The Emberstrider pitched and rolled violently through the storm of artillery fire. Each explosion felt like a hammer blow against the airship's fragile bones. The shriek of twisting metal, the hiss of broken steam pipes, and the choked cries of the wounded wove together into a tapestry of pure desperation.
Liam stood frozen at the prow, a statue carved from cold fury. His transformed left hand gripped the railing, claws sinking deep into the metal as dark red energy flickered between his fingers. His eyes, flowing with molten light, pierced the smoke and fire, guiding their desperate flight.
Then he felt it—a tremor across the vast mental web that connected him to the Ember and his curse. A sensation as fine and fragile as the last vibration of a snapping string. A soul-bond, stretched to its limit, but not yet broken.
She was alive. After everything.
The realization detonated in his rage-numbed mind. He spun around, moving with a speed that stirred the air, ignoring a shell that burst terrifyingly close. Hot shrapnel grazed his bare back, searing the flesh, but he felt nothing. The dark, rust-tinged fluid that welled up meant nothing.
"Where is Elara?!" The words were a raw scrape of sound, but they cut through the deck's chaos, demanding an answer.
A wounded wolf-orc looked up from bandaging a comrade. One of his ears was a bloody ruin. He met Liam's gaze, his single eye full of grief, and pointed a trembling hand toward the stern. "The... the medical bay... The Shamans... they're with her... but..." A cough wracked him. He shook his head, the rest unspoken.
Liam was already moving. He became a blur of dark red motion, shoving past wounded and crewmen alike, a barrel of rivets clattering in his wake. The terrifying aura he radiated—a mix of forge-heat, rust, and pure destruction—made orcs flinch back, their faces a mess of awe, hope, and a deep, instinctual fear.
He tore the heavy lizard-hide curtain from the medical bay entrance. The stench hit him like a physical blow—thick blood, bitter herbs, and the sickly-sweet smell of burned flesh. The dim light from swaying oil lamps cast long, dancing shadows on the stained walls.
A circle of orc Shamans, their skin marked with ritual paints, stood around a makeshift table of planks. Their low chants were heavy with despair. A young apprentice had turned away, shoulders shaking.
"...The Wolf Spirit's light fades... Our herbs, our totems... they are but cobwebs, holding only her last breath..." The eldest Shaman placed a fading, green-glowing totem stone aside. He looked at Liam, his aged eyes full of sorrow and defeat. "...We can do no more, my King."
Liam's breath stopped. His gaze, sharp as a blade, fixed on the figure lying on the planks, so still she seemed part of the shadows.
Elara lay broken. Her leather armor was torn to shreds, revealing pale skin crisscrossed with terrible wounds. But worse were the dark red rust patterns. They crawled like living poison from her injuries, spreading across her skin, leaving behind dull, sunken patches that glowed with a sickly light. Her beautiful silver hair was a matted, bloody mess against the rough wood. Her face, once so fierce, was now pale as death, frozen in a fragile, final stillness.
His footsteps were heavy and loud in the sudden silence of the bay, each one a hammer on his own heart.
The Shamans retreated, bowing their heads, unable to bear the weight of his presence—the suffocating power and the raw, volatile grief.
He sank to his knees beside her. His human right arm trembled as it supported his weight.
He wanted to reach for her, to hold her. But his eyes fell on his left arm—that monstrous thing of cooled magma and writhing rust-metal, claws wreathed in destructive energy. He froze, a wave of self-loathing choking him. He couldn't... he couldn't touch her with this hand of ruin.
With a trembling right hand, moving with infinite care, he brushed a blood-caked strand of silver hair from her icy forehead. The cold of her skin was a knife in his heart.
Perhaps sensing him—the familiar warmth of their Pact tangled with the chilling terror of the Ember's power—Elara's eyelashes fluttered. With a monumental effort, she cracked her eyes open.
