William sat in the frozen wastend, his breath curling in the cold air, though he barely felt it. His body, still naked, still too heavy with the weight of its own flesh, flickered with the strange fmes that had not left him since the Ashborn’s arrival. They licked at his skin, harmless but unnatural, casting his shadow in twisting shapes across the ice.

  Auracea was gone. She had left nothing but scorched earth in her wake, the molten cracks she’d carved into the ground still pulsing with heat. The snow around him melted in slow, zy trickles, steam curling into the air like dying spirits.

  She had gone to fight. To die, most likely.

  William did nothing.

  Zephar stood nearby, silent as well. He hadn’t spoken since Auracea had vanished into the distance, hadn’t goaded or mocked him as William might have expected. Instead, the master of chaos merely watched, the corner of his lips twitching as though he found William’s indecision amusing.

  But William didn’t care. He didn’t care about the smirking god, the fire on his skin, the frozen corpse of the world around him.

  He had stopped caring a long time ago.

  He was the st man alive. He had watched the world die—watched people die. And in the end, none of it bothered him.

  So why, now, was it so hard to let her go?

  He exhaled, and the past returned to him like a phantom.

  The hospital room. The air had been sterile, the sheets too white, the beeping of machines a cruel countdown. His wife had been so small in that bed, her fingers delicate in his as she smiled at him. “You don’t have to carry everything alone, Will.” She had closed her eyes after that, and when she opened them again, she wasn’t really there anymore.

  The river. The child had been screaming, thrashing, his tiny fingers cwing for something—anything. William had reached for him, had grasped that small, fragile hand. But the current had been too strong. Their fingers had slipped apart. He had watched the boy vanish beneath the surface, bubbles rising where his head had been.

  The bckened corpses. The fire had eaten everything. The people he had tried to save were no longer people, just husks of burnt meat. He had pulled them from the rubble anyway, even when their skin peeled off in his hands, even when the smell made him sick.

  One after another. Over and over again.

  He had failed.

  The wind howled. Somewhere in the distance, the earth rumbled.

  William’s hands clenched. His stomach twisted in something that was neither hunger nor pain.

  Auracea is going to die.

  He could feel it, sense it in the air, just as he had sensed death so many times before.

  It should have meant nothing to him.

  But it did.

  He was tired—so fucking tired—of existing, but now he had been cursed with some kind of immortality that not even ck of oxygen sunlight could snuff out.

  He stood, though his body resisted him. His joints ached under the weight of his own flesh. His stomach sagged, his limbs were thick, slow to respond. He had not been fast enough back then, and he was even slower now.

  The fmes on his skin fred.

  Zephar tilted his head, watching him curiously. “Oh? You’re actually going?”

  William ignored him.

  He took a step. Another.

  And then he ran.

  The frozen wastend shifted as he moved, ice giving way to molten rivers where Auracea’s path had burned through the permafrost.

  He followed it, the heat from his own body rising with each step, steam curling from his skin. The cold should have bitten into him, should have cut through the softness of his flesh. But the fmes—his fmes—kept it at bay.

  It wasn’t long before he reached the battlefield.

  And it was hell.

  Auracea stood in the center, a bzing beacon of fury, her golden fire roaring against the darkness. But she was losing.

  The Ashborn did not just attack—they consumed.

  They moved like a tide of living magma, their bodies flickering between solid, charred husks and liquid fire. They dragged themselves from the cracks in the earth, their limbs twisting unnaturally, glowing veins pulsing with molten light.

  Auracea burned as she fought, but the world fought against her. Her own power was failing.

  The nd beneath her should have answered her call, but the ice had sealed its lifeblood away. This world was dead. And she was its spirit, fighting alone against creatures that thrived in its ruin.

  One Ashborn reached for her—an obsidian arm stretching, the heat warping the air around it. She spun, fire trailing her fingers, severing the limb with a ssh of golden fme. The creature shrieked, its molten blood spraying into the air—and then congealing, reforming, shifting.

  They didn’t die.

  They could melt, they could break, but they reformed.

  And there were too many.

  Another came from behind. Auracea twisted, fire igniting along her arm as she drove her fist into its chest. The impact sent ripples of molten rock spilling outward, but before she could finish it—another grabbed her.

  And then another.

  They swarmed, dragging her down, their limbs coiling around her, smothering her light beneath waves of boiling darkness.

  William’s breath caught.

  Her fme flickered.

  A moment of hesitation.

  And then—they crushed her into the ice.

  Auracea let out a choked, gasping sound—not a scream, but a struggle.

  The earth shuddered beneath her. A weak tremor. The st pulse of a dying god.

  William did nothing.

  For a moment.

  And then—

  A sound.

  Not a scream. Not a voice.

  Something deeper.

  It rumbled through his chest, vibrating through his bones.

  His fmes fred.

  The first massive Ashborn turned to face him, its molten gaze locking onto his glowing form. It had no mouth, but William felt its hunger.

  It lunged.

  And William, with nothing but his bare hands, caught it.

  The impact should have sent him sprawling. Should have burned him.

  But the fire in his veins—**his fire—**didn’t reject it.

  It consumed it.

  The Ashborn shrieked.

  Not like before. Not in the way molten rock cracked and groaned when Auracea burned them.

  This was different.

  This was fear.

  The fire on his skin surged.

  The Ashborn melted in his grip.

  The others hesitated.

  William stepped forward, the ice beneath his feet hissing into steam.

  Auracea, still kneeling, lifted her head. Her eyes, wide with shock, met his.

  Zephar’s ughter echoed through the battlefield.

  “Oh,” the god of humans purred.

  “Now this is interesting.”