Tevlaia runs, ignoring the burns on her back. For the first time since her service in the Confederation, she is fleeing away from the same puny soldiers she used to look down upon. She cannot differentiate between friend or foe. The Battalion… She assumes they are dead. Her comrades, ones who poured out their lives for the Confederation, all gone. There is not even a moment to grieve.

An energy blast pierces through her left arm, the flesh immediately seared and roasted. She looks behind for a moment, just noticing the smoking hand of a Confederation soldier. Even with her comms broken and the soldier’s face concealed in their helmet, she feels a sense of indifference in them, as if this is just a daily occurrence.

The usage of magic, the energy released from their gloved hands. They are not the usual Confederation soldiers. Even as a few continue pursuing her, the others have already engaged in combat with the enemy… Well, they’re all enemies to her now, anyway.

An explosion to her left. Rocks lodge themselves to her calf, embedded in her flesh. She continues running, biting her lips to distract her from the pain. An enemy soldier suddenly appears in the smoke. She stabs them in the stomach, wheeling them around as a flurry of blasts hit the unfortunate makeshift shield.

Despite the chaos, she knows where she’s running to. The Battalion’s original destination, the entrance to the capital of the New Rule itself. And perhaps Kavlina is there as well.

And what will she do there? Die an undeserved death at the hands of her enemies, the puny insects taking advantage of her decaying corpse? Surrender and spend the rest of her days as a prisoner, mocked and defiled by all? Be labeled a traitor as the Confederation armies swarm the city and recover her broken body?

She is the leader of Battalion Elethien, the finest of the elites in the Confederation. She is supposed to be indispensable. Her individual martial prowess has earned her many victories, her perseverance pushing her onwards after every loss. And to be defeated by pawns who have never seen a single drop of blood before this battle?

Her pace quickens, her heart pumping faster as blood continues to trickle from her wounds. She feels a sharp pain in her chest, but that doesn’t matter. Her instincts sharpen, her eyes become blurry, blanking out as she continues to rush across the corpse-carpeted wasteland. It’s that feeling again. The desperation as she was locked up with the other children in the dark room. The thirst for more as she made the first hit. The primal pleasure as she killed one after another, unstoppable, untouchable. An animal, losing all sense of empathy as the prey were all torn up and destroyed. On the brink of death as she collapsed from the guilt of what she had done. A death worse than a death.

The memories resurface in her mind, the faces, the room, the eerie silence. It’s burning, scorching her corrupted heart and mind. The internal wall is broken through. The Gate is open. Again.

Except this time, there is no darkness to hide her shame.

Her wounds close up, the flesh and bones regenerate, leaving only a patch of blood. Her pupils constrict, her hair fading to a silvery color. Her steps only barely touch the ground before they take flight briefly, again and again. Even as blasts pierce her body from behind, the flesh only grows and closes the gaps, stretching like vines. Her mask, damaged earlier from the explosion, still covers most of her face, but it doesn’t hide her exposed mouth, gaping open, breathing rapidly as blood mixed with saliva trails out from her tongue. She drops her blade. It’s useless for her now, the broken metal clanging as it comes into contact with an armored corpse.

She’s already dead.

She suddenly stops, letting the soldiers approach her, their rifles and magic killing her over and over again. As the Confederation and New Rule’s soldiers converge on her, skewering her with their pikes, crushing her with their shields, she still opens her mouth, breathing heavily, her eyes still ablaze.

Her mind, corrupting, falling apart, shutting down as the Gate, the suicidal Gate bursts. Memories fade away, logic crumbling into ashes, people only blank-faced mannequins. She scrambles for the scraps left of the Battalion, but they, too, are burnt away in that consuming fire inside.

Wait, there’s still a piece. A girl ruining, corrupting into nothingness like her. Her simple mind focused only on a certain individual who had killed her once. She’s only a soldier to Tevlaia, so why… Why is that memory still persevering, refusing to be destroyed with the others?

She is not completely gone. Not yet. Tevlaia realizes now. She herself may be already dead, but Kavlina is still not yet decayed, her life still filled with opportunities ahead.

