The rain did nothing to smother the flames.
Red fire licked at the remains of the Whispers, its magic-fed tongues curling unnaturally, greedily, as if alive. It clung to the stone and the streets, bubbling, devouring. The air was thick with the acrid scent of burning flesh, of charred wood and melting iron. And in the center of it all, Rook stood, motionless.
His ears still rang from the explosion, his breath shallow and uneven. The rain lashed against his burned skin, a bitter contrast of cold on searing heat, but he barely noticed. His gaze was locked on them.
Three husks of what had once been.
Seraphine, Velesse, Liora.
He had known them in life—truly known them. He had held Seraphine when she had laughed too hard at her own joke, had tangled fingers with Velesse when she had braided her hair in the morning light, had traced the freckles on Liora's cheek when she leaned against him, quiet and thoughtful.
Now—now, they were only shapes in the ruin.
The fire had stolen their faces, their softness, their warmth. What lay before him were figures of blackened bone and peeling flesh, contorted in the way bodies only contort when death comes in agony. He couldn't tell where one ended and another began. They were curled together, twisted into something grotesque—fingers fused into the rubble, spines arched in some terrible last moment of suffering.
His breath hitched.
He did not know what he felt.
His chest was hollow, yet filled with something sharp and unbearable.
Grief?
No. This was not grief. Grief was a thing with shape, with meaning. This was void.
He stepped forward, rain sluicing through his blood-matted hair, soaking his clothes. He crouched, reaching out with trembling fingers, but stopped short.
What would touching them change?
Nothing.
They were gone.
Gone.
His fingers curled into a fist. They shouldn't have been here.
He should have—he should have—
A voice broke through his thoughts.
"...Shit."
A stumble of footsteps behind him, uneven and hesitant.
Rook did not turn. He did not need to.
Harker and Grendon.
They had made it out of the wreckage, but not unscathed. Harker still had the dagger in his thigh, his steps sluggish as he limped forward, chest heaving. Grendon's face was streaked with blood, his arm hanging at an awkward angle. Both men paused, taking in the destruction they had wrought.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Grendon exhaled sharply, shaking his head. "Gods."
Harker let out a rough, humorless chuckle. "Didn't think it'd be this bad."
Rook slowly, deliberately, rose to his feet.
Neither man noticed.
Grendon let out a breath, running a hand over his face. "Well. It's done now." His voice was quiet. "There's no going back."
Harker grunted, pressing his fingers around the hilt of the dagger buried in his thigh. He hissed as he wrenched it free, blood welling instantly, pooling onto the street beneath him. He grimaced but did not falter, tossing the blade aside carelessly. "Couldn't be helped. We did what we had to do."
A pause.
Then, softer, almost reluctant—
"Still," Grendon muttered, "this… this wasn't the plan."
The words stirred something deep, deep inside Rook.
This wasn't the plan.
The plan had been the Whispers thriving.
The plan had been Seraphine, Velesse, Liora— alive.
The plan had been something other than this.
A low, raw sound scraped from his throat.
The two men finally turned toward him.
"Rook?" Harker's voice was uncertain. He took a step forward. "Look, I know—"
Rook moved.
It was not a step. It was not a lunge. It was violence, erupting from him in a wave of unrestrained, all-consuming fury.
His fist met Harker's jaw with a force that cracked bone.
The man barely had time to stumble before Rook was on him, fists hammering down like a storm given form, like a god's wrath made flesh.
Harker shouted—or tried to. The sound barely made it past his throat before Rook's knuckles shattered his nose, blood spurting in a spray of red. His body twisted, trying to wrench away, but Rook did not let him.
Another strike. Another.
Another.
Teeth cracked, lips split, and still Rook kept going.
Harker thrashed beneath him, hands scrambling, trying to push him off, but there was no stopping this. No stopping him.
A cry. A plea.
Rook did not hear it.
A hand grasped his shoulder.
Grendon.
Rook twisted, grabbing the man by the collar and yanking him down.
