The tent was quiet save for the soft rustle of fabric and the muted clink of metal bowls. A single lantern burned near the flap, casting long shadows against the canvas walls. Outside, the muffled sounds of camp life faded into the distant crackle of dying firewood. The scent of rotten blood still clung to Reivo like smoke after a fire—thick, iron-rich, impossible to wash away.
He sat on the edge of a narrow cot, stripped to the waist, his skin streaked with grime and half-dried gore. Deep red smeared across his shoulder, matted in the ridges of his ribs, caking his arms like war paint. The gash across his side was angry and raw, weeping slightly as Lira worked.
She dipped a cloth into a bowl of warm water, wrung it out, then dabbed gently at the wound. Her hands were careful, steady, though her eyes kept flicking to his face. The piercing stare. The way his muscles didn't flinch, didn't twitch, even under pain.
"You shouldn't have gone in alone," she said softly, finally breaking the silence.
Reivo didn't answer.
Lira pressed the cloth a little harder. "It was reckless."
He turned his head slightly, eyes like winter. "And who would've gone?" he asked, his voice rough—like a blade dragged through gravel. "You? The princess? The soldiers? No. You all were too scared. You prefer watching a village burn to risking anything yourselves. Safe behind orders and excuses."
Lira stiffened. The words cut, not because they were cruel, but because they were true.
"…You're right," she said after a pause. Her voice was small, but not weak. "But what did it change? What did you get from this? Would anything have been different if we got there a little sooner?"
Reivo looked at her then—really looked at her. His eyes were shadowed, dark green rimmed in exhaustion, pain, and something deeper. Something seething.
"What changed?" he said slowly, his voice like a crack spreading in glass. "There were children. Women. Hidden in the temple ruins of that village. If I hadn't gone in, if I'd waited for orders, they'd all be dead by now. Burned. Torn apart. Fed to the things that crawled out of that hole in the earth."
He leaned forward, every line of his body taut, trembling with barely-contained fury.
"Now? Because someone acted—they have a chance. Someone to restart with."
Lira hesitated, lips parted. The firelight flickered against her face.
"Yes," she said finally. "But was it worth it?"
Reivo stared at her. Then—he laughed.
It was a dry, bitter sound. No humor in it. Just exhaustion and disbelief.
"See?" he said, rising slowly from the cot. The cloth slipped from her hands. "You people from the Reign… You always ask that, don't you? Was it worth it?" He spat the words like poison. "If someone isn't Awakened, they're just… what? A number? A line on a casualty report?"
"Reivo—"
"Do you know," he cut her off, voice rising, "how it feels to lose everything and not be able to do anything?! To watch people you love—your blood—die screaming while you can't even lift a weapon?!"
His eyes were burning now. Not with tears, but with something colder and sharper.
"No," Lira whispered. "I don't. But I think—losing yourself for strangers... it's not right either."
His breath caught, chest heaving. His fists clenched.
"You think I wanted this?"
He took a step forward. The shadows behind him seemed to stretch—unnatural, flickering against the lamplight like living things.
"A year ago" he snarled. "A year ago, and I watched my village fall. My father—torn apart in front of me. My mother—screaming as a giant crushed her like an insect. My baby brother's blood on the walls, my sister... My sister..." He couldn't bring himself to say it, "...I couldn't do a thing. I got tortured. I survived. And you think I'm supposed to forget that just because I'm 'useful' now?"
Lira's eyes widened. She was trembling—not from fear of him, but from the pressure rising in the air around them.
Then it came.
A whisper.
At first, she thought it was her imagination. But no—there it was again. Faint. Slithering. Voices, not his, curling from the corners of the tent.
You could have saved them.
She doesn't understand.
They'll use you like a dog, then chain you when you bite.
Lira gasped and stumbled back. "Reivo…"
He didn't seem to hear her. Or perhaps he did—but he couldn't stop it.
The shadows coiled tighter around him. His aura—the cursed Dreamless Murmur—pulsed with sickly energy. The lantern's light bent away from him, warping, dimming.
They'll never see you as human.
Just a blade. A beast.
"You hear them, don't you?" he whispered. His voice had changed—lower, deeper. Like it echoed with something else beneath it. "That's what it does. This curse. It feeds on what's already broken. And I was broken a long time ago."
Lira's hands were shaking. "Reivo, stop. You're not—this isn't you."
He turned toward her. The whites of his eyes were darkened, tinged faintly red. But his gaze was still there. Still his—angry, grieving, but not gone.
"It is me," he said, quieter now. "It's what they made me into. What the Reign let happen. What those monsters smiled at."
Silence. Only their breaths.
Then Reivo exhaled sharply, stepped back, and the oppressive weight in the air slowly began to lift. The shadows shrank. The whispers faded.
He ran a hand over his face, smearing blood across his cheek, and sat down heavily on the cot. Just a boy again. Angry. Exhausted. Drowning.
Lira swallowed hard, then knelt in front of him. Her voice trembled, but she spoke anyway.
"You're right," she said. "You shouldn't have had to become this. And I didn't understand before. But I'm trying."
Reivo didn't look at her.
She reached out, slowly, and picked up the cloth again. Dabbed once more at his side—so gently now it was barely felt.