Kaname's POV: The Longest Night
The academy slept beneath a bruised and starless sky.
Kaname stood alone on the outer parapet, fingers curled so tightly around the stone that blood welled beneath his nails.
Somewhere beyond the valley's black fog, Yuki was breathing without him, probably terrified, probably hurt.
He had sat through the council meeting like a man being measured for a coffin.
Sanae Lirien's measured voice: "We wait."
Dren Korsen's gravel: "No unauthorised excursions."
Elias's quiet nod.
They were right.
And that made it unbearable.
He closed his eyes and the memory rose: Yuki laughing the first time he'd accidentally set his sleeve on fire, the way her turquoise eyes had sparkled when she teased him, the soft weight of her hand steadying his shaking rune.
He had never said the promise aloud, but it lived in every glance, every spar, every shared silence:
I will come for you.
He opened his eyes.
The promise was still burning.
He dropped from the parapet, landing cat-soft on the frost-rimed grass.
His fire rune dimmed to a single coal beneath his cloak.
He was halfway to the postern gate when the wind shifted and Kazuhiro stepped into his path.
"You'll get yourself killed," the wind mage said simply.
"Then come with me and make sure I don't."
A long silence.
Kazuhiro exhaled through his nose.
"Give me thirty seconds."
They vanished into the night together.
Elias's POV: Dawn of Absence
Elias felt the absence before anyone spoke.
The eastern watch post was empty.
The postern gate's locking rune had been melted cleanly open from the inside.
Seraphina found him twenty minutes later, raven hair tousled from sleep, emerald eyes wide.
"They're gone," she whispered.
She didn't need to say who.
Elias already knew.
He stared out at the fog-choked valley and felt something cold settle behind his ribs.
Not anger—not yet.
Just the certainty that the war had finally come inside their walls.
"Strengthen every ward," he said quietly.
"We hold the academy."
A small pause
"They chose their path."
Kaname & Kazuhiro: Thirty-Six Hours of Hunger and Hope
They travelled without fire, without rest, without conversation that was not strictly necessary.
Kaname's world narrowed to the rhythm of his boots, the ache in his lungs, the single thought repeating like a heartbeat:
I am coming. Hold on.
Kazuhiro scouted ahead, returning only to murmur directions.
He never asked if Kaname wanted to turn back.
He already knew the answer.
On the second night the hut appeared.
A crooked thing of rotten timber and moss.
Thin smoke curled from the chimney.
Kaname's fire rune flared so brightly Kazuhiro had to shield his eyes.
"Easy," the wind mage breathed. "We do this smart."
Kaname's answer was a low growl.
He stepped forward.
The tripwire snapped.
A shadow rune detonated with a scream of violet light.
Kazuyoshi's POV: The Sound of Ending
Inside the hut, the alarm tore through the air.
Kazuyoshi was already moving.
Rin stood in the doorway, barrier rune flaring.
Yuki behind her: pale, bandaged, turquoise eyes wide with confusion.
Kazuyoshi crossed the room in three strides.
He cupped Rin's face, let a thread of mind manipulation slide behind her eyes.
"Take her. Marsh trail. Do not stop until the ground turns black and the air smells of rot. Go."
Rin nodded once, took Yuki's hand, and vanished into the back passage.
Kazuyoshi drew his runed shortsword and stepped outside.
The Clearing: Where Everything Broke
Kaname saw him and the world narrowed to a single point of hatred.
Kazuyoshi stood in the moonlight, cloak snapping, crimson eyes luminous with amusement.
Kaname did not speak.
He simply attacked.
A wall of white-hot fire roared across the clearing.
Kazuyoshi sidestepped as though it were a breeze, shadow clones flickering into being.
Kazuhiro circled wide, spear low, wind rune carving silent arcs through the mist.
"Kaname, he's baiting you—"
Kaname wasn't listening.
Daggers ignited mid-air, fire whip uncoiled like a living serpent.
Every strike carried the terror that Yuki was inside that hut, hurt, waiting for him.
Kazuyoshi parried, danced, laughed softly.
"You're slower than I remember," he said conversationally, batting aside a firebolt that scorched the earth black. "Anger makes you sloppy."
Kaname's answer was a scream that tore his throat raw.