No. Kavlina is a tool to her. She is nothing but a tool. Then why… Why doesn’t the memory of her just fade away?

Kavlina is a tool. She can’t be anything more.

No… Kavlina is like her. She is alive. She is—

The last sliver of rationality leaves Tevlaia. All that remains is a single thought: Kavlina. The raw instinct takes over. The ancient, dangerous instinct, the narrowing of vision to only her goal. The obsession of a single individual, whether to save them or to kill them. All channels of thought blocked off, Tevlaia only looks to one direction: Kavlina. Wherever she may be.

Silence. Solace. Tevlaia hears nothing. She sees nothing but an image of Kavlina in a sea of white. The little girl, asleep, her right arm outstretched as her left lies far away in a bloody mess. “Avalel,” Kavlina in her mind seems to mumble. Her body is fading, disintegrating every time Avalel is mentioned. “Avalel, Avalel, Avalel…” Kavlina is decaying. Just like Tevlaia herself.

“No, wake up,” Tevlaia calls out softly. “Kavlina, wake up.” The mumbles continue, ignoring her pleas. She tries to touch Kavlina, to nudge her a little, but the hand is already disappearing into dust.

“Wake up.” A firm command. Still no answer. Tevlaia is beginning to fade away, the image of Kavlina before her becoming blurry by the moment. Kavlina herself is also fading away, her arms already gone as she continues to murmur his name.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up!” Tevlaia shouts with increasing intensity. No, it can’t be. Kavlina, deaf to her cries, only crumbles faster, her legs already gone, her eyes like sand. The image dies away as darkness begins to envelop Tevlaia like an orb. Kavlina, too, is slowly being devoured by the darkness, albeit at a slower pace.

Kavlina won’t wake up from her madness. She just… won’t. The darkness. She isn’t waking up. She cannot wake up. Her insanity does not allow her to wake up. Her arm is still outstretched, but it is too late. Her mouth finally opens, but there is no sound.

Save me, Tevlaia.

“No, no, no… Wake up!” Tevlaia snaps back to reality, her vocal cords stretching to their limits as she screams. Her fists harden, becoming like rocks. Even though she is skewered from all sides, Tevlaia no longer feels anything. She is but a dead person, falling further from the cursed gift of life.

A punch to a New Rules soldier’s chest, shattering their rib cage. Some of the shards find themselves lodged inside her fist, but that does not matter. Her other hand rips apart a pike from her stomach, letting the flesh and traces of organs be pulled doubt alongside the weapon. The savagery, the animal-like mentality… She has become nothing but a beast.

Spikes protrude from her back, expelling the other weapons as she continues her charge. Another flurry of shots puncture her, but those are far too weak at this point. The Confederation troops with their magic are chasing her, ignoring even the New Rule who are supposed to be their enemies. In this battlefield, there is no one but the enemy.

Blood soaks her face, her eyes blackened into a vacuum like the void. Her fingers, like claws, dig into a Confederation soldier’s visor, blinding them before a spike from her abdomen gores their heart. Another shot at her face, teeth scattered out, her lower jaw dropping to the ground. Her mask breaks, quickly buried by the dust. Yet that does not stop her.

The bone, the flesh, the system all regenerates. She charges at her assailant, glaring at them with her regenerated eyes before their face is squashed flat by a punch. Another Confederation soldier. Another soldier. Another enemy. They are all the same.

Ba-dump. Her heart still beats, pumping, fueling her rage. But it is dying, blackening like her eyes. It’s exhausting itself, becoming part of the lifeless shell.

Dust up ahead, the loud clanging of blades vibrating her eardrums. Their speed, far greater than those soldiers with their pathetic magic. Their intensity, disrupting the flow of energy itself. Their majesty, forcing all to do nothing but watch.

And then it stops. As she approaches the site closer, she sees two figures, one pointing his sword at another. The other one is tired, her body no longer matching her will. No… she is paralyzed, her energy depleted, drained away. Her body is unresponsive, her explosive strength earlier all gone. She is an animal to the slaughter, the butcher raising his blade to deal the killing blow.

