The blue flames at Emerion's fingertips were the only light in the room.
They cast everything in cold azure the transparent wall in front of him, his own hands pressed against it, and behind him the floor alive with movement. The hiss of scales on stone was constant and close, the sound of something patient waiting to become something less patient.
He didn't turn around.
As promised, Anathema was handling it.
"How long is it going to take you to break this barrier?" Anathema's voice came sharp despite everything the strain in it visible only in the slight elevation of pitch, the bead of sweat Emerion could see reflected in the transparent surface before him.
"I'm not even sure I can break it," Emerion muttered, pressing both palms flat against the wall. Through it, clearly visible as if through glass, his sister stood in the burning corridor speaking quietly with one of Anathema's guards. She couldn't see him. He couldn't reach her. The frustration of it sat in his chest like something with weight.
"You're not sure?" Anathema's tone rose slightly, the annoyance he was trying to contain leaking through the edges. "Aren't you a mage? Isn't this exactly the kind of thing mages are supposed to handle?"
"Yes, but barriers like this are incredibly difficult to break,"
Emerion replied, pressing his forehead briefly and feeling the sweat there. "I think this one was designed to keep people inside. Breaking it from this side I don't know if I have the strength for it."
"Tch."
Behind him, a sword arc. Wet impact. The metallic smell of blood reaching him even without turning.
"So we're stuck," Anathema said grimly.
Another arc wider this time, Emerion could tell by the sound of it.
Six snakes, from the number of impacts. Then a sharp intake of breath not pain, something else and Anathema's footsteps shifting suddenly.
"Is this venom?"
Emerion turned his head slightly without moving his hands. The floor behind Anathema had a new quality a milky white liquid pooling in the blue light, glistening with a specific wrongness that suggested it was not inert. Anathema was already scanning it, already adjusting his footwork, his expression carrying the focused wariness of someone who has identified a new variable and is determining how dangerous it is.
A snake lunged for his leg. The sword came down. The head separated. Anathema let out a controlled breath.
"There were probably a hundred at first. Not a problem once I finish them off. But the real problem is--"
He looked at Emerion, and didn't finish the sentence, because the real problem was clear enough without finishing it.
Emerion turned back to the wall.
He pressed his mana against it carefully, feeling for the structure the way a doctor feels for the shape of a break rather than just pressing on it. The barrier pushed back with an evenness that told him it was well-constructed. Not improvised. Someone had built this with intention and time, knowing exactly what it needed to keep inside.
Behind him, Anathema continued.
The rhythm of the sword was steady, controlled, the footwork adjusting constantly around the spreading venom.
Then a sound Emerion hadn't heard yet. Faint. Bubbling.
"Emerion."
The urgency in Anathema's voice was new.
"What is it?" Emerion pulled his concentration back with an audible reluctance, turning.
The floor had changed. Where the venom had pooled, small shapes were emerging wriggling, hissing, already moving. Four from the nearest puddle.
More from the others. The bodies of the snakes Anathema had killed were still producing it, the white liquid seeping from the wounds and immediately beginning to move.
Emerion's eyes widened before he could stop them.
"More snakes?" he said. "Can you handle them alone?"
"If I stay focused, I can," Anathema said, his steps careful and measured, the determination in his face something close to grim. "But that's not the point. When you kill them, their numbers increase. The new ones are smaller."
"They multiply when slain," Emerion muttered. He reached for the memory of it something from a storybook, years ago, a creature with the same quality. He couldn't find the page. He stood between two problems, uncertain which one to face, knowing he couldn't effectively address either.
"You shouldn't waste time," Anathema said, bringing the sword down again. This time he tried cutting without killing shallow, disabling strikes, hoping to slow them without finishing them. The venom oozed anyway. He looked at the result and his expression darkened with the specific frustration of someone who has made a calculated decision and watched it make things worse. "Damn it."
The number surged again. The venom dripped steadily from open mouths now, the floor ahead of him narrowing to navigable gaps between puddles. A few bites. That was all it would take.
Anathema turned toward Emerion. Something in his face had shifted the hard edges softened by something that cost him more than the snakes did.
"It's a shame I'm taking help from a Dawnveil," he said, the words coming out rough, like they were being pulled from somewhere he hadn't intended to open. "It's a shame I'm even close to begging." His voice rose, cracking at the edges. "But break the barrier, damn it! Please break the barrier!"
His gaze moved through the transparent wall to the corridor beyond. Ryuuken on the floor. The blood. Rui's face. The look on it.
And something else moved through Anathema's expression something that came from deeper than the snakes, deeper than the barrier, deeper than the room.
If only I hadn't drawn my blade against that kid. The thought arrived and didn't leave. If only I'd avoided fighting Emerion in the first place, I wouldn't have been tricked by the captain. Why did I draw my sword against a child holding nothing but a knife? For the beliefs and customs of my house.
