me. Really looked at me. Like she was seeing me for the first time without ice in her eyes. "But you stayed," she said. "Even when I had nothing. Even when I was useless. Even when I was a monster who killed her own sister twice. You still stayed." I did not know what to say. I am not good with words. Nickolas is the one with words. I am just good with staying. So I just turned around knelt in the ash and said what I used to say when we were kids when she was tired after school and did not want to walk home.
"Climb." She climbed onto my back. Her arms around my neck. Her body was light. So light now without the ice in her veins. So warm. So fragile. Like she could break if I hold too tight. Like a lost sis I finally found after ten years searching. Nickolas walked beside us as we left the battlefield. He put his torn wing over us to block the cold wind. The sun was coming up fully now. The first sunrise without the Devil in ten thousand years. The ash field behind us was already growing small green weeds. Life was coming back. "Where do we go now?" I asked him. I was so tired my legs were shaking too. He smiled. His face was dirty but his eyes were bright. "Anywhere you want. Let's just go home. Let's go back to the walls. The others are waiting." Jessica rested her head on my shoulder. Her breath was warm against my neck. Warm and uneven.
"I just want to sleep," she whispered into my ear. Her voice so small. "For the first time without hearing her cry inside my head. Will you stay until I wake up? Will you stay even if I am weak forever? Even if I never get my ice back?" And I would be there when she woke up. Because we were weak now too. Nickolas and me. No devil blood. No angel light. Just three weak humans walking away from the end of the world. And weak people stay together. We walked away from the ash field into the sunrise heading back to the walls.