It ended, as it always did, in blood.
A traitor in their midst—a boy of seventeen who had been captured and broken by the Japanese, who had traded his comrades' lives for his own. He led the soldiers straight to the camp.
I woke to shouting and gunfire, to the screams of children, to the acrid smell of smoke as the huts began to burn. Chen Wei was already on his feet, pulling me up, shoving a small bag into my hands.
"Go," he commanded. "Run. Don't stop."
"I'm not leaving you."
"You have to." His eyes were desperate, fierce, full of a love he had never spoken aloud. "I'll find you. I promised. I'll find you."
The words—my words, from so many lifetimes ago—struck me like a physical blow. He didn't know what he was saying. He couldn't know. And yet.
"I won't leave you," I said again, grabbing his arm. "I've done that too many times. I won't—"
A bullet whizzed past, so close I felt the heat of it. Thomas appeared out of the smoke, his face streaked with soot and blood, his massive arms wrapping around me and lifting me off the ground.
"NO!" I screamed, thrashing against his grip. "PUT ME DOWN!"
But Thomas was young and strong, and he had been tasked with protecting me above all else. He ran, carrying me through the burning camp, through the chaos, through the screams.
The last thing I saw, before the smoke swallowed everything, was Chen Wei turning to face the oncoming soldiers. He held a parang in one hand—a useless weapon against rifles—and he stood tall, impossibly tall, a king in boy's clothing facing down his executioners.
Our eyes met for one final moment. He smiled—that slow, devastating smile I had seen on a mountain centuries ago—and then the smoke closed in, and he was gone.
I never saw his body. Never knew where he fell. The Japanese burned the camp to the ground and left the remains for the jungle to claim. For months afterward, I searched, hoping against hope, but there was nothing. No grave to visit. No closure to find.
He had simply... vanished. Like all the others.