The dust in the chamber had begun to settle, hanging in the stale air after the clash between Razor and Morvain. Though the exchange had only lasted moments, Razor felt it—fatigue creeping in faster than usual, her limbs heavier, her breath uneven.
Morvain remained where he stood, unbothered, voice dragging like it was too tired to carry itself. "Are we done yet...? Can we just head back and let the Empress do whatever weird ceremony she had planned? Every second I'm standing here feels like a punishment. My legs hurt. My soul hurts."
Razor stepped forward with a twitch in her brow and a familiar glint of chaos behind her eyes.
"Oh, gods, shut your whining hole already," she snapped, flailing her saw lazily over one shoulder. "You sound like a dying broom with abandonment issues! You think I'm just gonna keel over and let you win because I'm a little winded? Buddy, I've fought off hangovers worse than you!"
She gave a shaky twirl of her weapon—more wobbly than intimidating—but still raised it as if daring the world to try her.
"I've survived stampedes, explosions, three failed marriages, and one cult! You? You're just a tall pile of sad with a pointy weapon and zero enthusiasm. I've got more fire in my left eyelash than you do in your whole damn aura."
Behind her, Fioren's voice cut in dryly. "You've never been married."
"Not legally," Razor shot back without missing a beat. "But emotionally? Spiritually? That goat knew what we had."
Morvain stared at her blankly. Still unmoved. Still that deadpan look of someone who hadn't cared about anything since birth.
"And don't look at me like that," Razor added, jabbing a finger in his direction. "I might be down to my last drop of energy, but if I collapse, I'm takin' you with me by the ankle, teeth first. So come on, mop-head! Let's dance while I'm still conscious enough to see which direction is up!"
She grinned wide, breathless, unhinged, and still standing—barely, but proudly.
Razor lunged again, her saw sweeping through the air in a blur of reckless arcs. The jagged blade, chipped and snarling like it had a personality of its own, clashed hard against the curved edge of Morvain's sickle. The sound echoed sharply in the corridor, a harsh grind of iron on iron.
She pressed forward, not giving him a breath—yet he didn't need one.
Morvain barely moved. His foot slid half a step back, just enough to absorb the impact. His expression hadn't changed since the first exchange: dull, mildly irritated, and on the brink of asking for a nap.
Another swing. Another block. Razor's breathing grew louder, shoulders rising and falling with increasing strain.
"Oh come on!" she barked. "At least pretend to try! You're blocking me like you're swatting a fly with depression!"
Morvain's voice was as lifeless as ever. "That's because I am swatting a fly. One that screams and waves around scrap metal."
Razor's eyes flared. "Rude. And I'll have you know, this 'scrap metal' once carved through a chimera with trust issues!"
She darted to the side, kicking off the wall for momentum, and spun into a high slash. Morvain tilted his sickle at the perfect angle, deflecting it like he was brushing lint from a robe. Razor landed off-balance, boots skidding across the floor.
"Okay! Cool! Love that for me!" she gasped, clearly overexerted but still running her mouth. "You're like trying to punch anxiety. You're not even solid, you're just... feelings I don't wanna talk about!"
Morvain barely blinked. "I've been told that before."
Another strike. Razor's saw came from below this time, upward in a vicious arc. Morvain blocked again—lazily, like a man turning a page in a book he wasn't reading.
"You block like you're bored of existence!" Razor snapped.
"I am."
She paused mid-swing, saw trembling in her grip. "…Okay, wow. You didn't even hesitate with that one. That was raw."
"You think this is bad?" Morvain added, yawning mid-sentence. "Try being me in the mornings."
Razor went for another strike out of sheer frustration—but her arms lagged. Her balance wobbled. Her saw dragged against the floor.
"Stars…" she muttered, wobbling. "My arms are noodles. My brain's a salad. My lungs are filing complaints."
She tried to lift the saw one last time—but her grip gave out. With an unceremonious clunk, the blade fell to the stone floor.
Razor blinked, swayed once—
—and collapsed face-first beside it.
She lay motionless for a second, arms splayed out like she was melting into the ground. Then, without moving her head, she croaked:
"…Tell my fangirls I died doing what I love: violently disappointing boring men."
Her tongue lolled out. One foot twitched.
Morvain stared down at her.
"…Still... Didn't she have tentacle arms before or something?" he asked flatly. "Or was that just a dream I had during my patrol shift…"
Chiaki didn't move.
Not even a breath escaped her lips for a moment, as if her body had forgotten how to inhale in the wake of everything falling apart. Her limbs felt numb, her hands hung limp at her sides, and the weight pressing into her chest wasn't pain—not exactly—but something heavier, something formless. Like gravity had chosen her alone to punish.
