Casmir collapsed onto his back, his breath shallow and strained, watching with dimming eyes as the beast's severed head rolled gently toward the fountain. His limbs twitched, weak with exhaustion. The unnatural power coursing through him ebbed away, leaving behind only pain in his body. His eyes faded from red to amber, his skin pale and clammy, wounds bleeding anew. The healing that should have begun never came—there was no strength left to fuel it.
Every inch of him ached. The claw marks that slashed from his chest to his waist pulsed with raw agony. Darkness swam at the edges of his vision, encroaching fast. His thoughts frayed. His breath slowed. The world felt far away.
He had a task to do, but didn't resist. He let the darkness take him. He allowed a memory consume him.
Light filtered through stained-glass windows, casting pale shadows across the stone floor. Ravens whistled somewhere outside, their harsh crock piercing the silence like memory. A warm breeze stirred the air. It was quiet, peaceful.
Casmir stirred faintly.
He was in a room, on a bed draped with grey sheets.
He remembered this place. How could he forget.
Something shifted at the edge of his senses. Bare feet whispered across stone. Someone entered the chamber, her steps delicate, hesitant. He knew who it was. She moved with eerie grace, like a spirit not bound by the weight of the world. There was no sound except the faint swish of fabric brushing her bare skin.
He heard her breaths, observed them, waited as he watched her close the gap.
She came closer. Her scent —lavender and old firewood, the aroma of something warm. She sat at the edge of the bed, swaying gently towards him. Her blues locked on his gold, resting one hand lightly on his arm.
"You seem to have seen a ghost" her voice was a melody he could never grow tired hearing.
She leaned in close, her skin brushing his. The warmth of her body reached him in pulses. Her fingers ghosted across his chest, trailing around scars, and her breath softened as though she could fall asleep at that instant. Her touch wasn't filled with lust—it was reverent, cautious, like someone reaching out to a relic of something once great.
When her eyes met his, he saw them: deep, mysterious, but clear.
Her voice broke the silence. Barely above a whisper.
"If only this could last....forever." she breathed—more than a whisper, less than a prayer.
It wasn't a wish. Wishes were for fools. This was something else entirely—truth, bitter and trembling, cloaked in disbelief and shame and that most treacherous thing of all: hope.
Casmir didn't answer right away.
He couldn't.
The fire cracked low beside them, its embers painting her face in molten gold. Shadows clung to the corners of her eyes, the same eyes that had seen too much and trusted too little. Her voice still lingered in the air like incense—sweet, smoky, vanishing too fast.
He looked away, jaw clenched. The world outside their hiding place still burned, still hunted them. The sky bore no stars tonight—only a sickle of dying moonlight and the threat of ashfall on the wind.
"No one gets forever," he said finally, voice hoarse. "Not us."
She turned her face to him, and he hated the way her gaze made him feel hollow. As if she were trying to remember him for when he was gone.
"But we deserve it," she said. "Don't we?"
A silence followed. Not peaceful. The kind that waits to break.
Casmir reached for her hand. Just her hand. Just to hold something that felt real.
"I don't know what we deserve anymore," he said. "But if there's a mercy left in this cursed world... let it be this moment."
And for a time—just a heartbeat of eternity—they pretended the world had not ended outside the door.
A sudden scream shattered the stillness, knocking him back to consciousness.
It echoed through the ruined halls of the castle—shrill, distant, but unmistakably human. A sound of horror. Of something awakening.
Casmir's eyes snapped open.
He sat upright, a jolt of pain burning through his body.
Another scream followed.
The hunt wasn't over.
Not yet. He had to hurry. She cannot release another monster.
Casmir rose to his feet, partly healed. Every movement pulling at torn muscles and fresh wounds. The scream that had torn through the air still echoed in his mind, a raw, human sound soaked in terror. Whatever rest he had stolen was gone. The girl—the reason he had come, the reason he had endured the beast—was still inside the castle.
Still in danger. And a danger.
His blade, stained black with the blood of the creature, remained gripped in his hand. He wiped it once across the hem of his cloak, sheathed it across his back, and drew his second blade—a shorter, lighter edge, better suited for tight quarters. His steps were uneven, pain shadowing each footfall, but he moved forward regardless.
The castle loomed before him, its gates still agape, hanging from rusted hinges. Vines strangled the archway, curling like veins across ancient stone. The courtyard behind him was littered with debris—broken stone, shattered glass, and the carcass of the beast that had nearly killed him. He didn't look back.
He crossed the threshold.
Inside, the air was colder. Still. Heavy with old breath and older silence. Moonlight spilled in through broken windows, painting silver scars across the corridor. The walls were lined with portraits, but the faces had all been defaced—eyes scratched out, mouths smeared over in dried blood or mold. The castle didn't just feel abandoned.
It felt dead.
Casmir pushed forward, boots crunching over fractured marble. The scream had come from somewhere deep inside, and the castle twisted like a maze—hallways spiraling into stairwells, stairwells collapsing into galleries. The deeper he moved, the more unnatural the architecture became, as though the castle shifted in resentment of his presence.
He found the first body on the third floor—a man, barely older than a boy, his chest torn open as if clawed from the inside. His eyes were frozen wide, mouth still open in the echo of his final cry. Whatever had done this, it wasn't the beast outside.
There was something else.
A gust of wind shrieked down the corridor ahead, rattling doors, blowing out a nearby torch. Casmir stopped, crouched low, and listened.
Breathing. But not his own.
Shallow. Frightened. It was Human.
He followed it.
The path led through a cracked stone archway into a long hallway—mirrors on either side, all warped and coated in grime. His reflection staggered beside him, fractured, like something not quite human anymore. In the far end, a sliver of candlelight leaked from beneath a wooden door.
Casmir approached, placing his hand flat against the door.
He whispered the Sign of Silence, muting his movement.
Then pushed it open.
The room was small. Candlelight flickered along stone walls, reflecting off a copper basin filled with water. Chains clinked faintly from the far corner.
And there—curled against the wall—was the girl.
She was thin, trembling, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her dress was torn at the shoulders, and blood stained one side of her neck, but she was breathing. Alive.
Casmir stepped inside, slowly.
She looked up. Eyes wide, filled with fear. She backed away.
"No—no more—please, no—"
"It's all right," he said, his voice low. Calm. "I'm not here to hurt you."
"You're not one of them?" she whispered. "You're not a monster?"
"I came to save you."
Her eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"Because someone still remembers who you are." Harod.
Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away. And then she spoke, but not her voice— the voice of something else.
"YOU BELEIVE YOU CAN SAVE HER… FOOL." The darkness enveloped her body, her once frightful face now donning a grim look, one of a predator gazing upon its prey.
"What are you?"
"THE VOICE OF THE END" she smiled. "THE TIME OF THE BLACK SKIES AND THE WEEPING LANDS IS NIGH. THE TIME OF COLLAPSE AND THE TIME OF DEATH"
A scream raged out from her mouth, a shattering force. And beneath the ground, a rumble was felt. The barrier was shaking, failing.
He looked to her, his grip on his short blade tightened. One strike would do—to end it all, to rid this world of this long madness—of more monsters. But still he hesitated, staring hard at the girl.
No, not now, not until he found her.