a-ámej had not moved an inch since the moment I'd left him, two days ago. Even his fog was idle in the corner it had curled into. And bleak, not a bit of strength in it.

He was still fighting, still clinging to this world with whatever little of remaining powers he owned.

His fog swirled, peeking as I slipped through the magic of his cell. He remained unmoving but his powers had snaked toward me, silent like never before. Not a story, not a whisper. It wrapped around my ankles, my knees, up to my shoulders in gentle waves. It caressed my soul like a forgotten touch, a ghost.

The Unknown Prince, after so many centuries of imprisonment and resistance could do nothing but fight as Death wrapped his fingers around him, as the end loomed near.

Not a finger moved as I leaned against one of the cold, rough walls, right where his body had crashed. Fissures snaked from the hole—that remnant of what horrors Dearcious made him endure. His scent was still heavy, thick as poison curling in my lungs with each breath.

The fog swayed around my feet, still curled on my ankles as I stared at the bones that had snapped loose, the rot and dust gnawing at them.

Not a movement, not a twitch of a bone as he whispered, mind to mind, 'You burned her.'

It was no question, but there had been a lick of fear in those letters waiting for clean confirmation.

'We did.'

Piece by piece over two days. All of her and the carpet stained with her blood. We left no trace of what happened, even threw her into the fire in intervals of time so that what remained of her scent couldn't accumulate. Mar was gone with the wind, nothing but a false mission hiding the truth.

'Good.'

Silence fell again and I tried desperately to find a lost whisper, to hear a forgotten story ringing out of the man on the ground. So little months had taken of him more than the previous centuries did.

'I found the Aubarious.'

His powers halted for a heartbeat before they moved again, some of them seeping back in the holes of his eyes. 'Take its heart and leave. Do not look back.'

'Why, Ha-ámej?'

'Take the heart and do not look back.'

I pushed myself of the wall, the skin-like, black fabric of my uniform light as I took a few steps, standing at his feet, arms crossed. He still faced up.

'Do not go back. For no one.'

I breathed out, thin, white threads of smoke curling in front of my face. 'How do I take the heart?'

I waited. I waited for a word to come out of him, for a damn clue, a bit of help. Not a word was uttered.

I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose as I took another few steps, crouching next to his head.

I'd been close to him many times and had observed him far more than enough to know that the bones of his face were not so clear and visible before. Skin and flesh fell, most likely dust by now as there was nothing but the crumbling bones on the ground. And that heavy, stinking smell that burned my nose each time I was too close to him.

'Blake wants answers.' I sat on the ground, feeling its coldness seeping through the fabric and into my flesh. His fog was still curled around my lower limbs. 'He wants something worthy.'

'Tell him about the strath—'

'He knows about the strath.'

The Unknown Prince tilted his head, a cracking sound echoing in the cold and lightless air between us. Hollowed eyes rested on my face, that fog seeming to watch and see better than any eyes. His fog was silent as it added, 'He knows about the strath but he does not know what it is. Tell him to seek the middle of its lands, below the cliff where the forest stood, long ago.'

I rested my head on one hand, thoughts spinning wild. 'Still not enough, Ha-ámej.'

Another heartbeat of silence. 'Tell him that the blood must trickle warm when the night is darkest and the winds are loudest.'

'Why?'

'Because it is there where Apocalys's ichor first fell. And the brutal winds and darkness…'His thoughts faltered for a moment, magic fighting to get the words out as though running out of breath. 'The night and the winds will be in your favor.'

In my favor—to escape.

'And the hoy?'

Ha-ámej's stares seemed to look deeper than my soul as his fog-filled eyes remained fixed on my face. 'Nonexistent... Nothing more than a diverting lie.'

A lie—by the Gods?

The fog around us flickered in response and confirmation. But the fact that he'd heard my thoughts was terrifying. Through every wall and barrier—he went through all of them unfelt. Just like that day with his hold on my powers.

My head tilted back, stares tracing the moss and cobwebs nestled in the corners of the place. The fissures in the ceiling that threatened to fall at any given moment. 'He will kill you, once all is done.' My stares went back to him. 'Once he has all the information he needs.'

His hand scrapped against the ground as he blindly tried reaching for me. 'I know.'

Bone-fingers brushed against the edges of my boots, gently feeling the texture of the clothes, the sharpness of the blades strapped to my leg. Slowly, discovering. A blind's touch as the intensity of his stares remained on my face. He brushed one of my knees and I kept watching as his hand rested just above it, a light weight that gently tried to grab it. And failed.

