The night burned red.
Flames rose from the charred wood of the eastern barricade, licking the sky like furious tongues. Ash snowed softly over the corpses. The Hollowborn had retreated—for now. But victory tasted bitter.
Aira stood still in the wreckage, her chest heaving, hands bloodied and trembling. Kaien's body lay at her feet. The boy who once smirked like the war was a joke. The one who had called her human when everyone else had stared with fear or hate.
Her knees buckled.
The others didn't notice her fall. They were busy dragging bodies, mourning brothers, screaming orders. Ezrah shouted something, his voice distant like a dream.
But Aira couldn't hear anything over the silence Kaien left behind.
"You don't scare me," he had once said, tossing his blanket over her shoulders when she lay shivering by the watchtower. "I see you. You're just cold… like the rest of us."
Nobody had ever looked at her like that before—not as a monster, not as a weapon. Just her. Just a scared, lonely girl trapped in a body that wasn't fully hers.
She clutched his shirt now, nails tearing the cloth. Blood stained her fingers. Hers? His? It didn't matter.
"You saw me…" she whispered. "You were the only one who saw me…"
Around her, the voices of the living blurred
Ezrah pushed past a pile of debris, eyes searching.
"Aira!"
He found her crouched beside Kaien's lifeless form, shoulders shaking. He reached for her—then stopped. He'd never seen her cry. She wasn't built for tears. She was fire and blade and secrets.
But now she was something else.
"I should've protected him," she said through clenched teeth. "I could've stopped it."
Ezrah's voice was gentle. "It wasn't your fault. The Hollowborn—"
"No. Don't." She rose slowly, eyes burning not with fury, but grief. "You didn't hear what he said before he died."
Ezrah stayed silent. He didn't need to ask.
She took a slow breath. Her hands curled into fists, nails digging into her palms.
"I'll burn them all," she whispered. "Every last Hollowborn. And I don't care what I have to become to do it."
The wind carried her words like a promise to the ashes
Far beyond the wall, in the belly of the Hollowborn horde, something stirred.
Kaien's blood had not fallen in vain. A new rage had awakened something… ancient.
And soon, the wall would crumble again