"Inefficient," Alvian muttered, though the word lacked its usual bite. It was a hollow observation. He was looking at a game over screen.
Valeria stood beside him. She hadn't let go of his coat. Despite the primal terror radiating from the entity above, despite her skills being locked and her body screaming to surrender, she stepped closer. She intertwined her fingers with his empty left hand. Her grip was tight, trembling, but fiercely unyielding.
"We broke the dragon," Valeria whispered, her voice shaking but her chin held high as she refused to look away from the sky. "We broke the Warlords. Tell me how we break this."
Alvian looked at their joined hands. He felt her pulse, a rapid, stubborn drumbeat of human defiance against a cosmic void. He had spent his entire second life optimizing variables, treating people as assets and emotions as liabilities. But standing here, at the edge of erasure, her warmth was the only thing keeping his mind from fracturing.