Those eyes, once bright Arctic stars, were now dim, clouded, losing their focus. Her gaze drifted before slowly, painfully, finding his face—filthy, bloodied, and etched with agony.
Her pale lips moved. No sound came.
Liam leaned down, pressing his ear to her cold, bloodless lips, holding his breath.
"...You... fool..." The whisper was a blood-tinged breath, faint as a dying ember, yet it held a ghost of her old, chiding tenderness. "...Told you... to live... Why... won't you... listen..."
Her weak scolding, each word dragged from a ruined body, flayed his soul. He gripped her cold, limp hand, trying to warm it, but the heat in him was now a cursed, unnatural thing that offered no comfort.
"You will not die." The words were a rusty grind, suppressing an ocean of pain, filled with a desperate, king's command. "The Pact remains, Elara. Hold on! I command you to hold on!"
He refused. He focused, wrestling his churning emotions, drawing upon the spinning Ember-mark on his chest. He carefully separated a thread of pure life energy, guiding it to his fingertips, aiming to pour it into her.
The moment the Ember's energy touched her, the rust patterns on her body blazed like angry suns. They twisted and spread like awakened serpents. Elara's body arched off the planks in a violent spasm. A shattered cry of agony was torn from her, followed by dark blood, flecked with tissue, staining his cheek.
"Don't!" Her eyes flew open. With her last strength, her icy fingers clamped his wrist. Her dim silver eyes burned with final, desperate urgency. "...Your power... shares its source... It accelerates... the corrosion... Stop!"
Liam recoiled as if burned, severing the connection. He watched her collapse, her breathing growing fainter. A helpless, utter despair colder than any abyss swallowed him whole.
He had power to shake the world, yet he couldn't safely give the smallest spark of life to the woman dying for him. The irony was a torture.
Then, Elara's eyes cleared one last time, burning with a final, brilliant light. She looked at him, her gaze a gentle touch tracing his pain, the Ember-mark on his chest, and finally, settling on his monstrous, ruined left hand.
A single, pure tear escaped. It traced a slow, clean path down her blood-stained cheek.
"...I'm sorry..." Her voice was a thread, impossibly calm, filled with endless regret. "...Can't... watch over you... anymore... Can't... see you... go on..."
She paused, gathering the last pure ember of her strength. Her eyes shone with a final, brilliant starlight, gazing deep into his, as if to memorize his soul for eternity.
Then, in a resonance that bypassed sound and spoke directly to his spirit, clear and unshakable, she branded the words onto his soul forever:
"Liam..."
"I..."
"Love you."
As the last syllable faded, the light in her eyes died. The grip on his wrist vanished. Her arm fell limp to the planks with a soft, final thud. Her eyes closed, lashes sweeping down like a curtain. Only the faintest, most delayed rise of her chest showed the stubborn spark of her spirit clung on.
The single tear left a cold, final track on her cheek.
"Elara------!!!"
A howl of pure, shattered agony ripped from Liam's throat. He could hold back no longer. He gathered her cold, feather-light body into his arms, crushing her against his chest. He bent his head, his forehead pressing hard against her cold brow. Scalding tears, mixed with dark red energy, streamed from his changed eyes, falling onto her pale skin with faint, sizzling burns.
The power he wielded was now his deepest curse.
"I command you... don't die... Hear me? That's an order..." He buried his face in her cold neck, his voice a muffled, choked mix of a king's command and a child's desperate plea, rendered utterly meaningless by the cold truth.
In the corner, the elder Shaman bowed his head, chanting prayers for the departing soul. The apprentice wept openly. Outside, warriors stood in silent vigil, listening to the raw sound of their King's breaking heart. Even the thunder of war outside seemed to fade for a moment.
The Emberstrider flew on through fire and storm, carrying the shards of hope toward an uncertain dawn. But in its heart, in that crude room smelling of death and herbs, a being of newfound god-like power clung to his cooling light, utterly consumed by a grief as vast and human as any mortal's.