His sword swings grew faster. Less controlled.
Everything I've done since that bloody night until today I did it for the well-being of my house.
He caught himself.
Well-being of my house.
His father's words. Said in that same tone, with that same certainty, on that same night that ended with half a valley buried in the snow.
His pride and ambition overtook him, and he brought death to everything with one reckless decision. I despised that man. But looking back am I becoming the very man I despise? I was so focused on restoring the reputation of my house that I stopped appreciating the people who stood by me.
The sword swings slowed.
Ryuuken. Rui. I'm sorry. If possible forgive me.
The tears came without asking permission this time. He didn't chase them back. He didn't arrange his face into something harder. He simply let them come, and they came properly the kind that belong to someone who has been holding them back for nine years and has finally run out of the energy required to keep doing that.
His knees found the floor.
He cried the way he had not cried since he was five years old openly, completely, his shoulders shaking with it, no performance of strength anywhere in his body.
I want to see them again. I just want to be a normal person again. I want to smile again. The thoughts moved through him without order. Ruling was meant for Leon, not me. I was only ever a replacement.
Blue mana flared beside him Emerion turning from the wall, launching bursts of flame to push the snakes back, buying him time without a word.
Emerion looked at the kneeling boy and felt something in his chest that he recognized from the inside because he had been inside it himself alone in a room, crying in silence, convinced he was something less than what he should have been.
He didn't say anything. He kept the snakes back and he stayed quiet and he let Anathema have the moment, because some moments need to be witnessed rather than interrupted.
The sound of the room fell away.
The cold came slowly at first not the ship's cold, not the sea's cold, something more fundamental, more specific. The floor changed under his knees. He looked down and found snow.
He was kneeling under a tree beside a river he didn't recognize. Mountains in the distance. Sunlight on the water that moved slowly, without urgency. The air was not cold and not warm something between the two that he had no word for, something his body registered as perfect without understanding why.
He stood.
He looked around. No one else. The calm was so complete it felt foreign his mind, which had been running constantly for nine years, had simply gone quiet.
His feet carried him toward a wooden bridge over the river. Each step deepened the quiet. He didn't make the decision to cross his feet made it, and he followed, something drawing him forward with the gentleness of a tide rather than the urgency of anything that needed to be escaped.
A few more steps. The other side was close.
"Don't cross the bridge."
He turned.
The tears came again before his mind finished recognizing who was standing there. He crossed the distance between them without thinking and put his arms around the figure and held on with everything he had. The figure's arms came around him in return warm, steady, the specific warmth of something that has been absent long enough that finding it again doesn't feel like relief so much as the restoration of something essential.
"You've grown so much, little brother," Leon said. His voice was the same. Exactly the same.
Anathema buried his face and didn't answer for a moment. Then: "Big brother. Where were you? What is this place? I missed you so much."
He pulled back enough to see Leon's face. Almost the same height now. Leon's smile was exactly as he remembered it the eyes crinkling at the corners, the warmth in it entirely genuine.
"You always drop a lot of questions on me," Leon said. "I guess you never changed."
"You're still avoiding answering them. You haven't changed either." Anathema's voice trembled but the familiar irritation in it was real the irritation of someone who has found what they were looking for and is immediately reminded why it was also frustrating. "But you're here. Where have you been all these years? We never heard anything from you."
Leon rubbed the back of his head with the sheepish expression Anathema had memorized before he was old enough to know he was memorizing it. "It's complicated."
"Complicated."
"This place is in your heart," Leon said, his grin going slightly sheepish. "And I've lived in your heart all along. So I was never truly gone."
Anathema's brow furrowed. "In my heart? Don't trick me with pretty words, big brother."
"That's why I said it's complicated. I'm not tricking you. Sometimes logic stops working that's why poets say to follow your heart."
Anathema punched him lightly in the stomach. "I don't understand."
His voice darkened, the anguish pressing through the frustration. "I don't understand anything. I was fighting snakes. You show up after years, and now you're saying things that don't make sense."
"I know you were fighting snakes," Leon said, completely unfazed, the smile unchanged. "I understand if my words don't make sense I wouldn't get them either. But I have no reason to lie to you."
"Then why did you disappear?" The words came out broken. "Why show up now?"
"I disappeared because**********" Leon's voice continued moving but the middle of the sentence simply wasn't there.
The words existed and the shape of them existed but when they arrived at Anathema's ears they left nothing behind a gap, clean and complete, as though the answer had been spoken in a frequency he couldn't hear.
Anathema stared at him. "What happened to your voice?"
Leon's eyes widened slightly, a brief genuine surprise. "I see. You can't hear that part." He steadied himself, something shifting behind his expression. "Listen I don't have much time. You have to trust me. Even if it doesn't make sense."
