The tunnel breathed. Its walls sweated a cold that sank into their bones, and every step of Aisha and Rasen echoed like the phantom beat of a heart. The hospital's light had vanished, swallowed by an unnatural darkness.
"Rasen…" Aisha squeezed his hand, halting. The echo of her voice multiplied, as if the tunnel itself was repeating her fear.
He felt the weight of her gaze before he turned. Shadows writhed at the edges of his vision, swaying to a whisper that came from nowhere. The relic under his shirt vibrated, heating until it burned.
"This isn't just a tunnel," Rasen muttered, running his fingers along the wall. The stone yielded beneath his touch—liquid, gelatinous—before hardening again.
Aisha recoiled. Where her back had brushed the wall, the outline of broken wings was imprinted.
A thunderous crack split them apart.
The tunnel stretched, its walls undulating like the intestines of a beast. Rasen shouted her name, but the sound tore into a thousand fragments. When the space stopped pulsating, he was alone.
A figure rose from nothing: tall as a cathedral pillar, violet eyes gleaming beneath a black turban. Steven smelled of incense and gunpowder, a scent that stung Rasen's eyes."How curious," Steven said, studying the relic now dangling outside Rasen's shirt. "Luciano Kerens branding his pups."
Rasen struggled, but his muscles refused to obey. The pliers he'd stolen from the hospital slipped from his pocket with a pathetic clink."If I killed you…" Steven stepped on the tool, crushing it to scrap, "…I'd lose a rather entertaining pawn."
He tossed a towel at Rasen's feet."Wash off the fear. We'll talk after."
The icy water revealed his wounds: purple ribs, flayed knuckles, scars he didn't remember earning. He scrubbed until he bled, but Aisha's bergamot scent clung to his skin like a curse.
In the next room, Steven waited with Sanathiel's sword pressed to Aisha's throat. The blade hummed with an ancient hunger."Train. Break your limits. Or I'll break hers." He nicked her skin, and a crimson bead slid down the steel.
Rasen bit his tongue until the taste of iron drowned his cry. That taste stayed with him through every blow to the sandbags, every dawn of broken bones.
Aisha counted cracks in the ceiling of her cell. Three hundred and forty-seven. One for every minute Rasen spent in the gym, fighting shadows that screamed with his voice.
She found him one night, kneeling by her bed like a penitent. The bandages on his hands had stained the sheets with rust."I do this for you," he whispered, pressing his forehead to her knee.
She buried her fingers in his hair, feeling the relic burn between them. A fleeting vision struck her: Rasen on his knees before Luciano, accepting a dagger carved with the mark S.S.V."Stop lying to me," she begged, tracing the outline of his split lips. "Or one day I won't recognize the man who returns."
He caught her hand, sealing the promise with a kiss that already mourned its own ending.