When Kara woke up, it was dark. In the brief waking moments before her mind had yet to shake off the dullness of sleep, she let herself believe that she had dreamt everything that happened to her before she passed out.

Her delusion didn't last very long, especially when she noticed the familiarly messy figure of Cassian sitting at the other end of the room, staring directly at her.

"It's nice to see you're finally awake," Cassian said, before Kara even moved. Though she didn't know how he realized, he seemed to know that she was awake with utmost certainty.

Kara pushed herself up into a sitting position and gave her surroundings a brief scan. It wasn't hard to figure out where she was. The windows were open, and though a thin cloud cover dampened the light of the twin moons, the sparse light that they provided was still strong enough for her to recognize the interior of her house.

She stared at Cassian. He was sitting on one of her chairs, the same one he had sat in when he first visited her home, and suddenly Kara recognized the strange clothes he was wearing.

"Did you steal those clothes?" she asked.

"Borrowed," he corrected, though he did sound somewhat sheepish about it. "I intend to replace them once I acquire my own clothes. I took it from a storehouse not far from here."

"That wasn't a storehouse. It was my friend's house. She collects clothes."

"Is that so?" Cassian frowned. "I suppose I will need to apologize to her personally in that case."

Kara stared at the messy self-proclaimed king musing heavily about his upcoming apology when she reminded herself that Cassian was still guilty of breaking the Grand Treaty.

The very moment she started to gather her magic, his eyes snapped to her.

"None of that, please," he said, in a voice that suggested he was more concerned than he was angry. "I would have to break your floorboards to create a dome of earth around you, and it's such a lovely home."

Kara didn't know how to react to that. Could he sense magic? That would be both a blessing and a curse. A curse in that it would be impossible to kill him with magic, as long as he could stop her from using it, and a blessing in that because magic was useless and there would be no point in endangering her friends when a knife would be just as effective.

With how fast he could manipulate the earth around him, she doubted that she would be able to stab him in the first place, but it was quite nice that she didn't have to try and kill all her friends again.

At that thought, Kara gripped her fist into a tight ball and bit into her lip as the old anger she felt towards Cassian grew in her gut.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Would you like me to tell you what I'm doing in your home, or what I'm doing in Astranta? The answer to both is quite similar."

She'd meant neither. It was a rhetorical question, filled with an aggressive desire to get him out of her sight. She had almost killed her friends, and Cassian didn't seem even slightly remorseful for it.

Cassian's gaze wasn't on her, directed out of her window instead, so she wasn't sure if he'd noticed the murderous look on her face. If he did, he feigned ignorance well.

"I'll take your silence as acceptance," he said, over the grinding sound of Kara's teeth.

Kara didn't correct him. Her fury made it difficult not to leap towards him and try to strangle him with her bare hands. She disregarded the fact that he was maybe a head taller than her, and would probably be able to pry her hands off his neck without much trouble.

"I'm in your home because I was worried about you," he said, still gazing out the window. "I wasn't sure why you collapsed, so I sent everybody to their homes, and offered to house the bladeless in temporary earth huts outside the Armoury walls. None of them accepted, for some reason. I hope they're staying warm."

Kara frowned.

"What's a bladeless?" she asked.

Cassian glanced at her momentarily before returning his gaze to the sky. "It's a term I created myself, for humans who have yet to manifest their Soulblade."

"You mean a Normal," Kara said.

Cassian's eyes snapped to hers, and the suddenness of his glare made her want to flinch away, but she met it head on out of sheer spite.

Surprisingly, he was the first to break eye contact.

"I'm sorry," he said, with a huff. "I shouldn't blame you for thinking that way when it's not your fault. You simply don't know better."

Though the last words might have been a simple dismissal of her intelligence if it were spoken by anybody else, Cassian spoke them sadly, as if it were an unchangeable tragedy that he felt responsible for.

"But also," he continued. "I was truly interested in developing your abilities as a Soulblade. I hope to get you to reach the same state as I have reached."

The offer surprised her, but not enough to change her mind. As Kara eyed her kitchen, careful not to let her eyes linger for too long in case he had some ability to know where she was looking. It wouldn’t be the craziest thing he’d shown himself to be capable of.

"Why me?" Kara asked. Though she didn’t care, if he talked, then he would be distracted

"Excuse me?"

"There are dozens of other Soulblades in this Armoury. Why single me out?"

Cassian smiled. "Well, I wouldn't quite say that I'm singling you out. More so that you brought quite a bit of attention to yourself when you tried to kill me. Besides, it’s not only you that I would be helping. A Soulblade will eventually be consumed by their own magic if they do not assimilate, which is why I intend to eventually share this process with all the Soulblades in the Armoury, and also to answer my question about why I'm in Astranta, I plan to do the same with every Soulblade in the Kingdom."

Kara frowned. She was sure that the idea sounded noble, but she couldn't accept the fact that the more Soulblades that existed in the same way that Cassian did, the more casual breaking of the Treaty there would be.

"Why am I the first?" she asked. Her eyes flitted to the kitchen, where her cooking knives were kept.

"Well, again. You drew attention to yourself, but admittedly I had planned to approach you first anyways, as you have the largest aura in this encampment."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure. I can see auras, but I'm not quite sure what they mean. Perhaps you having a larger aura means that your capabilities are higher. Perhaps it means nothing."

"You want me as a guinea pig, then."

"Precisely," Cassian admitted shamelessly, even smiling slightly, with the reflection of his teeth shining through his unkempt mess of a beard. "I wish to understand the process as well as possible, including the capabilities of one with an aura such as yourself. It dwarfs even Gareth's."

"Gareth?"

"The boy with the red eyes."

