My steps bring me past a calendar pinned to the wall. Days are crossed through with orange ink, and the last one—today—is the Verdant Haven. I pause, remembering the day to come. Tomorrow, the Day of Amber Glow—the last week of the year, the month of Astra. Tomorrow, I turn twenty-four.

The thought makes me grimace. My birthday lies before me like a stone in my path. On Amber Glow, the day we depart for Ruby on the wings of mountain birds, my age will change. How fitting. How ironic. I had forgotten it completely.

I'll celebrate it alone; neither feast nor family will contribute to its occasion. Even with companions by my side, my birthday is mine alone until the journey ends. Even though it doesn't end on the day after, we will travel on the mountain bird for a few more days until arriving on Ruby.

I will celebrate without family, willingly for the first time. I won't waste one more day hoping for my parents to appear. That hope has rotted away, year by year. Not once did they come. Not once.

Now, I can do as I please. No expectations. No waiting. Because I have already left it all behind, no—I left everything behind the day I killed my brother.

Someday, his body will surface. The sea will cast him up, and his corpse will be carried back to my family; when that day comes, my fate will be sealed. They will know. But by then, I will be long gone.

The last memory I will hold of them is in a body that is not my own. That is all they will ever have of me. And I feel free.

I'll take Ella, Tristan, and Doran; I'll wrap them in disguise as Lieben. I will wear the mask of my dead brother, and through his name, give them a future worth living.

I will leave it all behind.

The empty room hums with silence. Doors closed, windows yawning open to the sea, I step toward the breeze. Breathing in the salt again, I imagine galleons sliding over waves heavy with stolen lives. Men, women, children—all bound, all chained.

The sails have already been raised. The day after the assassination, they set out—precisely timed, no more than a week of travel. Excellently planned, so they all enter Ruby as the Golden Moon wanes and drowns itself in Red.

Small in scale, yet a triumph vast, immeasurable.

I count heartbeats in the silence, while the azure sun heats my bandages, but I enjoy every little sensation I have with my peaking skin underneath. Twenty heartbeats pass before Harmon enters the room.

He does not look at me; his shoulders sag, his head bowed, the weight heavy across his frame. It has been days since that expression claimed his face, yet it still does not leave him.

He trudges past me, each step slow, his massive hands hanging low—hands as large as one and a half of my head, fingers thick as two of mine—and he scratches absently at his face. As he passes through the golden doors of our headquarters without a word, his thoughts seem to consume him.

However, my gaze drifts to the right.

A picture hangs there. Arthur. Not a photograph, but a work born from Vis's blood-craft.

Arthur's likeness glows in shades of hardened green blood. His mane combed back, his gaze as sharp as a lion's. He wears the attire of a royal, and though his lips remain pressed, though his face is carved with severity, I can see the ghost of a smile. A proud smile.

It's no wonder Harmon is haunted. To lose him is to lose a part of the world.

Arthur's painted eyes stare at me, and it feels like something inside me is being torn away.

"I wish we could celebrate my very first birthday together, my friend."

The words scrape from my throat like thorns, cutting deep, leaving me raw.

My vision blurs suddenly.

Tears brim, spilling freely, and still, I force a smile. I wipe my face with the loose bandages draped around my arms, but the tears soak through anyway.

The first person I could have called a friend is already gone.

I smile back at him, grieving for the moment. But soon—a few heartbeats later—I walk away, holding my right arm weakly into the air, saying farewell.

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