Dominic didn't move.
He knelt there, Seraphina's body folded against his chest, it felt too heavy. His arms were locked around her like a child clutching something already broken. The shard of wood still jutted from her stomach, dark and wet.
Her eyes were open.
Wide. Unfocused. Empty.
The fluorescent lights above him flickered once, twice, then steadied, casting the scene in harsh, unforgiving white. Every detail was sharp. Everything was wrong.
"...Sera?"
The name came out thin.
No response.
Her head lolled against his shoulder. Her neck had gone slack in that particular way, the way that meant nothing was holding it together anymore.
His fingers tightened, he bit his lip.
"Don't... don't do that."
His voice cracked. Splintered somewhere between command and plea. His throat was raw, scraped hollow by screaming he didn't remember doing. His lips were dry. His tongue tasted like copper and salt.
"You always used to answer me. Call me an asshole again. I just want to hear your voice."
Blood soaked through his clothes. Warm where hers still lingered. Cold where it had already begun to die. It clung to his skin, his hands, his throat, his hair. It was in his mouth. He could taste it. He didn't know when that had happened.
He shifted her slightly, like he was trying to wake her without admitting it. His arms trembled with the effort. Not from weight. She was light. Too light. She'd always mind her weight.
His breathing hitched. Stuttered. Restarted wrong, too shallow, too fast, like his lungs had forgotten the rhythm. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, in his throat, in his temples. It was the loudest thing in the room.
"...You're being annoying."
A laugh tried to form. It didn't. It collapsed into something wet and broken in his throat, a half choked, half sob, not quite either. His mouth stretched into a shape that might have been a smile if he'd had the strength to finish it.
His hand came up to her face, trembling, smearing red across her cheek, like friction alone could undo what had already settled into her bones. His fingers traced the curve of her jaw, the line of her brow, the corner of her mouth.
"Get up. Please."
Nothing.
His pupils shook. Not dilating. Not focusing. Just shaking, tiny, rapid movements that made the room blur at the edges, that made her face swim in and out of clarity.
"Seraphina."
It echoed off the walls that were still wet with rain that had been blood, that was still pooling around his knees, that was still seeping into the cracks between stones.
Black Scene.
His grip tightened around her.
Because that wasn't right.
His eyes dropped.
The shard.
Still buried in her stomach. Just below her ribs. Angled slightly upward. He could see the edge protruding from her torn sweater, dark with blood, slick with it. The fabric around the wound was wet, heavy, clinging to her skin.
His hand was still wrapped around it.
[Feel it. Feel the hatred.]
Empty.
The way it did when the pressure got too much, when the questions got too loud, when the thing inside him pressed too close to the surface. A blank slate. A door slammed shut.
Then it broke.
"No."
Too quiet. A whisper. A breath.
His fingers spasmed, jerking away from the wood like it burned him, like it had only just appeared, like it wasn't something he had driven in himself. His hand came away wet, red, shaking.
[It's your fault]
His breath came faster now, uneven, scraping his throat raw with every inhale. His chest heaved. His shoulders shook. His whole body trembled with a violence he couldn't control.
His gaze snapped back to her face.
"Say something."
Black Scene.
Her eyes were closed. Her lips were parted slightly, just barely, like she'd been about to speak and forgotten how. There was blood on her teeth. Blood on her tongue. Blood on everything.
"Say something!"
His voice cracked, loud now, sharp enough to echo off the walls that still dripped with what was left of the halls. The sound of it startled him. It didn't sound like his voice. It sounded like someone else's.
Still nothing. The silence pressed in from all sides, thick and wet and heavy.
His vision blurred.
Not gradually. All at once.
Tears spilled over, hot and relentless, cutting clean lines through the blood on his cheeks. They dripped from his jaw, fell onto her face, mingled with the crimson already there.
"Why won't you-"
His throat closed.
"Why won't you say anything?"
His head dropped forward, his forehead pressing against hers, his hair falling across her face in tangled strands. He could feel her skin against his.
Cold.
White Scene.
"I'm sorry."
The words came out broken, fractured, barely audible.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"
The shard.
The rain.
Nothing.
He pulled back just enough to see her face. His hand came up again, trembling, and brushed the hair from her eyes. His fingers lingered on her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
Crimson.
The tears kept coming. Hot and endless. They blurred his vision until she was just a shape, just a presence, just the space where a person had been.
"Come back."
His voice was small now.
"Please come back."
His hand pressed flat against her chest, over her heart. He could feel the stillness beneath his palm. The absence.
"I'll do anything."
Another breath. Shallow. Shaking.