His whispers became hushed—broken—as they echoed in my mind. 'If he comes for me and you're still here,' he tried again, pouring all of his might until I could feel the touch, the gentle squeeze, 'be the one to do it.'

Harder. He tried even harder until one of his phalanges broke and shattered on the floor. But he succeeded and the touch was almost normal, almost as tight as it should be. He didn't let go even when he trembled with all the effort.

'Let me fade at your hands.'

I didn't answer, didn't deign look at his emotionless face as his words hollowed my bones. As they rang and rang and rang in my head.

Ha-ámej had lost hope. Had let go of it.

His grip tightened and squeezed one last time before it slackened, laying flat and idle, the trembling of his arm slowly subsiding.

So frail, so weak—

'What do you feed off?'

The first brush of my fingers against his was tentative and when he didn't push the touch away I continued, tracing his hand, his wrist, feeling the bones and splinters, the dried blood vessels still stuck here and there around the bones were tissues had been.

A long, sigh-like sound slipped out of him as his fog danced around my fingers. 'Memories, emotions. Thoughts and ideas.'

I wasn't surprised—most likely would have been disappointed had he answered anything else. All his roaming in the Sombers, all the memories and cries and emotions that his fog sang about…he fed off them. Sucked on their strength to stay alive.

It had been months since he'd been let out of his cell, months since he'd last had anything worthy of sustaining him.

I stared at the hand still on my knee as I allowed a few memories to trickle down the bridge between our minds. He accepted them with not a second thought, the few flashes of my life the past couple of weeks running through his soul. The fog thickened within instance, still bleak and silent but…stronger. Denser, no longer so sheer and frail.

Drop by drop, I allowed all senseless moments to slip into him, to fuel his strength. He denied none of them.

'Why haven't you told me your name yet?'

A faint shadow of what could only be a smile adorned his sewn mouth—something vaguely familiar to what Téors and Siltheres would convey.

'Remember, Nightweaver, that names are power. And some should be forgotten rather than shared.'

I knew then that there was no possible way to pull that particular answer out of him no matter how hard I tried.

'When you asked if I still remembered who I was before coming here, I told you I did.' My fingers stopped tracing, and the memories I allowed to slip became lesser and lesser. 'But now, I feel lost. I…I don’t know who and what I am anymore.'

'Do you?' His hand slowly moved higher, again blindly searching for a new place to rest. It caressed my elbow, bones groaning with every movement as it kept on going higher and higher. 'You feel like yourself more than you've ever done.' Higher. 'Never have I said the girl you were was the woman you should be. Be through your soul, through your heart and strength. Not through what others anticipate from you.'

His hand reached my shoulder, head slightly lifting of the floor. His skull would crack should he loose balance, would split open and most likely be the end of him... I placed an arm beneath it, gingerly pulling him closer and did not object when he leaned in, when he aimed to rest on my lap. His stares didn't waver once yet, trying to take every feature in. Every bit.

Head on my lap, one hand rested over his ribs as the other traced the side of my neck, leaving a smear of grey, flaking skin on mine. The fog caressed my chin, my nose, making it wrinkle. It carried no clean scent of its own—a blend of all he'd seen and heard and felt. A bit of every memory he'd ever taken.

His fingers still caressed my skin in gentle motions and yet his touch was rough and dry. I wondered what he was thinking, what he was feeling. Wondered how long it had been since he rested so physically close to someone without a death threat.

We remained like this for a while, seconds morphing to minutes as he still brushed my skin, felt the texture of my hair, traced the structure of my nose and chin. His fingers had halted more than once near my mouth, right where my dimples used to be, and it made me terribly conscious that it wasn't Elayda he was seeing.

That he saw me from the very start, from that first time near the Palm, even before the trial and the chains he'd created. He knew, all along. Perhaps even before that.

He brushed the brooch pinned to my suit—the wings and tail and eye, just like the insignia that had been painted in the Norm—and kept tracing lower until where my heart was.

And ever so slowly, the rhythm of his fog melted to what he felt as he rested it there, on my chest. He had a heart beneath all the tattered clothes and decaying flesh. A heart that had since long stopped beating, and yet here, in this cold darkness far from the world, hidden beneath a well woven illusion to keep us safe, I realized he was more alive than any of us had been those past few weeks.

I realized that until recently, he had been filled with hope that needed centuries and millenniums to be drained. Such a warrior. Such a resilient soul that had believed for so long, that had hoped.

