Desmond stretched out a hand toward the endless blue sky.

There was the dark silhouette of an eagle flying, framed by sunlight. The sun was huge, appearing to be closer to the planet than normal. Still, he couldn't feel its warmth on his skin. Quite the opposite. The only thing he felt was cold.

The cold of death was filling his body. Because he was dying.

After so long struggling in vain against the truth, he was finally able to silently accept it.

Even though his savior had managed to lead him here....

Even though he had clung to his consciousness, his life, so tightly....

In a little while, it would be extinguished.

He would never think again.

His eyes would never open again.

He would truly lose everything, forever. Worse, he wouldn't know what he had lost or how, because from now on it would be nothing. What could be worse than that?

No matter how much you were suffering, life was better than death.

He didn't want to accept that this was his fate, but there was nothing he could do about it.

But still...

He didn't wish for wings. He definitely didn't express any verbal wishes, though as the years passed his memories of this moment would distort until it seemed to him that he had. Actually, that was being too picky.

Though he didn't utter a wish, mentally or verbally, there was a wish.

Staring at the eagle crossing the sea in the sky, he wondered vaguely, with the last remnants of his fading consciousness, what it would be like to be as free as that eagle. What it would be like to be able to go anywhere and not be afraid of anything.

What it would be like... to be like the woman who had saved him, who was now smiling sweetly at him, as if everything was all right.

The kind of person who could enter a war zone to, for unknown reasons, save a stranger. What mattered to him now was not his motives. It wasn't the time. What mattered to him was how powerful she must be, and the freedom that allowed her to have.

If only he had that freedom...

If only he could fly free. Go wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted, for whatever reason he wanted.

That's why those in the Azure Empire could commit these kinds of atrocities and get whatever they wanted. Because they had the power to do so.

Yes. Power was synonymous with freedom.

That was the last thought that crossed his mind before his hand fell and his eyes closed. The last thing he saw? The face of his savior, of course.

The face of his savior, in more ways than one, who told him without words that he would wake up again.

Though he missed it at the time.

■

I can do this, Amy told herself. I can.

Because she was strong. And it wasn't just about her talent with magic. If she was here, if she had come this far despite her body refusing to follow her commands, it was because of her unbreakable willpower.

And that was what would allow her to win. She wasted no time thinking that she might die.

Not because she was desperate and didn't want to think about it.

Just because for her it wasn't a real possibility.

She swore this wouldn't be her first and last battle. She couldn't die before experiencing true freedom. For other people, that wish would have been an excuse to hide in the infirmary and not come out.

Not for her. To her it gave her the strength she lacked at the moment.

Going on her own, not sheltered in a more or less secure position in the formation, having to lean with one hand on the wall to keep her balance, she attacked the soldiers coming up the stairs. Joining the assault.

She threw a shower of stalactites.

She created ice on the steps, causing the soldiers to stumble, to lose time.

That made them fall, too, though such a fall couldn't kill them.

However, doing it at the right time could cause the shot of one or more to be diverted. And so she did finish some of them off. Causing them to accidentally kill their own comrades.

Her body was on the verge of collapse, but her soul still burned with fury.

And it would not be extinguished, its light would not grow dull.

It was something the Empire's soldiers couldn't harm, even if they filled her with bullets, even if they killed her. In fact, she felt she was stronger today than on any other day in her short life, for some reason.

Maybe it was her own fanciful fantasies, but it helped more than it hurt her, so it was okay, if nothing else.

One of the soldiers...

He picked up a grenade, removed the pin and threw it from the middle of the stairs to where they were gathered. Quickly the mages scattered.

It hadn't landed near her, so she didn't need to move. But that didn't mean there wasn't a reason to do something about it.

She encased the grenade in ice, preventing it from exploding.

Amy let out a sigh of relief. She had never tried it before and hadn't been sure it would work. It would have been so easy for it to go off. Because failing would not only have meant that the grenade would have exploded.

The explosion would have shattered the ice, sending chunks flying in all directions, fast and deadly.

It would only have made things worse and by far.

She was glad she had tried it, because it worked and because she now knew that was an option. But she shouldn't do any more experiments of that kind. Her luck wouldn't last forever. Maybe she wouldn't even repeat that now that she knew it worked, because if she had been slower the worst would have happened anyway.