He placed both hands on Anathema's shoulders. The grip was real and specific and present.
Anathema nodded despite everything.
"Let go of the past," Leon said. "I've watched you carry it. What happened that night wasn't your fault any of it. I know you fear becoming like Father. I've seen it happening in you." He held Anathema's gaze. "But for many people, Father was a good ruler. I know that sounds strange. It depends on your definition of good."
Anathema's eyes darkened. The words found the wound they were aimed at and pressed.
"I see you're not satisfied," Leon said, and his laugh was soft and knowing. "That's actually good." He looked at him with the specific understanding of someone who has known you your whole life. "I know what you really want. You want to be a good person. You can't stand on both boats forever, brother. You have to choose and make the right choice."
"Good person. Why can't I be both?"
"Don't be greedy now," Leon said gently. "If you continue to rule, you'll see why. For now just make the right choice."
"How do I make the right choice?"
Somewhere very far away, or perhaps very close a cracking sound. Anathema registered it and let it go.
"Follow your heart," Leon said. He took Anathema's hand and guided it to his chest the warmth of it immediately present. "Close your eyes. Let go of your burdens, let go of your regrets. Empty your heart as if you were born completely new."
Anathema closed his eyes.
The weight came off in layers. Not gone he understood it wasn't gone. But set down. Temporarily, honestly, with the specific relief of something that has been carried for so long the carrier has forgotten what it felt like not to carry it.
"Now open your eyes," Leon said. "See the world fresh. And tell me what do you want to become?"
Anathema opened his eyes.
He looked at his brother.
Every memory he had moved through him at once the paper plane. The rice balls. The sled. The valley. The snow. The years between that night and this moment, all of it, the full weight of it examined and held and not flinched from.
He breathed.
"I want to be myself," he said.
Simple. Direct. The most honest thing he had said in nine years.
Leon was quiet for a moment.
Then he laughed full and warm and entirely proud, the laugh of someone who has been waiting for exactly this answer and finds it exactly right.
"A choice after all," he said. "If you truly wish that you must go back." He pointed toward the tree. The cracking grew louder. "You can't afford to die and abandon the people who will need you. Not yet."
"Aren't you coming?" Anathema's voice broke. "You'd be a better ruler than me"
"I live inside you," Leon said. "I'll always be with you."
He pulled Anathema into the last hug tight, certain, the hug of someone who means every part of it.
Then he let go.
The bridge gave way beneath them.
Anathema lunged his hand reaching, his face a map of everything he had felt in nine years of not knowing and the tree's veins came from nowhere, wrapping his body, holding him back with a strength that had nothing cruel in it, just the gentle absolute certainty of something that knows better.
"Let me go! Damn it--"
He swung his sword. The veins didn't break. Didn't respond. His vision narrowed.
Leon's voice came from below from the water, from somewhere past the water, from wherever the bridge had been going before Anathema tried to cross it.
"If your heart ever feels heavy with regrets again share them with me. And I will share my strength with you."
The veins closed over his eyes.
Blue fire.
A streak of it, close enough to feel the heat, moving past his face and away.
Anathema blinked. The room came back the floor, the snakes, the transparent wall, the blue light. His cheeks were wet. The sword was still in his hand.
Emerion stood a few feet away, still casting, his face showing the particular strain of someone who has been doing something unsustainable and is doing it anyway. He glanced back. His expression softened briefly.
"Are you okay? It'd be rude to ask you to fight again, but--"
"You're not surviving this by being polite," Anathema said. His voice was steady. He wiped his face with the back of his hand one clean motion, practical rather than ashamed. "And neither am I by just crying."
He stood.
Something was different. He felt it before he understood it a warmth in his chest that had not been there before, rising slowly, moving outward. He looked at his hands.
A faint green glow had settled over his skin, rising like warm steam. Mana real mana, generated rather than borrowed, internal rather than pulled from the environment around him. His eyes reflected it when he looked at Emerion, who was staring with his mouth slightly open.
"I'm not dying until I see my guards again," Anathema said. He gripped his sword. The green deepened. "No. My friends."
He turned to face the snakes.
"Same plan," he said, glancing back at Emerion with a firm nod. "You focus on the barrier. And if I die but you survive--" a beat, "tell my friends I'm sorry."
Emerion looked at him for a moment.
"Well, if you're going to die," he said, rolling his eyes with a dry expression that didn't entirely hide what was underneath it, "die a bit later. I need more time to break this thing."
Anathema blinked.
He pressed his lips together.
The laugh that was trying to come out the first one in nine years that had nothing bitter in it stayed mostly contained.
"You should really work on your way with words," he said, turning back to the snakes with renewed focus, the green mana settling around him like something that had been waiting for permission.
"Only if I get out of here," Emerion muttered, pressing his palms back to the wall, the blue light brightening.
"ZALTREIGN!"