Kavlina, still conscious, lying helpless on the ground. Avalel, victorious, the Anapadeia raised high.

“A goodbye to you, brave soldier of the Confederation,” he says.

Tevlaia dashes, a sole spike growing out from her fist, becoming somewhat of a lance. As the blade begins its fall, she leaps, the lance poised for Avalel’s heart.

Blood splatters on Tevlaia’s face. Did she… She suddenly feels a sense of nausea, her strength sapped away in an instant.

The lance finds itself grazing Avalel’s shoulder, breaking the armor and ripping the fabric within. He’s bleeding. The boy, who had, in his madness before killed one of her comrades, is finally bleeding once more. Kavlina still lies there, alive, her eyes looking at Tevlaia in surprise.

“What an annoyance,” Avalel scoffs. “Quite rude indeed.” Tevlaia has stopped, but she is still hovering midair…?

She looks down. The Anapadeia cleanly stabs through her stomach, the bloody tip reappearing behind her back. The sensation of pain… It’s returning. Bit by bit, it’s returning.

“You must be Tevlaia,” he notes, barely recognizing her through the mess of blood, sweat, and bone. “Have you come to kill me as well? Or perhaps…” He takes a look at Kavlina. “You have come to save one of your foolish comrades?”

He’s not retracting the blade. There can be no regeneration. Her wound is freezing, the exposed flesh calcifying, turning cold, no different than bone.

“Regeneration,” he says, feeling the abnormal sensation from the Anapadeia. “What an interesting development. Calcification too, at such admirable speeds. You are far crazier than I assumed you to be, Tevlaia.” His voice is mockingly soothing, like the cries of a Tiralep mimicking the mating calls of its prey before it goes for the kill. “You must’ve opened your Gate completely.”

“K...av...lin...a,” Tevlaia gasps, reaching an arm towards her. Immediately, Avalel removes the Anapadeia from her stomach, slicing off her hand.

“Foolish, just foolish,” he comments, laughing lightly as the hand falls onto Kavlina’s chest.

Little does he realize, he is the foolish one.

Tevlaia screams in agony, her hand immediately regenerating as calcified flesh. She can no longer regenerate her cells to their original state, but calcification is still possible. A fist soundly lands on Avalel’s face, shattering his visor, knocking him back and stunning him. More spikes sprout out from her back, a forest of death for all who dare strike her from behind. It’s becoming far too uncontrollable, her entire body slowly developing into nothing but a statue.

She swiftly picks up Kavlina, her ribs extending to wrap her around in a protective cage. Before Avalel can even react, she has already left, taking Kavlina as far as she can before her body fails.

“A beast rescuing another’s prey,” Avalel mutters. “How poetic.”

The group of Confederation soldiers arrive, some aiming at his head, some tugging at their prisoners. The sounds of enemy bombardment grow louder, thundering even as their aircraft deploy wave after wave of bombs, destroying the already desolated landscape. Meanwhile, his own decimated soldiers hide in their respective pockets, waiting to be killed by the enemy.

“Any moment now…” He stares to the distance, not even paying attention to the cautiously advancing enemy. He hears some soldier shouting his name along with something else, but those are merely pawns undeserving of his attention. And so what if he can sense traces of magic in them?

Elethien does not prefer to waste her time to personally execute some petty criminals. So, too, will Avalel not fill his hands with the blood of the unworthy.

The sound of aircraft soaring to the skies. Hundreds of them, infesting the air like locusts. The sound of the armored vehicles, bursting from hiding as they charge out the dozens of makeshift ramps and hangars from the city. The cries of soldiers, eager to take revenge upon their dead comrades at the Pass. The roar of an artillery barrage, thousands of shells raining upon the battlefield dotted with both the recruits of the New Rule and the Confederation’s invasion force.

The confusion in their body language. The fear, the horror, the denial of the inevitable… So many emotions exploding at once.

Avalel smiles. Watching the enemy be rapidly defeated before his eyes can be quite entertaining, isn’t it?

“And so it begins.”