Only in an emergency, she told herself. By which she meant when her life was in danger and not others', of course.

Not even Desmond's.

She wondered if she'd be able to keep that promise when she saw seeing Desmond in danger.

He was a stranger to her, as were the other applicants, the living and the dead. A couple of conversations couldn't change that. Still, she couldn't deny that he was a cut above the others precisely because of those conversations.

Despite what her control over ice might suggest, despite the associated stereotypes, she wasn't a cold person.

But not warm enough, either, to be sure what she would do until it happened. One way or the other.

She told herself she had nothing to worry about.

She was surrounded by people her age good enough to study here and not at a second-rate academy, and by the professors, some of the most capable mages in the entire realm. Did she really believe, despite everything, that it was her responsibility who lived or died?

She had no such responsibility.

Desmond would manage on his own. And if not, well, it was possible that someone would pull its ass out the fire.

It was possible and ideal, if that someone did it in a safer way, and there were a thousand safer ways.

Amy slumped forward, kneeling against the railing of the stairs.

As the battle progressed around her, she could only focus on the fact that her legs were shaking. That they were weak, limp, as if they had been broken.

She took a deep breath.

She had to calm down. This didn't change anything, really. She had known this was the kind of danger she faced.

Being practically defenseless in a war zone.

That she could fight with her spells didn't change that she couldn't move to her satisfaction. That she couldn't, by any stretch of the imagination, dodge gunfire, or move quickly where or how it suited her best, following the progression of the battle.

It was bad, but this was nothing new.

Looking around, the others had it much worse than she did.

Everything had gone pretty well while they were climbing the stairs, when they could absolutely control the pace of the battle and the soldiers were 'trapped' in an enclosed space, with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Despite all their disadvantages, they had been in a superior position then.

But that changed as soon as the stairs ended and they reached the second floor.

The nature of the fight had changed, and their side was paying for it. They had lost control of the fight. They had started to die. Most of the people she was watching, even some of the teachers, possibly, would be dead by the end, even if they won this fight.

But she wouldn't.

Amy wouldn't die. Amy had come too far to die now. But there always, always had to be something or someone standing in her way.

The spark of rage in her chest set her heart on fire, and that heat spread throughout her body, filling it with renewed strength.

Just in the nick of time.

Someone laid hands on her, a soldier. Roaring, gritting her teeth, she lunged forward with a chunk of ice that had formed in her hands. She said had formed, as if it had nothing to do with her, because it almost was.

Amy had formed it unconsciously, reacted on instinct. A stalactite used as a knife.

The stalactite entered through the chin and came out the other side. The blood flew, pieces of skull too. The visible part of the stalactite was so painted red that its original color couldn't be seen.

Amy yanked back, tearing the weapon away rather than simply pulling it out.

Since her magic was ice, the cold didn't affect her grip, the effectiveness of the stalactite as a weapon, because she couldn't feel what others would do by touching it. It wasn't that it didn't affect her, but that for her it didn't exist.

What she did feel was the blood splashing on her shirt and face.

Amy felt it, but it didn't affect her either.

Not like then, in the forest.

This situation was more dangerous, more out of control, and yet she was perfectly calm. Well, no. Calm no, because she was burning with rage. But the point was, she wasn't breaking down.

Blood was just liquid, after all. Everyone experienced the same thing when diving into a pool.

Now she didn't understand how she had become so hysterical, losing control of herself.

She took a step back. Her breathing was agitated.

She physically collapsed. She crawled backwards, straining as hard as she could, and stopped abruptly when her back touched the wall. Her body was telling her that she had reached the limit of her strength.

Bullshit, she thought. Cooperate, bastard.

She raised an ice shield in front of her as she struggled to get up again, leaning first against the wall, then against a piece of furniture.

Bullets impacted against the shield. Even a spell, once, from someone who might have been talented, but had no fucking idea how to aim.

The spell that grazed the shield, just grazed, was what made it explode into a thousand pieces, in fact.

A gust of wind, not bullets.

"Useless son of a bitch," she muttered. Even speaking was an effort.

Speaking of useless, she shouldn't have wasted oxygen saying that.

A soldier aimed at her.