Through shaking fingers, he traced the shadow of a symbol, an unsteady mark that I did not know. Never had I seen it before, not here, not in the Book.

'The child who carries the oath.'

His words had been so low, so lost among the many thoughts intertwining in my mind. But their echo was suffocating. And cold and brutal.

My father's face flashed behind my eyes. And Ramos's and Leon's and Siltheres's and Téors's. My father's cry reverberated in my ears. That prophecy…it had been the heart of this mission. The reason of so many tears and secretsand lies.

'Such a bitter face,' he whispered into my soul as I stopped all memories from trickling anymore. His fingers once again brushed my neck. My jaw. It was then I noted how heavily I had clenched my teeth, how dangerously I had spaced out. It would have cost me the barrier of magic that kept us hidden from Blake's magic if it weren't for him who held it.

'Should I react any other way about it? This piece about the prophecy of my very downfall?'

His fingers stopped. 'Downfall?' Ha-ámej craned his neck, his skull-like face unmoving as he added, 'The future is not set. Not anymore. And the Five have no longer any power or leash on Fate.'

'It is more bound to happen than not.'

'Is it?' He brushed the side of my face, a breath curling out of him, swaying in the space between us.

'The Queen who has seen,

Life and death and everything in between.

The Queen who does not kneel,

Who at her hands the world shall heal.

The Queen born from power's breath,

She who lays within her arms the long forgotten Death.

She is victory, she is light,

She is the beacon of life, the last hope through the endless night.'

The beacon of life. The Chosen. The Gods' favored one. From the day I had come, everyday, those words had haunted me. Had ran through my blood until they became every bit a piece of me. An identity.

The Queen—

Forgotten Death. In my arms.

Death.

A crumbling, fading strength. A wisp of gentle darkness...

Ha-ámej.

His fingers halted at the thought. And I could swear I saw him smile for a fleeting heartbeat. Could swear I almost saw Téors and Siltheres in that smile. That same mischief, that same scheming.

'You are Death.'

'Death is no person. Death is a strength that blesses whoever the gods decide.'

I brushed a few black and grey hairs out of his eyes. 'You were their prince, those blessed like you.'

'I was a prince—their prince, so long before. So far before the war and the bloodshed.'

'Had there been others? Like you?'

'I had siblings, many of them. Some of Life, some of Death. All gone and forgotten now.'

Forgotten Death.

Something within me tightened as he brushed my chin before removing his hand, hovering it above his face, thin, black tendrils of magic dancing at his tips. Such a brightless, immaculate darkness. Such a power that hummed like nothing I had seen before.

It faltered.

His hand rested over his other one, both on his chest, his fog still swaying with its new rhythm, pulsating out of his eyes. At the same beat as warmth trickled in my blood, coursing like wildfire. Warm. Tingling—

I almost dropped him off my lap as I swallowed the magic, the memories, the emotions. As I pushed them all deep.

His fog withered, the faint breath of color in it faltering. Still grey, but the vibrancy of the color, the intensity of it dwindled as I pushed him out of my mind, as I stopped him from taking more memories.

More emotions.

Warm. Tingling. The bright spring sun that flashed behind my eyes, the verdant garden, the chirping birds and laughing smile.

A happy memory, unlike all that I'd given him. All that he received for so long.

I gave him that memory at the Norm, that heartbeat of me smiling alongside Mayra in our morning walk.

His fog shimmered, bright silver and grey, a faint singing ringing in this prison.

Another memory. The singing grew louder. Louder. Louder.

A heartwarming song in a language unknown to this world. A song as beautiful as the rise of dawn after a long, sinister night.

The wisps of magic caressed my face as Ha-ámej breathed, sound lost among all those many ones, 'Smile…please.'

And so I did. Small and gentle, at him, at the memories I let him see and feel. His fog seemed to smile back.

The singing filled the air; such a beautiful melody. Such mellifluous, angel-sung voices. Like a caress of golden light, a refreshing breeze.

'Do you sing, Nightweaver?'

I didn't. Never tried, really. Never felt the confidence or the heart to do so. But here, now…

A last request before the world claimed him back. A final ray of mirth.

And so I sang, my voice lost with all of those around us, twirling, swaying, dancing, over the walls, brushing my skin, my hair.

I sang, taken by that warmth. By that joy I hadn't sensed in such a long time.

And the smile I gave Ha-ámej then was true. Broad and bright.

I kept on singing.