The silence at altitude did not hold. It was never meant to hold.
In the thin, frozen air high above the ruined stronghold, Arthur Kaine stared down the length of Valor's blue-green edge. The cold, razor-sharp steel was pressed flush against the metallic skin of his throat, close enough that the low, steady hum of the weapon's voltage vibrated directly into his jawbone. Lucy Grey hung before him in the open sky, her face drenched in a thick, sticky mask of her own blood, her right bicep torn open, her armor fractured and hanging by ruin. She looked like a nightmare hauled out of a storm, her eyes burning with an absolute, blinding white current that refused to dim.
For two seconds, Arthur did not breathe. The shame of the position was a physical weight, cold and rancid in his chest. To be caught. To be measured, outmaneuvered, and held at the tip of a weapon by a girl who had not existed when he was already buried in legend.