And he was glaring at her. He was looking at her as if he hated her personally. He didn't have a helmet and his face was marked by an ugly scar.

Recent, so much so that it was still bleeding. Was that what it was about? That she had scarred him?

Amy took a step forward.

It didn't matter.

What mattered was that she wouldn't have time to dodge, or to raise another defense.

He squeezed the trigger.

The bullet flew, slicing through the air.

Another senseless kill. However, this time, same as with the bullet, she wasn't going to be able to avoid it.

... Once again, she misjudged.

A body fell to the ground, followed by a spurt of blood, but it wasn't hers.

Time slowed down. Inside that bubble, she had plenty of time to burn that shocked expression on his face, the pain that twisted it and his wide eyes.

Then the bubble burst, and there was nothing left, nothing else. That expression would be that boy's last expression.

Because he was dead. He was already dead.

In pushing her out of the way, he had not only had the bad luck not to be able to dodge it, but the bullet had hit him full in the chest and pierced his heart, killing him instantly. If he had been left between life and death, maybe he could have been saved. Maybe, with a little luck, a small miracle.

But no.

No, no, no.

He was dead, it was the end.

It would have been terrible to see anyone die to save her, but that chunk of flesh, it was no more than a chunk of flesh, lying at her feet was Desmond.

She couldn't believe she had been having a more or less pleasant conversation with him a few hours ago.

She couldn't believe that she had seen him smiling, when now the only thing she saw on his face, the only thing that would be there forever, was a grimace of surprise and pain that didn't express the awfulness of what had really happened to him. That it wasn't even close, because he had died before it registered.

Instantly, without knowing it, he had

(returned to darkness)

died.

And worst of all, if she hadn't been here, he would still be alive.

It was almost as if she had killed him with her own hands.

■

I didn't know him...knew him. He meant nothing to me.

That was what she told herself, but she couldn't look away from the corpse. She couldn't focus on more important things. Which should be more important, like the danger of death that surrounded her on all sides.

Desmond was dead. He had promised her he wouldn't throw his life away.

Yet at the first opportunity he had sacrificed himself for someone he didn't really know. It was possible that she was wrong, but, from their conversation, she had the feeling that they were not friends, not even acquaintances.

That, like her, he had met that woman just today. And he had died for her.

He hadn't gone to push her out of the path of the bullet thinking he would die, of course. He must have thought he'd be able to dodge it, too. Or that he would be shot, but not die. She didn't know what had gone wrong, but something had.

She saw her surprise reflected in Desmond's dead face. The last expression he had made before he died.

His last thoughts, the last emotion he had felt, it was all there.

She heard a wild scream.

When it dawned on her that the inhuman sound had come from her own throat, the soldier who had shot him was in the air, lifted by the tentacles of his own shadow and the shadows of the room.

When he realized that inhuman sound had come from his own throat, the soldier who had shot him was in the air, lifted by the tentacles of his own shadow. There was no darkness in the room, after all, except those cast by the people, the furniture, the lamp.

And the one writhing inside the hole that was his heart.

She exerted force with her magic power, manipulating the shadows so that they pulled with all their might in two different directions. Splitting the soldier into two unequal halves, armor and all.

She dropped the corpse.

She grabbed Desmond as she had grabbed the soldier. Only, in this case, the more appropriate word was wrapped, of course.

The dead deserved respect.

But he wasn't dead.

It would be ridiculous for him to have died from a single gunshot after having found him in the woods full of blood and bullet holes, fighting as if nothing had happened to him. He had to be okay.

She needed time to concentrate. To think.

Christina moved, turning her back on her first mission, on her comrades, on her kingdom. Without a second thought, she slipped into one of the classrooms, closing the door behind her.

She set Desmond gently on the floor. And examined him closely, to make sure he was okay.

As if a glance wasn't enough to know that wasn't true.

No.

He was fine, she'd seen wrong, he was fine, she'd seen wrong.

Her hands were shaking. Her eyes had filled with tears.

Wiping the blood from his chest, which had hidden it, she saw the truth. She ran out of ways to hide from the terrible truth. As she had thought from the beginning, deep down, he was not unconscious, overcome by pain and wounds momentarily.

The bullet had simply pierced his chest, shattering his insides.

Opening a hole in his heart, which was still bleeding.

