The Mouthless King stumbled backward, clutching his side as radiant ichor leaked between his fingers. It wasn't blood—it shimmered like spilled memories, golden and liquid, and where it touched the ground, flowers bloomed and instantly withered.
Rose landed in a skid beside Mortain, her breathing ragged. The Bramble Fire around her sputtered, taxed to its limits, but still alive. Mortain looked worse. His robes were scorched, his lips pale, and the arcane sigils along his arms pulsed erratically.
"You alright?" she asked.
"I've been worse," he muttered. "Not often. But once."
A tremor rippled through the battlefield as the King raised his head. His expression hadn't changed—he had none—but the Choir around him began to shriek in alarm. Their formation broke as fear slithered through them like a contagion.
Basil, who had somehow climbed onto the back of a dazed ember-beast, waved his arms frantically. "Hey! I think we actually hurt him! Or at least mildly inconvenienced him! Which is basically the same!"
Nimbus hovered overhead, crackling nervously.
Rose wiped soot from her brow. "He won't let us do that again."
Mortain nodded grimly. "Then we strike while the veil is torn."
Before either of them could move, the Mouthless King raised his arms. The air grew thick. The Choir stopped shrieking—and began humming. Low, deep, and dreadful. A lullaby for the end of days.
Rose's ears rang as the hum burrowed through her skull. Around her, Emberfen's soldiers dropped their weapons, staggered, and some fell asleep mid-stance. The hum didn't hurt—it drained. It convinced you that nothing mattered, that sleep was safer.
Rose clenched her fists. "No."
She focused inward, calling on the Bramble Fire. But it sputtered weakly. She was nearly spent.
Mortain dropped to one knee beside her. "He's unraveling reality around us."
The King took a step forward. One. Just one. But it cracked the ground in a perfect circle, as if he were stepping on the idea of solidity itself.
"Rose…" Mortain said, "you have to stop him. I'll hold the line."
She turned to him. "If you do that alone, you'll die."
His stormlight flickered, and for the first time, he looked… tired. Mortal.
"If I don't, we all do."
Rose stared at him, the battlefield around them quieting, slowing, as if caught in a long breath before the plunge.
And then she kissed him.
It wasn't graceful. It was desperate, scorched with smoke and trembling with fire. But it was real.
When she pulled back, his silver eyes widened.
"I'm not done with you," she said. "So don't die."
And with that, she stood, flame reigniting, brighter than before.
A second wind.
A second blaze.
The Bramble Fire surged to life once more, threaded now with something purer—love, perhaps, or sheer, wild defiance. She stepped toward the King, who paused mid-step.
He felt it too.
The fire wasn't just magic anymore.
It was meaning.