She lowered her head slightly, staring at the polished floor beneath her feet, where the flickering torchlight reflected back a blurred and broken version of herself. And somehow, it felt fitting. Because that was all she saw when she looked inward too—fractures and false starts. A person caught between what she was told she had to be and what she never managed to become.
"I thought I knew what I wanted…" she murmured to herself, the sound barely rising above a whisper, not even meant for the others. "I thought if I chose for once in my life—if I said 'no,' if I resisted, if I broke their rules and turned my back on everything they made me for… that I could finally be free."
Her fists clenched, trembling.
"But I was wrong."
The words hurt. Saying them aloud made them real. Made the failure feel etched into her skin.
"I wanted to be strong. I wanted to believe that my choices mattered. That even if I wasn't perfect, even if I was a mess of contradictions and regrets, I could still live on my own terms."
A breath caught in her throat, her eyes burning though not a single tear fell. She was too hollow for that. Too frayed at the seams for her body to remember how to cry.
"I said I'd make my own path," she continued, slower now, the words dragging behind her like heavy chains. "I said I'd take control of my life, of who I'd be. But all I've done is hesitate. Doubt. Stumble forward thinking it would lead somewhere better."
Her voice tightened, brittle and raw. "But nothing's changed."
She lifted her hands, staring at the scars across her knuckles, the dried blood along her fingers, the marks left behind by shackles and mistakes.
"I'm still trapped. Still bound by everything I swore I'd escape. I'm still the same girl trying to run from a purpose I never asked for—but I can't outrun it. I keep telling myself I'm different. That I'm more than what they made me. But what if I'm not?"
The words lodged like knives in her throat.
"What if I'm still just a blueprint with a heartbeat?"
A silence stretched out around her, not peaceful but suffocating—thick with tension, with the stares of the others, with the weight of everything unspoken. But she didn't look at them. She couldn't.
"I thought I had the strength to fight back. I thought I could bear the consequences of choosing myself."
She shut her eyes tight, shoulders hunched as if bracing against something unseen.
"But I didn't save anyone. I didn't change anything. I'm still the reason this is happening. I told myself I was ready to take control of my life, but now I don't even know what that means. What good is a choice if it leads nowhere? What good is freedom if I don't know what to do with it?"
The quietness of the corridor wrapped around her like a noose, drawing in closer with every breath.
"I'm tired," she whispered. "Not just from fighting. Not just from the running. I'm tired of hoping. Of pretending that I'm not lost. That I'm not… hollow."
She let out a slow, broken breath, her voice softer now. Smaller.
"I tried to be someone real. Someone with will. But maybe I was never meant to be anything at all."
And in that moment, kneeling beneath a ceiling that loomed like the weight of legacy and chains disguised as stone, Chiaki stopped fighting herself—and let the silence answer for her.
Yuka was the first to notice. Her eyes widened faintly as she caught the glint of tears running silently down Chiaki's cheek—no gasp, no sound, just the soft tremble of someone whose heart had finally cracked open.
"Chiaki…?" Yuka murmured, stepping toward her.
But Chiaki didn't meet her gaze. She kept her eyes on the floor, lips moving in a whisper too soft for the others to hear at first.
"…Take her," Chiaki said. "Take Razor and go. Please."
Fioren's brows furrowed. "What are you talking about?"
Chiaki's voice broke—still low, but this time Yuka heard the weight in every syllable. "She can't fight anymore. She'll die if she keeps pushing. Just take her and run. I'll stay behind."
Yuka stepped forward quickly. "No, we're not leaving you. We can fight for you—"
"You can't," Chiaki cut in, louder now, trembling. "None of you can fix what I broke. I ran from everything. I wanted to be strong. I thought making my own choices would save me, but I dragged all of you into this instead."
Fioren stepped beside her, her voice strained. "We can't leave you behind—not like this. Chiaki, your wounds… you can barely stand. You're bleeding through your bandages again—how can we walk away knowing that?"
Chiaki shook her head slowly, turning toward the lazy figure still looming nearby—Morvain, who hadn't moved since Razor collapsed, still holding his weapon loosely like he barely cared what happened next.
Chiaki wiped her face roughly with her shoulder, then raised her head. Her voice wavered, but didn't fall.
"…Let them go," she said to him. "All of them. Just let them go, and I'll stay. I'll cooperate. I won't run."
Morvain blinked slowly, as if it took effort. "…Ugh. I hate decisions. I really hate being responsible for anything." He looked at Razor on the ground, then the others, then back to Chiaki. "But if it gets everyone to shut up sooner…"
He sighed. "Fine. You stay. They walk."
Fioren's eyes widened. "Chiaki—no!"