And in mine as well.

She brought her hands to her head, squeezing it as if she wanted to crush it.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit. "

As if to forget about the present, her mind dove back into the past.

Long before this moment, when she was ten years old and her training had just begun.

"Christina, you can't be like this. You've worked so hard to get them to let you train. Calm down, or you'll blow the opportunity you've been given."

"I am cool."

The man sighed.

"We both know that's not true. You don't have to lie to me, not to me. Especially when it's so obvious. Look at you. You're so angry your teeth are chattering."

Then Christina put a hand to her mouth to check, falling into his trap. Betraying her feelings.

"What a childish lie. Who's the child here?"

"Childish, maybe. But it worked, huh?" He bent a knee in front of her. "Listen to me. You want to know why everyone was so worried when they discovered your affinity, don't you? Why did they put so many obstacles in your way?

Christina nodded her head, her mouth suddenly dry as straw.

Of course she wanted to know.

She'd been mulling that question over for four years. Everyone should have been happy when she discovered her affinity, especially since it was an exceptionally rare and powerful one.

Not only would that help her in her life, whichever path she chose, it would increase the family's prestige.

Everybody won, everybody was happy.

That's the way it should have been. Yet she had encountered just the opposite reaction. And no matter how much she thought about it, she didn't understand it. No matter how many books she read, no matter how much information she gathered, she couldn't find the answer.

-Okay. Listen. Shadow magic has an emotional core. It's not only about the darkness of this world, but also the darkness in your heart. And that of others. That's why you have to control yourself. Don't succumb.

-I don't understand.

-No? You're a very clever girl. You must suspect it, deep down, now that I've told you so much. But I'll be clearer if that's what you want. If you don't keep a good grip on yourself, you could use your magic and come out the other side as a different person.

He put his hands on her shoulders, looked her in the eyes.

She didn't like to be touched. Especially not strangers or people who practically were, but she forgot how uncomfortable that made her feel with his next words.

-That anger you're feeling... it's yours, partly, but mostly mine. You took it from me.

She stopped breathing for so long that it became painful.

And when she came back to the present, it was as if the present and that moment in the past had become seamlessly connected. She felt the same way she did back then.

She couldn't breathe properly, and it was as if something had ripped the ground out from under her feet.

Putting her in free fall into a dark, dark abyss.

If she didn't keep control of herself, that abyss would engulf her. But... a part of her recognized that it was too late for that. That there was no turning back.

Christina got to her feet, turned and walked to the door.

Desmond went after her, held by the darkness of her heart, as if he had become her shadow.

■

The lights in the hallway flickered.

None of them suspected it, not even those in the kingdom of Albion, but that was the signal of the beginning of a massacre such as none of them had ever witnessed.

The door of one of the classrooms opened.

There stood a girl stained with blood from head to toe, framed by the light that streamed through the classroom windows and fell on her back, and by the shadow that loomed behind her as if she were a living thing.

She closed the door. As if on cue, the lights went out again, only they didn't come back on. The darkness reclaimed what belonged to it, swallowing the dead and those struggling to survive.

The soldiers of the Azure Empire concentrated their fire on the girl, driven by an inexplicable restlessness.

They heard a dry gasp of pain, and thought they had hit the nail on the head, that they had killed that girl who seemed the personification of a premonition of death.

They discovered they were wrong and received an explanation for their bad feeling seconds later.

Crackling sounds were heard in that total darkness.

Strange sounds, as if someone was chewing on something.

The soldiers couldn't see what was going on, where those sounds were coming from, of course. But it didn't take much thinking to realize that it had to be happening to one of them, and that girl was responsible.

That they could have her nearby, without knowing it, and they could be next.

They had been in total control of the battle so far. After all, they had been fighting children, not soldiers. However, the tables had turned.

Now they were the prey.

And Christina was the perfect predator. She moved in the dark like a shark in the water.

Those with an affinity for fire magic, for example, had a high resistance to heat. The same applied here, for her. Even in pitch darkness, in the deepest lightless abyss, she saw as if she were in daylight.

That's why she could kill everything in her path with hardly any resistance. They were shooting in the dark, of course, they didn't stop, and even being blind it was possible that they would hit her.

But she hadn't been hit, and it didn't seem likely to change any time soon. That was what mattered.

