End It, Then

KEIRA

The dead don't stay dead when they have something left to say.

My bones locked up before I could scream.

No warning. No voice dragging me from sleep. Just-impact.

One second, I was in the dark. The next, I was inside it.

Barefoot. Drenched. Blood soaking up to my ankles like the earth was trying to drink me whole.

I didn't remember falling asleep. I didn't remember anything.

Wherever HERE was, it bled.

The floor pulsed under me—too soft to be stone, too warm to be real. My toes curled. The blood clung, thick and fresh, and beneath it... something shifted. Solid. Cold. Not stone.

Bodies.

I stumbled back with a choked breath, heel catching on a chunk of something I swore was a chunk of something no longer human. Something shaped like a ribcage.

"What the fuck," I hissed, my arms wrapping around myself, like that would hold in the shaking. Like it would keep the pieces of me from falling apart in this nightmare I didn't remember entering.

But my body already knew.

This wasn't it.

The blood was too warm. The air too sour. Smoke gnawed at my lungs. My heart thrashed like it knew what was coming, like it had felt this place once, maybe in another life. Or death.

Everything here was wrong.

The corridor bled light. The walls flickered between real and ruin. Half-burnt tapestries fell to ash without ever touching flame. And overhead, no sky. Just the black void of something missing.

The screams didn't echo.

They lived here. Haunted the walls like ghosts too angry to leave.

And then I heard her.

A voice. Barely a breath. Feminine. Fragile.

"...you must... hear me..."

I turned toward it like I was pulled.

And that's when I saw her.

A woman, collapsed in a man's lap. Her dress torn to ribbons. Her throat a red smile of ruin. Blood pooled beneath them like a cradle of war.

She should've been dead.

But her lips moved.

"You must... let him in..." she rasped, fingers twitching weakly against the man's chest. A lover's touch, barely there.

"I was never yours..." Her mouth trembled. "...he is..."

The man flinched like her words struck deeper than blades.

"No." His voice cracked, raw like the inside of a throat torn from screaming.

She smiled, a curve of lips that looked almost peaceful. But it dripped with blood.

"Yes..." Her last breath ghosted into the air. "...he is your end... and your beginning..."

Then—Nothing.

No gasp. No twitch. Just... stillness.

Eyes wide. Smile intact. Dead.

The man didn't move.

Not for a heartbeat.

Not for a hundred.

And then...

He howled.

Not a cry. Not a scream.

A curse.

It shattered the silence. Shook the world. Shook ME.

I flinched, breath locked in my chest as if it too refused to exist in the face of his pain.

He pressed his blood-slicked forehead to hers. Whispered something I couldn't hear. Then, with trembling hands, he peeled her arms from his waist, kissed her one last time when she was still warm, and laid her body down like it was made of starlight.

His fingers wrapped around a sword at her side. Black. Heavy. Covered in dried gore that didn't belong to her.

And I swear to God...

The way he rose, like death giving birth to fury.

"I will kill them all," he lifted the blade. "I will rip their lungs from their chests. I will eat their screams until this world chokes on silence."

My legs moved on instinct. One step back. Two.

Every nerve screamed RUN.

'He's going to see you,' my mind whispered. 'And if he sees you, he'll bury that blade in your chest and smile while doing it.'

I turned.

Slow. Silent. Calculating how fast I could sprint barefoot over corpses and not die trying.

And that's when it came.

A voice behind me.

Sharp. Male. Cold as the steel he likely carried.

"Drop the blade."

I spun, breath catching in my throat... And nearly screamed.

He stepped through the smoke like it wasn't trying to swallow him whole. Like it bowed to him. Like the world had always burned at his feet.

Broad chest. Shoulders dusted in cracked gold armor. Blood smeared down one side of his face; the rest shadowed in smoke.

But it was the way he moved, silent, heavy, like grief had weight and he carried it in his spine.

I knew that walk.

I'd watched it from the rooftop that night, through ruined cathedral windows, from the edge of every nightmare I couldn't wake up from.

Nikolai.

But it wasn't him.

His eyes didn't glow gold. His hair was longer, tangled in ash and blood. He looked... younger. Wilder.

Wrong.

And when he passed me, he didn't flinch.