Tevlaia rushes away from the battlefield, Kavlina cradled inside her extended rib cage and arms. Her legs are becoming stiffer, the flesh calcified from within. Her heart is already slowing, her eyes slowly dimming. There isn’t much time left.

She stops, gently placing Kavlina onto the ground as her legs become firmly planted into the soil, pillars that are no longer willed to move. The humanity inside her reviving, the beast receding, and with it, her death returning. Despite the whirr of aircraft overhead, they are in a completely untouched area, the dry tall grass offering camouflage to the two soldiers. Tevlaia, the former leader of Battalion Elethien, now at her dying breath. Kavlina, the one who had been rescued to serve the Battalion, now having no shelter.

“Wake up,” Tevlaia whispers despite knowing Kavlina is very much awake, her body still healing and regenerating lost systems from earlier.

“Why did you rescue me?” Kavlina asks, wincing in pain as her wounds close up. “This was a fight between me and Avalel. Only.”

Tevlaia scoffs lightly. “I didn’t know, really,” she says. “Maybe I was worried for your safety.”

“Lies. I was only a tool for you, was I not? I wanted to kill Avalel, you wanted to defeat the New Rule. We each had our goals and promises. Safety was not one of them.”

“I couldn’t bring myself to leave a comrade behind. Not when our numbers were already so small.” Tevlaia is only rationalizing it. She wants to tell Kavlina, but all the comes are bland words she could’ve said to anyone.

“I am not an official part of the Confederation, nevermind the Battalion. My death counts for little. And you still rescue me from the hands of that murderer. Have you become insane, Tevlaia?” Kavlina’s voice shakes as she looks towards her limp prosthetic arm. “Why do you sacrifice so much for me?”

“You’re finally sounding more human,” Tevlaia smiles. “I still remember my fear when all you had in your mind was Avalel. It seems to be better now, I assume.” Her torso is beginning to freeze in place, leaving only her arms, neck, and head to move.

“Why, Tevlaia, why?”

“You have endured much, far more than I have. The Confederation does not deserve you, and nor does the New Rule. You have such passion, such firm belief, but they are destroying you. They are killing you—”

“Tell me why.” Despite the increasing anger, Kavlina’s voice only grows soft and hoarse, almost begging for Tevlaia to give her at least an answer. “Why so much for me?”

“I… I…” Tevlaia chokes, unable to string her words together. “I don’t want… I don’t want you to become a beast. Not like me.”

“But I am not.”

“The murderous intent. The repressed ecstasy when you kill. The obsession over a single individual.” She looks at Kavlina with eyes of grief, as if she is mourning Kavlina’s death rather than her own. “It will… It will corrupt you.”

“Then why rescue me? Just let me die before his blade!”

Tevlaia laughs softly, her eyes fogging up. “You have a long life ahead of you. I am already dead. You can still reverse your downfall to insanity. I am already beyond repair. You still have many opportunities. I can no longer atone for my sins..” Before her calcification reaches completion in her torso, she bends down further, stretching her bloodied hand to Kavlina’s mask. “I don’t want you to repeat the same mistakes as I have done.”

“I am no one to you. I was only rescued to become a tool.”

Tevlaia brushes her hand at Kavlina, leaving a crimson trace on her mask before it freezes. “If you were, I wouldn’t rescue you, not then, not now, would I?”

“I don’t understand—”

Tevlaia stares at her with longing as her face gradually turns to stone. “You have a long way to go, young, rebellious star.” So much for the greater good, only to die for the sake of one. She chuckles weakly. Her journey is finally over. The beast, finally sedated. The troubled child, finally at rest.

Tevlaia, her body becoming a stone canopy over Kavlina, is silent. They had only been on the same side for a few months, but to Kavlina, something within her seems to have withered away. As her body slowly heals and regenerates, regaining her motor skills, she can only stare at the now calm face of Tevlaia, a subtle smile streaked across her face. The blood on her mask dries, leaving a faint red handprint sliding down the left side of the metal.

Tevlaia, thirty years of age, turns into stone. The Battalion is annihilated. The Confederation’s finest soldier is now dead.

Kavlina is alone. Again.