Kazuhiro tried again, voice steady even as he lunged.
"He wants you blind with rage—look at his feet, he's herding us—"
Kazuyoshi's smile widened.
"Tell me, Kaname," he called over the roar of flame, "how will it feel when I tell you she doesn't even remember your name?"
The fire stuttered.
Kaname froze mid-step, dagger raised, chest heaving.
"…What?"
Kazuyoshi stepped forward slowly, sword resting lazily on his shoulder.
"I erased you," he said, almost gently. "Every kiss, every promise, every time you told her you'd protect her—gone. When she wakes up now, she thinks Rin and I are the only family she's ever had. You are a stranger to her. Worse—you are the enemy who tried to take her away."
The dagger fell from Kaname's numb fingers.
The sound it made when it hit the ground was very small.
Then the scream came—not rage, but something ancient and broken.
Kaname attacked like a man trying to set the entire world on fire and take himself with it.
Kazuhiro shouted his name, reached for him, but the firestorm drove him back.
Kazuyoshi's eyes glittered with satisfaction.
He let Kaname come.
Let the whip wrap around his arm and burn through cloth to flesh.
Let the daggers carve shallow furrows across his chest.
Let the flame bursts blind him for half a heartbeat.
Then he moved.
One step inside Kaname's guard.
An elbow driven into the sternum with surgical precision.
Kaname flew backward, carved a shallow crater, ribs snapping like green wood.
Kazuhiro lunged—spear a silver blur, wind screaming behind it.
Kazuyoshi caught the shaft, twisted, and drove his shortsword through the gap in Kazuhiro's guard.
The blade slid between ribs with a wet, intimate sound.
Kazuhiro's eyes widened.
He coughed once—warm blood spattering his lips—and folded to his knees.
Kaname saw it in perfect, slow clarity.
"Kazuhiro—!"
He surged up, broken ribs grinding, and flung Kazuyoshi away with a raw pulse of flame that stripped the grass to ash.
What followed was not a duel.
It was a boy with nothing left trying to kill the man who had stolen his entire world.
Kazuyoshi toyed with him for another full minute—dodging, weaving, letting Kaname's wild strikes come within inches—until he felt the faint psychic thread that told him Rin and Yuki were safely distant.
Then he sighed, almost regretful.
"Enough."
The shadows rose like a tide.
Tendrils thick as pythons whipped out, coiling around Kaname's arms, throat, legs.
A lance of pure darkness punched through his guard and hurled him into an ancient oak.
The tree cracked.
Kaname slid down the trunk and did not rise.
Kazuyoshi walked forward slowly, boots silent on the scorched earth.
He crouched beside Kaname's crumpled form, brushed a lock of sweat-soaked hair from his forehead with almost paternal gentleness.
"Tell Elias," he murmured, "that love makes very poor armour."
Then he was gone.
Kazuhiro's POV: The Walk of the Half-Dead
Kazuhiro woke to iron in his mouth and the slowing drum of his own heart.
He crawled to Kaname, seared his own wound shut with a blade of super-heated wind, and dragged the unconscious fire mage across his shoulders.
And began to walk.
One step.
Pause.
Breathe through the pain.
Another step.
The valleys blurred.
He talked the entire way—not to Kaname, but to himself.
"We're going home… she'll remember… she has to… just keep moving…"
When the academy gates finally rose out of the mist, his legs gave out.
He fell forward, Kaname tumbling beside him, and lay staring up at a sky the colour of old bruises.
Elias's POV: The Gates of Return
Elias heard the commotion and ran.
He reached the gates in time to see Kazuhiro collapse, blood-soaked and burnt, Kaname limp beside him.
Seraphina dropped to her knees with a wordless cry.
Sanae and Dren pushed through the crowd, healers already running.
Elias knelt, light rune flaring gold, pouring healing warmth into Kaname's shattered chest.
Kazuhiro's voice was barely a thread.
"Yuki… doesn't know us anymore.
He took her memories… and erased us from them."
The light in Elias's hands flickered.
Then it steadied, brighter than before.
He looked up at the ring of stunned faces and spoke with a calm that felt like the edge of a blade.
"Then we will remind her."
Thunder rolled overhead, slow and deliberate, as though the sky itself had decided the time for waiting was over.