"I know who Gareth is," Kara snapped, taking advantage of every excuse to be annoyed at the man. "Why did you bring him up?"

"He has the second largest aura, within this encampment," Cassian explained. "Followed closely by Aberthan, but both of their auras combined would not be as large as yours."

Kara stayed silent for a moment. She had initially thought that maybe auras were somehow tied to the range of magic that Soulblades could use, but if Gareth's aura was larger than Aberthan's it didn't quite make sense. Aberthan was a Guardian, after all.

"How big's your aura?" Kara asked, unwilling to theorize for any longer. Any theory she came up with wouldn’t be based in nothing concrete anyways.

"I don't have one," Cassian said.

"Really?" Kara asked. "But you're powerful."

Cassian shrugged. "Perhaps I simply cannot feel my own aura or more likely, I have become a being of pure magic through my assimilation."

Kara stood up, and started to walk towards the kitchen as casually as she could, pretending as if she were merely pacing as she thought. "That makes sense," she lied. "So why else are you asking me to go along with your stupid plan?"

"It's not stupid."

"Whatever," Kara said as she stood in her kitchen, leaning back against the countertops.

Cassian seemed to hesitate before speaking. For the first time since he'd started talking, he sheepishly looked down and spoke slowly.

"I-"

Seeing the moment of hesitation and unsure if she would get a second chance, Kara moved, grabbing a random handle from the knife block in her kitchen. In one swift motion, she lunged forward, driving the quartz knife down into Cassian's flesh.

With how dark it was in the house, how awkward she was with the makeshift weapon, and how frantic her mind was, her short steak knife, which she had used to cut into a nice meal just two days before, barely sunk into Cassian's skin before he yelped in shock and pulled away. Though the knife veered off target as he pulled away, and the awkward lunge of her initial attack drove her forward, with Kara realizing quickly that she was just stabbing air.

Before she could think about stabbing at him again, the momentum of her assault took over her body, sending her crashing into Cassian’s chest. Taking hold of whatever she could, her momentum refused to stop, and with their bodies effectively pinned together, Kara’s accidental tackle sent the both of them tumbling back in his chair.

The world briefly lost all orientation, but Kara still felt her other hand gripping Cassian's shirt. Using it as a guide, she forced herself to ignore the way that the wind was knocked out of her after she fell, she stabbed down towards where she assumed Cassian's body was.

Something stopped her knife arm on the way down, possibly Cassian's hand hitting her arm as he flailed around, but before he could grab her arm, she pulled away and stabbed down again.

This time, she felt the resistance of flesh, as her steak knife sunk deep into Cassian's flesh, a warm spray of blood hitting her arm and the top of her head as she did.

Cassian twitched and though he had somehow managed to get his hand on her face, attempting to push her away, Kara pushed herself forward, putting all of her body weight on the knife that was currently embedded in Cassian. Underneath her weight, the blade of the knife seemed to bend, just slightly, until it slid into Cassian's flesh with a slick wet sucking sound.

Cassian's gasp was just barely audible over the sound of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.

As a shallow puddle of blood started to pool under her hands, she drew in a shaky breath.

But before she could start to cry, Cassian spoke.

"Hmm," he said. "So I do still have blood."

Kara froze.

Cassian sighed. "You really scared me," he said. "But I suppose no real harm's been done here. I really thought I was going to die." He sighed again. "Though it's quite messy, I must admit. I would prefer if you didn't do that again."

"You're immortal?" Kara asked, not quite believing what she was seeing.

Cassian shifted, though with her entire weight still pinning him down, it might have been an attempt at a shrug. "It's seeming more likely now. It's still quite painful, though. Would you mind getting off me?"

Kara didn't move, couldn’t find any strength to resist as Cassian pushed her off his body, groaning as he did.

"So anyways, the second reason why I chose you to be so-" He cut himself with a pained groan as he pushed himself into a sitting position, propped up on an elbow. "So involved-" Another pained grunt as he gripped the handle of the knife. "Is precisely because of this." As Cassian pulled out the knife, rather than a pained groan, he let out a silent gasp of silent pain.

A spray of blood hit Kara's cheek. She didn't react.

"Do you hate me, Kara?"

"No." If she wasn't still shocked at the supposed immortality that Cassian held, she was sure that she would have taken some time to answer. But the automatic answer slipped out of her mouth. She had no personal grudges against Cassian. She barely knew him after all.

"That's good. So why did you try and kill me? Three times now, if you count the fact that you almost tried to manifest as soon as you woke up."

That question had another automatic and easy answer. "Because you broke the Grand Treaty."

She didn't know what she expected his reaction to be, but she knew she hadn't expected a casual nod, as if he were accepting it as the most reasonable explanation for his attempted murder.

"I thought as much," he said. "And that's exactly what many other Soulblades may think. You're an example of the Soulblades that are the most dedicated to the Treaty, and I don't plan to abandon you or any other Soulblade that may subscribe to your train of thought."

As he propped his body up, a slow, seemingly endless stream of blood flowing from his chest, his hand lifted up to her and for a moment, it seemed as if he was pointing at her, readying himself to accuse her of something.

"I will save you, Kara," Cassian said. "Do you think you are worthy of being saved?"

Her third automatic answer slipped from her lips easily.

"No."

Cassian smiled, and Kara finally recognized the outstretched hand for what it was meant to be. Though he was in pain, barely supporting his body with his shaking arm, and bleeding fatally from a wound that Kara had made, he was trying to offer his help.

"Well that’s too bad," he said, spitting out a wad of blood as he spoke. “I’m going to save us all. You have no option to refuse.”

He smiled at her, and his teeth no longer reflected the moonlight, darkened by the blood in his mouth.