Grendon barely had time to gasp before Rook slammed his forehead against his. The crack of skull meeting skull rang out, wet and sickening. Grendon reeled, his knees buckling, but Rook did not let him fall. Not yet.
With a snarl, he drove his elbow into the man's temple, then drove his fist into his throat.
Grendon gurgled, his hands clawing at his crushed windpipe. His eyes were wide, mouth open in a silent scream.
Harker was wheezing, barely moving.
Rook saw none of it.
He felt only the break of his own knuckles, the split of his own skin as he kept pounding, pounding, pounding.
It did not matter when they stopped fighting back.
It did not matter when their bodies twitched and convulsed, then stilled.
It did not matter that his hands ached, that his own breath was ragged, that the rain washed their blood down the broken cobblestones in dark rivulets.
They did this.
They burned his home.
They killed his girls.
And so, he killed them.
Rook sat back, shoulders rising and falling.
The two bodies lay motionless before him, unrecognizable in the ruin of broken bone and pulped flesh.
His hands trembled.
Not with fear.
Not with grief.
Just empty.
The rain kept falling. The flames kept burning.
And Rook knelt between the dead, staring up at the ruin of the world he had once known.
*
Rook did not move for a long time.
The rain whispered against his skin, its chill stark against the lingering heat of the flames that still smoldered through the streets. Blood—not just theirs, but his own—ran in sluggish rivulets from his cracked knuckles, pooling with the water beneath him, diluting into something thinner, weaker. His breathing was slow, heavy, hollow.
Harker and Grendon lay still before him, their bodies wrecked and mangled, but their deaths had not filled the void inside him. Nothing would.
Seraphine. Velesse. Liora.
They were gone.
And in their place was only silence.
His fingers twitched.
The way Seraphine used to laugh—that was silence now.
The way Velesse would hum under her breath while tying up her hair—silence.
The way Liora whispered to him in the dark, words only meant for him—silence.
He had killed these men, but it had not changed the weight in his chest, had not brought him anything close to peace.
Rook's jaw clenched, and finally, finally, he pushed himself upright. His body protested, stiff from the cold, aching from the strain, but he did not acknowledge it.
Harker. Grendon.
He let his gaze linger on them one last time.
It wasn't regret. He would never regret it.
But it wasn't satisfaction, either.
There was no word for what this was.
With a slow exhale, he turned away and stepped forward, walking through the wreckage of what had once been home.
The flames still flickered along the streets, curling around stone and steel in defiance of the rain. The air was thick with the scent of smoke, of charred wood, of things that had once lived. His boots sank into the mud, into the blood, into the rubble that now made up the skeleton of the Whispers.
There was nothing left.
For a moment—just a moment—he considered stopping.
Right there.
Laying down.
Letting the fire take him, like it had taken them.
Wouldn't it be easier?
What was left for him now?
His girls were gone. The Whispers were ash. The city was crumbling.
Even the rain was dying.
He felt it as he walked—the shift in the air, the slow faltering of the downpour until it was no longer a storm, but a drizzle, then a mist, then nothing.
The world grew still.
And Rook was alone.
He closed his eyes.
Seraphine.
He could still see her. The way she'd throw her arms around his neck when he came back from a job, demanding to know what he'd brought her, her smile sharp and teasing. The way she danced in the Whispers' den, a whirlwind of motion, her feet never quite touching the ground in his memory. He had loved watching her move, effortless, free. She had always been free.
Velesse.
She had been the one to braid his hair, even when he grumbled about it, even when he swore he'd take it out later. "You'll leave it in," she'd say, voice patient and knowing. And he always did. She had a way of knowing things before he did. She'd been the quiet one, but never weak.
Liora.
Gods, Liora.
She had seen him. The way others didn't. The way others couldn't. She had pressed a warm palm against his face when she thought he was brooding too much, whispered, "Stop thinking," against his lips, against his throat, against the hollow of his ribs. She had kept him steady, kept him sane.