But the girl had already turned her back to them. Her knees wavered as she stood in front of Morvain, as if resigning herself to the weight she'd carried all along. And as the others stood frozen, torn between escape and heartbreak, Chiaki gave them a single glance.
"Go."
And this time, they knew she meant it.
Fioren's steps echoed slightly as she moved closer, her voice barely above a whisper, as though the weight of the moment demanded reverence.
"You don't have to do this," she said, pain cutting through her words. "We'll find another way. We always do."
Chiaki didn't look at her. Her eyes were fixed on the smooth stone floor, as though seeing something far deeper than the surface—something buried in the cracks, something that refused to mend.
"I've already made enough mess," she said quietly. "If I keep running, someone else pays the price. I won't let that be Razor. Or you."
Yuka's voice came next, more direct, more desperate. "You think we came this far just to abandon you? Chiaki, we fought through an entire fortress for you. We bled for this. We don't leave each other behind."
Chiaki's shoulders twitched. "And I'm grateful. I am. But that's why I need you to leave now. Because if you stay—if you keep trying to fix me—this place is going to devour all of us."
Razor groaned softly in the background, barely conscious, her wild hair sticking to her cheek as she lay sprawled on the stone. Her breathing was shallow, and her weapon lay just out of reach. Yuka glanced at her, then back to Chiaki, her voice tightening.
"You think this is strength? Giving up your freedom to buy time for the rest of us? That's not what you taught us."
"I'm not trying to be strong," Chiaki replied, eyes shining now with something more fragile than rage—something cracked open and human. "I'm just trying to be useful. Just once."
Fioren stepped forward again, her voice trembling. "You are useful. You always were. Not because you fought for us, not because you carried all this pain alone—but because you kept going in spite of it."
Chiaki finally looked at them, and for a moment the fierce girl they'd known was gone—replaced by something quieter, more tired. "I can't keep going like this. Not yet. Not when they're still hunting me. Not while I'm broken. So let me do this. Let me hold them here… and you keep going. Live the life I can't right now."
Yuka opened her mouth to speak again—but nothing came. No argument. No solution.
Fioren's jaw clenched. "We're coming back for you."
Chiaki gave a faint smile. "I know."
And as the chamber's silence reclaimed them, Fioren turned and knelt beside Razor, lifting her gently with Yuka's help. The three began to retreat down the corridor, their footsteps heavy and reluctant.
Chiaki didn't turn to watch them go.
She just stood still, eyes on the path ahead—the one she had chosen, and the burden she had finally accepted. Alone.
As they reached the far end of the corridor, Fioren paused.
Her arm cradled Razor's weight as gently as she could, but something had shifted—something she hadn't noticed in the heat of the moment. Her hand came away slick with blood. Razor wasn't just exhausted. She was wounded. Deeply. Several slashes across her side, one across the back of her shoulder, and bruising that was spreading like ink beneath her skin.
Fioren's breath hitched. "These aren't just scratches," she whispered, eyes narrowing in realization. "He didn't even fight seriously… but she—she's really hurt."
Yuka turned, eyes filled with disbelief as she saw Razor's state under the torchlight. "No... he didn't even chase her, but she still—"
"Guess that's the price you pay for being awesome," Razor muttered weakly, her usual grin barely held together, her voice hoarse and faint. "Or… y'know… maybe I just got slightly annihilated. Like, a little bit. Maybe."
She coughed. It was wet.
Yuka's eyes widened. "Razor, you need rest. You can't even breathe properly—"
"Shut up," Razor whispered, lifting her head with sheer willpower. "I'm not done. Not yet."
She forced herself upright, wobbling on her legs as Fioren instinctively tried to pull her back down. But Razor shoved her hand away, swaying like a leaf in a storm.
"I said…" Razor panted, eyes unfocused yet burning. "I'm not done fighting. That sad sack of a grim reaper's not gonna take her from me. From us. I don't care if I've got one lung and half a soul left—I'll still rip his kneecaps off with a spoon if I have to."
"Razor—" Fioren tried again, but Razor was already staggering forward, dragging her saw along the stone floor with a horrible screech.
"I ain't leavin' her," she murmured, every word a battle. "She made her choice, yeah. But screw that. I'm makin' mine too."
And then—mid-step—her legs buckled.
Fioren caught her instantly, sinking to her knees with Razor slumped in her arms.
"Razor—!"
There was no answer.
Her saw clattered to the floor beside them. Her breathing, shallow. Eyes closed. Blood still seeping from her wounds.
She'd poured everything out. And now… she was still.
Yuka dropped beside them, panic in her voice. "Is she—?"
"She's alive," Fioren said, voice shaking. "But barely."
She clutched Razor tighter, her hands trembling against her pale skin.
"…Stupid girl," she whispered. "You were supposed to hold on…"
To be continued...