Viktor stepped out from behind the melting ice wall.
The silence was crushing.
The handlers were dead. Three bodies in the mud, torn open by crystalline fragments that still glittered in the grey dawn light. The crater sat at the center of it all, smoke rising from scorched earth.
And Leopold—
His brother lay face-down in the mud where he'd fallen. Not moving. Not breathing. The thrown blade still jutted from his shoulder. Blood pooled beneath him, spreading dark and wide.
Gone.
Viktor's eyes moved past the bodies to the assassin.
Still alive.
The man sat slumped against the remains of the cabin wall. His chest rose and fell in shallow, wheezing gasps. His skin was grey, stretched too tight over his bones. His eyes were open but unfocused. Empty. Like someone had reached inside and pulled out everything that mattered.
But his mouth moved. Tried to form words. Failed. Tried again.
Was he laughing?
Viktor couldn't tell. Couldn't think. The world felt distant and immediate all at once—too loud and too quiet, too bright and too dark.
He started pacing.
Back and forth in the mud between the bodies. His boots splashed through blood and water. His hands shook. His breath came too fast.
"My brother is dead." The words spilled out. Not to anyone. Just out. "Leopold's dead and it's my fault. He was only here because I—because I dropped the locket and they found Mother and—"
His voice cracked. He kept pacing. Faster.
"And that man is right there. Still breathing. One of the men who killed her and I can't—I don't know how to—"
The tears came. Hot and fast. But his feet wouldn't stop moving.
"I want Emeline." His voice went high and small. "I want Mother back. I want everything to go back. Before the gala. Before—"
His hands found his hair, pulled.
"It won't stop. Nothing stops. Everyone keeps dying and it's because of me—"
This wasn't like the quick tantrums when Aldwin pushed too hard. This was bigger. Deeper. Something breaking inside him that he couldn't control.
"Father said I had to prove I wasn't weak. But I am. I'm so weak. Everything I touch breaks and everyone around me dies—"
His legs gave out. Viktor dropped to his knees in the mud. The sobs shook his whole body.
"Please. Please make it stop. I can't anymore—"
Behind him—Viktor didn't know how long he'd been pacing, seconds or minutes—something moved.
A wet sound. Breathing.
Leopold pushed himself up.
Slow. Shaking. His good arm braced against the mud. His face was pale beneath the blood. The blade still jutted from his shoulder. He swayed, nearly fell, caught himself. Stood.
His eyes found Viktor's back. His mouth opened. Tried to speak.
Sound. Movement. Viktor's mind registered them and discarded them. Nothing mattered. Nothing—
The temperature plummeted.
Not gradual. Instant. Viktor's breath fogged thick and white. Frost raced across the mud in branching patterns. The air itself went sharp and brittle.
His Source wasn't asking permission anymore. Didn't wait for intent or control. Just responded to the overwhelming need to make everything STOP.
The sphere formed around him—ten feet in every direction, Viktor at its exact center. Ice materialized in the air. Crystals. Needles. Some tiny as glass shards, others thick as fingers. Thousands of them. All pointing outward.
Then they exploded.
The assassin tried to speak. His mouth opened—maybe a word, maybe just a gasp—and the ice hit him. Needles punched through his chest, his throat, his face. Hundreds of them. They didn't kill clean. They shredded. His grey skin split open in a dozen places at once. Blood sprayed. An ice needle went through his eye and out the back of his skull. Another through his jaw, pinning his mouth open. His chest opened in ragged lines as crystal shards tore through ribs and organs. His body jerked once, twice, then slumped forward. What was left looked less like a person and more like meat held together by torn fabric.
Leopold screamed.
The sound was raw and terrible. He'd been standing right there. Right behind Viktor. Close enough that the sphere caught him full-on.
His arms disintegrated.
Not severed. Not cut. Shredded.
Ice needles tore through his left arm first—the one that had hung useless from the thrown blade. The shoulder joint exploded outward in fragments of bone and tissue. The limb came apart in chunks, held together only by strips of skin and muscle that hung like ribbons. Blood sprayed in thick arcs.
His right arm—his good arm—held together half a second longer before ice punched through the bicep, the elbow, the forearm. Bone shattered. Flesh split open. The hand separated at the wrist, fingers still twitching as it hit the mud. The rest of the arm hung from his shoulder by threads of tissue, shredded down to exposed bone that gleamed white through the red.
Leopold's scream cut off. His eyes rolled back. He pitched forward and went down hard, face-first into the mud. The impact sent fresh blood spreading outward in a dark pool. What remained of his arms lay in tatters around him—unrecognizable pieces, bone fragments, torn meat.
Then silence.
Just Viktor's sobbing. Harsh and broken in the cold grey dawn.
Ice crystals settled around him in a perfect circle. Already melting, water running pink with blood.
Viktor stayed on his knees, hands still covering his face, crying like his heart would break.
He didn't see Leopold lying in the mud behind him.
Didn't see the ruin where his brother's arms had been.
Didn't see the blood spreading dark and wide.
Didn't realize what he'd just done.