And now.
Now they were gone.
And he was still here.
Rook exhaled, opening his eyes.
The city stretched before him, still burning.
He kept walking.
*
Rook moved through the streets like a specter, half-dead and fading.
The flames painted the sky in lurid reds and oranges, reflecting off the water pooled in the cracks of the broken cobblestones. Every step was heavier than the last, the weight of exhaustion settling deep into his bones, but he did not stop.
Not until he reached that street.
The one where he and Davin had stood, back to back, fighting against the Syndicate's swarm.
It was a graveyard now.
Bodies lay scattered across the cobblestones, slumped against ruined carts, sprawled across the wet ground. Some had been run through with steel, their wounds dark and gaping. Others had charred holes burned clean through their torsos—Helios, Davin's power, his lifeblood turned to light, turned to fire.
Rook staggered to a halt.
It hadn't been enough.
The Syndicate had kept coming, wave after wave, and now, the silence told him all he needed to know.
His stomach twisted as he moved forward, scanning the wreckage with something between desperation and dread. His boots squelched against the wet ground—blood mixed with rain, forming rivers between the fallen.
Davin, where are you?
Rook swallowed against the dry ache in his throat, shoving aside a collapsed man with a scorched chest. Nothing. He moved further, stepping over twisted limbs, past sightless eyes that had once burned with battle-fury.
And then—
There.
A little further down the street, amongst the bodies, half-hidden beneath a torn banner.
Rook's breath left him in a ragged exhale.
Davin lay on his side, blood pooling beneath him, his body slack, his sword fallen from his grasp.
Rook fell to his knees.
For a long moment, he could not breathe. Could not think. Could only stare.
Davin, who had stood beside him through everything.
Davin, who had made jokes even in the worst of times, who had refused to break no matter what.
Davin, who had been his only remaining friend.
Rook reached out with trembling fingers, pressing them against Davin's neck, searching for something—anything.
Nothing.
Davin was gone.
The roar that tore out of Rook's throat did not sound human.
It ripped through the broken street, raw and guttural, a sound of pure agony and rage. His fists clenched so tightly his nails bit into his skin, and his vision blurred with something hot and stinging.
How much more?
How much more could they take from him before there was nothing left?
He sat there for what felt like forever, hunched over, his body curling in on itself as if he could keep himself from splintering apart.
But it was too late for that.
His ribs heaved. His heart slammed against his chest.
He pressed his forehead against the blood-slick ground, teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.
He stayed like that, unmoving.
And when he finally lifted his head, he felt nothing.
The rage, the sorrow, the despair—it was still there, but it was buried beneath something heavier. Something colder.
He had to go.
He did not look at Davin again.
Rook forced himself upright, body shaking, and turned away.
The streets blurred together as he walked, his mind a dull, empty void. The fire still spread in the distance, but he felt no heat, no fear. Just exhaustion.
Eventually, his steps took him to a side street, narrow and shadowed. He leaned against the cold stone of a wall, slid down to sit, and let his head drop against his knees.
The city still burned.
But he did not move.
He did not know how long he sat there.
Minutes. Hours.
The flames crackled. The ruins whispered with ghosts.
When he finally pushed himself to his feet, his body protested, stiff and aching, but he ignored it. He walked without direction, his limbs heavy, his chest hollow.
It was instinct alone that guided him.
Through alleys and broken streets, past the wreckage of his former life, until finally, he reached the shed.
Hidden, tucked away behind what had once been an old storehouse. He pulled open the rotting wooden door and stepped inside.
The air smelled of damp wood and dust.
His hands moved automatically, brushing aside old crates and shifting a loose floorboard. Beneath it, wrapped in oilcloth, was the sack.
Emergency money.
For when things went wrong.
Rook let out a slow breath.
He picked it up, the weight familiar in his grasp.
Then he turned.
And walked north.
Away from Oryn-Vel.
Away from everything.
He did not look back.