"I'll leave the Walkers. I'll run away. I'll-" His voice cracked again. "I'll be better. I'll be whatever you need. Just-"
His forehead pressed against hers again.
"Don't leave again, there's no need to run."
The silence stretched, the fluorescent lights hummed. Somewhere in the building, a pipe dripped. Water. Not blood. The sound was almost normal. Dominic's shoulders shook as his breath came in ragged gasps. His hand, still pressed against her chest, curled into a fist.
Hoshimi stood behind him, with a blank expression on his face, unreadable as if it was carved from stone.
His blade was dim now. Barely holding together. The light along its edge flickered like it was dying alongside everything else in the room.
Dominic didn't look back, but he could feel him.
The weight of his gaze. The stillness of his presence.
"...Hoshimi."
The name came out wrong. Soft. Stripped of everything that had once made it sharp. There was no challenge in it. No mockery. Just exhaustion. "I don't want to die."
His fingers curled into her clothes, gripping the fabric like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the world. "I don't want to die."
His shoulders shook.
"I don't want to understand this and then die."
A wet breath. Shuddering.
"I don't want this to be the last thing-"
His voice broke completely.
"I don't want this to be the last thing I remember."
Tears fell freely now, dripping from his jaw, soaking into her hair, her clothes, her already cooling skin. "I don't want to remember her like this."
Quieter.
"I don't want to remember me like this."
Hoshimi watched.
His expression didn't change. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword. The light along its edge pulsed once.
He didn't speak.
He didn't move.
He just stood there, violet eyes fixed on the boy kneeling in the blood, and waited.
The silence held for three breaths.
Then Edward started to crawl. His legs ended in charred stumps below the thighs, and the floor beneath him was slick with his own blood. But his arms still worked. His hands still clenched into fists.
He dragged himself forward, his elbow scraping against the dirt.
A slow scrape across the blood-slick stones. His face was the color of paper. His eyes, those dark, always-watchful eyes, were fixed on Dominic's back.
"Hoshimi said-" Edward's voice came out cracked, barely a whisper. "Hoshimi told me to watch you."
Dominic didn't turn.
Edward kept crawling.
"Seraphina... she told me once. That you were the only one who made her feel-" His voice broke. He swallowed. Kept going. "She told me that, and I-"
His hand found Dominic's shoulder.
Dominic flinched.
"I'm sorry," His head lifted slightly, tear-streaked face half-turned, crimson eyes meeting Edward's dark ones.
"Shut up."
Edward's fist connected with Dominic's jaw.
The impact was weak, Edward had nothing left, no strength, no mana, just the last dregs of a body that should have died an hour ago. But it was enough. Dominic's head snapped sideways. His grip on Seraphina loosened.
"I hated you," Edward gasped. "For years. For making her look at you like that. For never seeing it. For-" His hand trembled. "For being everything I wasn't."
Dominic didn't fight back. Didn't raise his hands. Just sat there, blood dripping from his split lip, eyes empty.
"But she chose you." Edward's voice cracked. "She always chose you. Even at the end. Even when you-" His throat closed. His fist uncurled.
"Even when you killed her."
The words hung in the air.
Dominic's face crumpled.
"I didn't kill her," he whispered.
Edward hit him again. Weaker this time. Barely a slap.
"I know," Edward's breath came in ragged gasps. "But I've got no one else."
"No, it was my fault, it's my fault for existing in the first place, I'm sorry."
Dominic's voice was raw, scraped clean of everything that had once made it Dominic. No charm. No ease. Just a boy kneeling in blood he'd spilled.
"I don't know how to bring her back. I don't know how to make it not have happened. I don't know how to-" His hands pressed against his chest, over the wound that had already healed, over the thing inside him that had done this. "-how to make it stop."
Edward stared at him.
His fist uncurled completely. His hand fell to his side.
"Shut the hell up."
The fluorescent lights hummed.
Dominic stared at him, tears in his eyes.
"There's a lot wrong with me, and you know that best, I want you to know that I'm so sorry."
"Sorry isn't going to bring her back damn it!"
"Please, I know I've failed you, I'm a colossal failure of a human being even before everything, yet you stayed with me. You always say and do the right thing. I'm a pathetic excuse for a human being."
Dominic held onto Seraphina's hand.
"I'm sorr-"
His head jerked sideways.
Blood sprayed across Edward's face.
Dominic's body folded.
Not slowly. Not dramatically. Just... collapsed. His weight sagged sideways, slipping from Edward's grip, crumpling onto the stones beside Seraphina's still form. His eyes flickered towards Seraphina, his hand reached towards hers but landed too short.
[Ser–]
Hoshimi's eyes widened.
[Reina?]