Didn't blink. Didn't SEE me.

He walked straight through the space I stood in, like I didn't fucking exist.

Like I was smoke, too.

"What the fuck—" I choked out, stumbling back, my palm smacking against stone. My knees buckled, and I barely caught myself.

The air was heavy. The world tilted.

This wasn't real. Couldn't be.

And yet... my breath fogged in front of me. My heart hurt in my chest. My hands stung from where the grit bit in.

What kind of dream hurts?

Nikolai's voice broke through the smoke again. This time louder.  "Drop the blade. You've already won."

The man with the sword, the prince, because that's what he was, even I could feel it in my bones, snapped his head up. And that was when I saw them. 

His eyes.

Blue, so brilliantly they could've been carved from sapphires. 

But bleeding red like someone had cracked his soul open and poured fire into it.

He didn't drop the sword.

He laughed.

Low. Hollow. That sound the broken make when even madness feels like mercy.

“Won?” he rasped, lips cracked and dry. His voice hit like splinters down my spine. “You think this is what winning looks like?”

He stepped over a body without looking down. 

“I have lost EVERYTHING.”

Across from him stood Nikolai. Still. Breathing heavy. 

“So have we,” he said quietly. “Half our people are gone. Our lands, burned. This war hasn’t spared anyone.”

The prince's voice cracked. “I lost HER.”

His breath shuddered. A tremor rippled down his arms.

“And you stand there with the blood of MY people on your hands and talk of loss? You don't even know what she gave me.”

Nikolai didn't reply.

He just stared. And something in his silence said more than words ever could.

“She followed me,” the prince whispered. “Into battle. Into fucking hell. I warned her, and she followed me still. I told her I would end it, and she said, then 'I'll follow you to the end.'” He laughed again, but it broke mid-way. Shattered like glass. “And she did.”

Fire cracked behind them, sending shadows dancing across the dead.

“She believed in you,” Nikolai said softly.

The prince snapped his gaze toward him.

“No,” he growled. “She trusted you.” He stepped forward, slow and seething. “And that's worse.”

“She trusted me... with you.”

“Don't.” The prince's voice dropped to a warning. “Don't you dare speak like she tethered us together. She was the only thing that held me together. And now... now she's gone, and I'm barely still breathing.”

“She wanted you to live,” Nikolai said.

“She wanted me to LET GO,” the prince spat. His hands trembled. “You know what her last words were? Not ‘I love you.’ Not even ‘forgive me.’ Just…” he broke, voice brittle, “LET HIM IN.”

I went still.

“She died asking me to choose you. You think I wanted this?” He raised his blade. “You think I wanted to love something I was told to destroy?”

Nikolai's expression cracked, just a flicker.

“I didn't take her from you,” he said.

“No,” the prince whispered. “But you took what was LEFT of me.”

He swung the blade.

It came fast. Brutal. 

I flinched at the clang of metal that shuddered the walls.  Nikolai blocked the strike with a roar of steel. They fought like this wasn't the first time blood ran between them. Like hate was too small a word.

Not to kill.

To survive each other.

They were rage given form. Heartache molded into violence.

The air buzzed with it, each strike vibrating through my ribs.

"She died asking me to choose you," the prince hissed. "She died thinking there was something true between us, something cursed, twisted, wrong. And she wanted me to accept it."

The next strike was brutal enough to make me flinch.

"She called it fate." The prince snarled, blade flashing.

Nikolai blocked, hard. “IT IS.”

"NO. It's damnation!"

Their swords clashed so hard it sent both of them stumbling back.

And for a breath, just one, the fire paused.

Then—

Nikolai did something I didn't expect. He let his sword fall.

Not slipped. Not fumbled.

He dropped it.

It hit the stone like a final heartbeat.

"If you believe I damned you, then end it."

The prince froze, staring. Panting. Bloody. His hand still gripped the hilt like it was all he had left.

"Go on," Nikolai stepped forward. "Strike. But if you raise that blade again, make sure you kill me."

I felt it in my throat. That pause. That breath where no one moved, not even the fire. Like the air was holding its own lungs.

Then the prince... he moved.

Fast. 

Too fast.

The blade rose high.

My breath stuck.

The sword came down.

I screamed.