The fire burned low by dawn.
Smoke drifted above the ruined camp, curling like ghosts over broken tents and blood-smeared grass. Knights moved in slow silence, nursing wounds and dragging the dead into makeshift burial rows. The scent of ash and fear clung to everything.
Kai sat on a rock at the camp's edge, hunched and still.
He hadn't slept.
Couldn't.
Every time he closed his eyes, he heard it.
> "You do not belong in that skin."
The nightfang's voice wasn't fading like dreams usually did. It was etched into him — like it had scratched the words across his soul.
Necromantic energy. Soul theft. Death magic.
It all lined up too neatly. Too damning.
And Rael… Rael had seen too much.
Kai flexed his fingers. Valeria's fingers. They didn't shake. Her body was too trained for that — her assassin instincts ran deeper than emotion.
But his soul?
His soul was screaming.
---
"You look like you saw a ghost."
Rael's voice cut into the silence like a blade, casual and sharp all at once.
Kai didn't look up. "I am a ghost, remember? You've said that more than once."
Rael stepped into view, now fully dressed in his royal blues and silver-trimmed cloak. His curls were damp — freshly washed — and his boots still had bits of charred grass stuck to the soles.
"Don't twist my words. I meant… you're not yourself. Not lately."
Kai shrugged. "Maybe trauma does that. Or almost dying. Or being hunted by shadow monsters that talk like they read your thoughts."
Rael didn't smile.
He crouched instead, eyes narrowing.
"Valeria…" he began.
Kai tensed.
"…there's something off about you."
There it was.
Not a tease. Not a jab.
Just truth.
Kai met his gaze. "Took you this long to notice?"
Rael tilted his head. "The old you would've stabbed me for saying that."
"Maybe I still will. I'm just pacing myself."
"Or maybe," Rael said, voice quieter now, "you're changing."
Kai swallowed.
"Or maybe," he shot back, "I'm finally tired of pretending."
That made Rael pause.
His eyes searched Kai's face, like he was trying to find someone who wasn't there.
"You saved me last night," Rael said eventually. "You didn't have to. You threw yourself in front of that thing like a knight out of a bard's tale."
"Don't flatter me. It was instinct."
"That's the thing. Valeria doesn't have those instincts."
That silenced them both.
For a long moment, they only listened to the distant clang of hammers — soldiers repairing the wagons — and the low murmurs of priests praying over the dead.
Then Rael asked, softly, "Do you even know who you are anymore?"
Kai didn't answer.
Because he didn't.
He wasn't Kai, not fully — his own memories felt dulled at the edges, like they were being overwritten.
And he sure as hell wasn't Valeria. Even if her body moved like it remembered battles he never fought, kisses he never gave, wounds he never earned.
He was something in between.
A stolen soul in a haunted shell.
And the worst part?
Valeria wasn't gone.
---
That night, he opened her journal again.
Not the one she carried in public — the fake ledger with coded missions and names. No, this one was hidden inside her saddlebag, buried beneath a false bottom and wrapped in silk that smelled like rosewater and blood.
Her handwriting was sharp. Exact. Calculated.
> "The mission is always more important than the memory."
> "Kai would never forgive me if he knew. But I have to make him hate me. It's the only way he'll survive."
Kai stared at that line for a long, long time.
> Make him hate me.
Was that why she killed him?
Was it even betrayal?
Or… protection?
His chest ached. A strange, unfamiliar ache. Like her emotions were bleeding into his — like her guilt had been branded into this body, and now he couldn't shake it off.
He shut the journal.
Hard.
---
Later that night, he found Rael training alone — shirtless again, because of course he was — throwing bolts of stormlight at a line of broken helmets. Every time the lightning struck, it scattered dust and made Kai's skin buzz.
"Can I ask something?" Kai said, arms folded.
Rael turned, wiping sweat from his jaw. "If it's about the creature, I already told the men it was after me. Said it mistook my magic for necromancy."
Kai blinked. "You covered for me?"
Rael didn't answer right away.
Then: "I don't know what's happening to you. But I know what you've done for me. For this mission. For my survival."
Kai looked away.
"You're dangerous, Valeria," Rael continued. "But I trust you. Even if I shouldn't."
Kai exhaled slowly. "That's a terrible idea."
Rael stepped closer.
"I have many terrible ideas," he murmured, voice low. "You might be my favorite one."
Kai's heart stuttered.
And in that moment — for one terrifying second — he didn't know if Rael was talking to him… or to her.
The silence stretched too long.
So Kai did what he always did when emotions threatened to unravel him.
He turned to leave.
But Rael caught his wrist.
And when Kai turned back — Rael wasn't smirking anymore.
His eyes were searching again. This time, not for truth.
But for memory.
For something long buried.
"Before," Rael said quietly, "when you kissed me… back in Lorne's tower… was that you?"
Kai froze.
"I—" He stopped.
Because he didn't know how to answer.
He didn't even know who he was in that moment.
But something in him — something broken and reckless — whispered:
> Lie.
So he did.
"Yes," he said. "That was me."
Rael stared at him a moment longer.
Then nodded — once — and let go.
---
That night, Kai dreamed.
But the dream wasn't his.
It was Valeria's.
He stood in a field of silver grass under a moonless sky, wearing white armor soaked in blood. The wind carried whispers — not in words, but in memories. In regrets.
And across from him stood a man with golden eyes.
Not Rael.
Someone older. Colder.
A voice echoed through the field.
> "You stole what was mine."
> "You cannot run from what she owed."
Kai woke with a gasp, sweat slicking his neck.
The runes from the nightfang still burned behind his eyes.
And the weight of her past was clawing its way into him.
She was gone.
But her enemies?
Her memories?
Her debts?
They were just beginning.