Christina was the one in control, now.

The soldiers weren't soldiers, they weren't her enemies, but merely toys she could let off steam to her heart's content.

Christina saw one of the toys abandon his rifle to pull out a pistol. She didn't understand why until they pulled the trigger, and what shot out wasn't a bullet, but a flare.

The flare fell to the ground, dragged by the momentum it kept spinning, spitting sparks.

Its light created what could be called a safe zone in the midst of the darkness that was their territory.

And it exposed the combatants on both sides.

It exposed her.

She concentrated their fire on her. She didn't allow the bullets to reach Desmond.

Christina kicked the flare, taking its light to the other side of her room. Her power had certain drawbacks and that was one of them. That not all amounts of darkness were enough for certain things.

Like taking a step and covering ten meters, placing herself behind the soldier who had fired the flare.

The soldier realized that there was someone behind him, turned around. He didn't drop the flare gun to go for the rifle. What he did was to dive to get her. Attacking her physically, with his fist, also using the pistol as if it were a club. Deciding wisely that he had no time to lose.

That complicated things for her. But well, not too much.

She snatched the flare gun from him and shoved it in his mouth. And, of course, she pulled the trigger.

He died screaming. Suffering indescribable agony.

But it was short. When the soldier's life was extinguished, so was the light from the first fired flare. And with that as the last note, the battle returned to darkness.

The battle had progressed under the cover of darkness.

Those on their side, though disorganized by fear and confusion, and blinded, had managed to build barricades behind which to fire their spells. They wouldn't last long. But it was better than being left exposed on open ground, certainly.

Christina saw open doors and that the curtains had been drawn to keep out the light.

To help her continue killing without real opposition.

Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, the absolute control she enjoyed was irrevocably wrenched away from her shortly after regaining what little ground the Empire's had gained.

The lights came on.

The emergency generator must have kicked in. That wasn't something she could deal with. Anyway, it had been nice while it lasted.

The ground was littered with corpses, and too many of them were mages.

And, at the end of it, even if they managed to kill each and every soldier, there was the monstrous mechanical spider waiting for them, which would no doubt not take much longer to finish regenerating. They had the odds stacked against them. It was more than clear.

It had been clear from the beginning. And yet, so many people had died? And for what?

Unconsciously, her eyes strayed to the place where Desmond had breathed his last.

There was that girl, lying on the ground, eyes half closed.

On the verge of unconsciousness.

The girl was an easy target, and if she died, Desmond would have died for nothing. That was not something she could allow.

So she caught her too, as she had done with Desmond, as she was still doing, even though Desmond was gone and the only thing she was holding with her power was a piece of meat.

"Let go of me," the girl she knew nothing about said, grabbing the shadow, her own solidified shadow, and tugging at it in an attempt to free herself. Showing much more energy than when she had been in mortal danger.

She turned a deaf ear to her useless protests.

Spending saliva explaining to her that she meant her no harm wouldn't do any good.

She would figure it out, despite her panic, on her own.

And if the problem was something else, well, she had no time to talk to her in the middle of a war zone anyway. If she kept protesting, she'd plug her mouth to keep it shut, whether she wanted to or not. Without feeling the need to apologize because she would be doing it for her own good.

Now Christina not only had to carry a dead body, and the shame of her failure, but also protect a person who couldn't fend for herself. At least, not until one of the nurses had time to work on her.

Christina turned back to the enemies.

There were too many soldiers still standing. But she could do this. She had to do this.

She owed it to herself and to the fallen.

“With me!” the headmaster shouted, suddenly.

That teacher... Isabella, pulled him out of his wheelchair and carried him in her arms as they backed away. As they fled with their tails between their legs, just as they intended them all to do.

After pushing them to war, to death, with sweet words about the nature of the people of this kingdom.

But, as much as she didn't want to admit it, she understood their decision. They had simply lost too many allies. They faced overwhelmingly low odds. Likely, if she chose to stay, she would kill many before she fell.

Yes. Sooner or later, she would fall. At best, it would buy time for the others to escape.

Even if she was somehow sure they could escape because of her sacrifice, she would not say it would be something worth dying for.

Dying for someone else's mistakes, someone else's decisions, was perhaps the natural thing for a soldier to do.

