The plaza split in half.
Not from magic.
From Veyra taking a single step forward.
KRNNN—KSHH!
Each footprint she left turned the stone to molten glass, blooming into crimson roses that hissed as they cooled.
The vines clawing out of Kael's chest had become a living tether—a heartbeat chain binding them thorn-to-scar, soul-to-bone. And Veyra dragged the First Keeper behind her like a beast on a leash woven from her own fury.
The Keeper tried to freeze the vines.
CRACK—SHRRR!
They bled, but did not break.
She inhaled to sing the lullaby again—
VROOOOM—!!!
Veyra's roar drowned it out, a sound like mountains tearing open.
"You don't get to silence him," she snarled.
"You don't get to silence any of us—ever again."
She reached Kael. Dropped to her knees.
Her thorn-split hands trembled as they cupped his face.
"Hey," she whispered. "Look at me."
Kael's eyes were fogged with frost—dead eyes—but they still found hers. Crimson on silver.
"I'm here," she breathed. "I'm still here. You don't get to die empty-handed, you bastard."
She pressed her forehead to his.
THUMP—THUMP.
The tether pulsed once.
Warmth—her warmth—flooded into his chest.
Ice shattered. Blood thawed.
Kael's heart remembered the choreography of beating.
He coughed a drift of red snowflakes—
KHH—HHRK—
and laughed, a cracked, wet sound that tasted like living.
"Thought you wanted me weak," he rasped.
Veyra smiled. All teeth. All tears.
"I changed my mind. I want you alive… and pissed off… and mine."
She hauled him upright. His legs barely remembered how legs worked, but she held him like she'd hold the last sun in the sky.
Together they faced the First Keeper.
The horned woman had torn her own arm off to escape the vines.
White blood steamed where it hit the ground.
Her once-placid face trembled.
Good.
Veyra raised Wrathbinder.
The sword ignited—FWOOM—
not pink, but the deep, brutal red of old wounds that finally chose to scar.
"Round two," she said.
Kael leaned on her shoulder, breath ragged but voice steady.
"Make it hurt."
The Keeper raised both hands.
The sky answered.
SHRAAAAAA—KSHH!
A storm of divine frost descended—ancient ice-blades, winds carrying every name ever sung into the lullaby.
Veyra stepped in front of Kael.
Took the entire storm alone.
KLANG! KSHHH! SHRRRK!
Thorns detonated outward in a sphere of crimson and black, catching every shard, splitting, bleeding, bursting.
She did not move.
She did not fall.
She only bled—
and bled—
and smiled.
Because pain was the only language she'd ever spoken fluently.
And right now, pain was saying:
Not. Today.
When the storm died, Veyra was still there.
Still bleeding.
Still standing.
Still holding Kael up with one shaking arm.
The Keeper stared.
And for the first time in ten thousand years—
she was afraid.
Veyra stepped forward.
CRUNCH.
Another rose footprint.
Then another.
Kael limped beside her, dragged by stubbornness and love.
"You wanted silence?" Veyra asked.
Wrathbinder screamed—
WRAAAAAAATH!
a sound like every battlefield she ever walked away from finally given permission to speak.
"Here's mine."
She swung.
WHRRRA-KRAAASH!
The Keeper raised a wall of frost.
Wrathbinder sliced through it like damp parchment.
The blade halted an inch from the Keeper's throat.
Veyra leaned in.
Close enough to kiss.
Close enough to kill.
"Tell Lirien," she whispered,
"that next time she wants to put the world to sleep, she'll have to go through me—and every thorn I've got left."
The Keeper opened her mouth—
no sound escaped.
Behind her, the remaining Horned Silence collapsed to their knees as Lirien's counter-lullaby finally reached them.
CRRRK—CRRRACK!
Their horns split.
Their robes smoldered.
Their voices turned human again.
The Rift began closing.
Not in defeat.
In surrender.
The First Keeper looked at Veyra… at Kael, half-dead but refusing to lie down… at Seraphine walking toward them with the ashes of stolen names glowing in her palms.
The Keeper exhaled.
"I understand now," she whispered.
She placed her hand over Veyra's blade—
and pushed forward.
SHHHK.
Wrathbinder slid through her chest like water.
White blood poured.
But she smiled—small, tired, relieved.
"Thank you," she said.
"For teaching us… how to stop singing."
She dissolved into snow
that rose upward
and became stars.
FWMP.
The Rift sealed with the soft sound of a door closing itself for the very first time.
Silence fell.
Real silence.
Not absence—
but choice.
Kael slid down Veyra's side until he hit the ground among roses and blood.
She sank with him.
Neither spoke.
They just breathed. Together.
Seraphine knelt, placing the ashes of names in Kael's lap.
"They're yours," she said. "If you want them."
Kael looked at the ashes.
Then at Veyra's ruined hands still wrapped around him.
He shook his head.
"Keep them. I've got everything I need… right here."
Veyra laughed—a wet, broken, perfect sound.
She leaned her head against his shoulder.
Seraphine smiled, ancient and relieved.
And somewhere in the distance—
the city began to sing.
Not a lullaby.
A new song.
One no living soul had ever heard.
And for the first time
in ten thousand years—
the world
let it play.