The man in her arms thrashed, teeth gnashing against her throat. He bit at her skin, his fevered breath hot against her neck. Yet for all his efforts, she remained untouched. The collar of her shirt showed only dampness where his mouth had been, the skin beneath smooth and unbroken. “I’m here, love,” she whispered into his ear.

  His gaze had gone milky, distant. She had kept vigil through it all. Through the climbing fever that left him shivering, through the screams that tore his throat, through whispered promises she had known were lies even as she spoke them. None of it changed anything.

  The dead crashed against her. Fingers snapped backward on contact. Jaws clamped onto whatever they could reach, only for teeth to crack and splinter, mouths tearing open under the strain. A forehead smashed into her temple, hard enough to shatter bone. The corpse that had struck her recoiled, its skull collapsing inward as it crumpled at her feet.

  She trembled as she held him, traced the lines of his face—features she had loved so deeply, now warped by whatever sickness had claimed him. And still, beneath the distortion, she could find him. They had never knelt before one another. Never spoken vows. Their love had been simpler: quiet dinners, nights spent inside. He had lived unburdened by cosmic design, unaware that he had given his heart to the Goddess’s chosen warrior, the daughter of dawn. With him, she had known happiness.

  Now it is gone.

  She looked up at the dark speck hovering over the city, throbbing like a malignant heart. Glass, metal, and stone defying gravity as they sat against the cloudless sky.

  Her skin split with radiance, the glow beneath its surface rupturing outward like solar flares. The dead staggered back, rotting faces illuminated as shadows burned away. A column of brilliance speared skyward from her body. The infected ceased to exist—their forms dissolving into dust, frozen forever in their final, futile motions. When the light receded, the street lay bare but for blackened silhouettes scorched into the concrete.

  * * *

  Lilly had taken Reina away on his command, a cruel request, but he had no other choice. He’d searched the cluster of survivors, attention snapping from face to face, hunting for that relieved, crooked smile. It wasn’t there. Midori was dead.

  His fingers curled into a fist. Muscles knotted beneath his skin as his teeth ground together. He lowered his face toward the ground. Never again. That was what he had sworn.

  Hayate. Tetsuya. Yuka. Midori. Reina.

  All dead.

  The sound came moments later, piercing not his ears but something deeper. Bells. Holy bells. The ethereal toll that had silenced battlefields in an instant, leaving mages frozen where they stood. “So,” he said, “you were alive.”

  Ren turned toward her silhouette against the blinding sun that crowned her head, golden curls cut sharply at her jaw. Her white-and-gold suit caught the daylight, red trim stark as fresh blood against snow. Only her eyes remained unchanged: molten gold flecked with starlight.

  Evelyn the Promised.

  She held the Sword of Saint Luciann. The unconventional, awkward blade should have dragged her arms earthward, yet she balanced it with the indifference of someone holding a tiny knife. It rose between them, its tip aligning with his heart without hesitation.

  “You seem like you’ve done well for yourself.”

  A shadow crossed her face. The faintest crease formed between her brows. “What have you done?”

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  “The only thing I could do.”

  “It wasn’t enough to disrupt the balance of one world. You had to poison another?”

  He closed his eyes, exhaustion settling into every inch of him. He had nursed a secret wish in the darkest recesses of his mind, one he never fully admitted. That Leon’s spell had taken only him. That she had been left behind in the void between worlds. That the universe might grant him that single mercy.

  It hadn’t.

  He was a fool to think he could vanish into the mundane rhythms of this world. Even if his body had not betrayed him, even if he had found acceptance here, she was the real reason he would never belong. She would have hunted him to the edge of existence. And when she found him, she would destroy everything he had built. Her hatred was not merely emotion. It was doctrine. Purpose. The axis around which her existence revolved.

  “Evelyn. Today’s been hell.”

  Her lip twitched.

  “Me too.”

  She attacked.

  Ren reacted much too late. The phantom limb rose first, confused signals racing through his body. Her molten gaze locked onto him, burning with the cold, merciless clarity of an executioner. The distance vanished.

  His fingers unfurled. The runway imploded beneath Evelyn, collapsing into a jagged crater. The shockwave tore outward, ripping loose anything not anchored. She hovered inches from him, suspended in crushing pressure, sword arm trembling as invisible weight pinned her in place.

  “Weak.”

  Her elbow drove forward. The impact detonated across his face. The world dissolved into motion and pain as his body was hurled end over end. He struck once, skidded, tore through the terminal wall in an explosion of glass. Screams followed him in. He dragged himself upright, copper flooding his mouth as blood ran from his nose. Through the haze of dust, people scattered or hid, huddled shapes crouched behind shattered cover. He rose onto one knee and swayed, balancing tenuously amid the debris.

  He saw Aki. Haruka. Terror had drained their faces of all color.

  “Did you save these people?” Evelyn hovered above them, feet resting on nothing, sunlight cutting around her form as wind tugged at her curls. Her gaze swept the survivors below. “Are you protecting them, devil?”

  He launched. The ground detonated beneath him as gravity inverted, his body becoming a missile. He slammed into her shoulder first, the impact cracking the air as he drove her higher, forcing distance. They climbed together until Evelyn stopped them. Momentum died in an instant. The sudden halt tore a gasp from his lungs as her knee buried itself in his gut, folding him before she kicked him free. He tumbled, sky and earth trading places in a violent blur of blue and gray.

  “You’ve failed.”

  The sword fell. A crescent of pure radiance tore free, wide enough to swallow the runway whole. His fingers splayed. Space hardened before him as the arc struck an invisible wall, the collision erupting into a thunderous blast. The terminal shuddered under the strain.

  “Stop!” The plea ripped from his throat before vanishing into the open sky. “They’re innocent!”

  The breeze stirred the edges of her immaculate suit.

  “We don’t belong here.”

  Her words slid beneath his skin, finding the hollows where certainty should have lived. How many nights had he lain awake beneath that same thought? How many times had his reflection looked back at him like an intruder?

  “These people are already dead. Were it not for you, they would have died on the first day.”

  “That’s bullshit!”

  “If you truly wanted to protect anything,” she said, “you should have kept to yourself.”

  Her blade blurred. Each swing birthed a point of light, burning like stolen stars. Only he could follow the dozen strikes as they ignited the air. Overlapping arcs of white-hot annihilation. Gravity surged from his palm as space warped and bent. The light crashed against his barrier, detonating into blinding coronas. Each collision fed the next, a chain reaction of explosive force. Smoke billowed outward until the world beyond his fingertips ceased to exist.

  His arm shook. Cold seeped into his limbs as if winter had claimed his veins. Warmth traced his upper lip, crimson droplets staining his chest. Already?

  A single ray pierced the smoke. It screamed past his shoulder and struck the terminal. The building erupted—glass atomized, steel twisted, screams cut short beneath the roar. “No!” He spun, panic fracturing his thoughts. Where were they? He needed to see them—needed proof—the air shifted, Evelyn appeared overhead, sword raised, its edge singing with living light.

  The purest affinity.

  Life itself.

  He clawed at what remained, desperate to steal momentum from the blow. The collision consumed him in white fury before hurling him earthward. Concrete shattered as his body carved a trench through the runway.

  There was nothing left. No reserve. He had spent nearly everything, and what remained unraveled like rotted cloth. There was no making it out of this for him. “And after?” Ren demanded, spitting out blood and forcing himself upright. “After you kill me. After you kill them. What then?”

  She touched down before him without a sound. “There is no after,” she said. “This is the end. For all of us.”