But it wasn't an idea that sat well with her.

Trusting that the headmaster had a strategy, that it wasn't about running away, but that he was retreating to do something, Amy went after him. Behind everyone who was running away with her. There was too much up in the air in that decision as well. However, at least it promised a greater reward if their hopes were fulfilled.

They were falling back and, at the same time, repelling the attacks as best they could.

Christina was surprised that the few survivors were still holding their nerve. At this point, he would have expected them to be running around like headless chickens, ignoring orders.

Well, the answer was 'hope', of course. The important thing was: how long was it going to last?

Speaking of which, the girl Amy was carrying as a passenger. She looked at her out of the corner of her eye, but it wasn't as if she had lost consciousness from her injuries. She had simply shut her mouth, deciding that, since she couldn't make things easier for her, at least she wouldn't make them harder. In other words, the sensible thing to do. She was glad.

They suffered two more casualties on the way to the secret entrance, which led them into the sewers.

With every step they took, the more likely it seemed that Jacob intended to flee, after all. One of the teachers bent down to pull out a piece of the wall, sliding it aside like a door.

"Let go of me," the girl murmured, blushing. "This at least I can do on my own. "

Christina hadn't let go of her after coming here not to be safe, just in case, but because, frankly, she'd forgotten about her.

So she had no problem agreeing to his request.

Christina was the first to pass. Without a second thought. Christina was wearing a skirt because she didn't like to wear pants, never had, but she could make concessions for the sake of the circumstances. Under the skirt she wore shorts, so there couldn't be any unfortunate accidents.

But well, in this case there was no need to worry about it. Even if they saw something, even if they could see something, these guys were too traumatized to care.

Trapped inside their own heads. They wouldn't even notice.

Christina had bigger worries, too.

The corpse she was dragging behind her, for one. Getting out of this with him and giving him the burial he deserved. Oh, yes, and also...

If we were going to run anyway, Desmond might be alive now, had we done it sooner. If that's really what you're planning, I'll kill you. I swear I'll kill you, if it's the last thing I do.

Debts to fulfill.

Was this anger burning in her heart her own...or Desmond's? It wouldn't be so strange if she had absorbed his negative emotions before he died, or even after, for someone's death could leave a 'footprint' in the world, that is, a ghost that was nothing more than that.

The darkness in a person's heart at the moment of their death.

Christina didn't know the answer to that question.

But frankly, she didn't care. It was a true emotion, not something she should feel confusion over, that she should try to separate from her to test its veracity.

Even if she didn't have this curse, she would feel this intense rage. She was sure of that at least. And it was what mattered.

Christina reached the other side and stood waiting for the girl to arrive, for she was now her responsibility.

Just as she had thought, she wasn't in a state to get out of the sewers on her own. Only to crawl through the hole, and even that with difficulty.

The girl refused to let her grab her with the shadow again, but, in the end, seeing that it would indeed be impossible, she stopped wasting everyone's time and agreed to let herself lean on Christina. Truly, it was incredible that even after seeing how one of the most powerful men in the kingdom letting himself be carried in somebody arms, she could be so stubborn.

No, so stupid. If she hadn't been so stupid, Desmond wouldn't have been forced to save her and he would still be alive.

Christina kept her anger locked up, yes, as far as she was concerned at least.

Starting to hate the person she had to protect to honor Desmond's memory wouldn't be good.

As soon as she emerged from the sewers, she saw Empire soldiers waiting, and her heart leapt into her throat, but she realized that their backs were turned to them. And that there weren't too many of them. They hadn't come out of the building to look for them.

Some of the soldiers, a considerable number, had stayed outside the building, near the fallen spider.

Guided by the headmaster, they hid among the trees in the forest, and stayed there.

It didn't look like he intended to flee, after all. But what exactly did he intend?

Jacob pulled something out of a pocket.

A detonator. He pressed the button, and then the world shook.

The explosion made her vision go white for a few seconds. Her head spun; her ears began to ring horribly.

And that was just from the explosion.

What was truly shocking, what shook Christina to the core, was watching the main building collapse. It was accompanied by a great shower of debris, a cloud of smoke that swallowed up all the devastation.

In that deathly silence, Jacob spoke.

"Now, let the real counterattack begin."