Lenko never thought he'd live long enough to wonder how to escape death itself. He only had a beat to realize it, his sister had already released her arrow. Cold. Precise. Unflinching.

The shaft pierced straight through his chest. Right through his heart. Breaking it, literally and otherwise.

Images rushed through his mind in a dizzy blur... his parents' faces, his siblings' laughter, his friends. The palace. The punishments. The escape. The nights spent working in barns, the horse, the cows, the goats, the chickens, the villagers. Hinnom. Sheol. The old people and the kids. The thief princess. The prince. Muzio.

But no memory could keep pace with the reality of the arrow buried deep in his chest.

Even now, even as the pain flared and his vision began to spin, his mind dragged one last thought to the surface, the memory of that elf and their infuriating smile. 'Fucking bitch,' he thought.

And then his body bloomed with agony. It wasn't just the arrow. It was as if his very soul was being torn apart from the inside.

Blood surged up his throat, hot and metallic, spilling past his lips. The tang made him dizzy. If his body even hit the ground, but he didn't feel it.

Through the haze, through the ringing in his ears, he caught sight of wide, terrified eyes, the dragon child clutching at him, her small hands shaking, desperate.

But he couldn't feel his limbs. Couldn't feel his breath.

The world dimmed around him, leaving only the shimmer of mana light above, there's something soft, golden, flowing upward too.

'Flowing?'

He blinked slowly. The light swirled, lifting. 'Ah,' he realized. 'That's me… I'm flowing.'

What was he doing again?

Why was he,

Oh.

Right.

He died.

He died.

"Lenko!"

The breath he drew felt like it stole everything from him. Pain bloomed everywhere, sharp, deep, relentless. He could never understand how people claimed pain meant you were alive.

'Wait… alive?'

His body trembled. He tried to sit up, limbs sluggish, senses blurring in and out. Every sound was too loud, everything is too bright. Then, someone's hand pressed against his back, helping him rise. He flinched hard at the touch, his heart stuttering in panic.

When he finally sat up, he realized, the weight on his chest was gone. The arrow was gone.

Even the searing pain in his heart had vanished, replaced by an ache spreading through every inch of him.

"---hey, can you hear me? Lenko? Hey, answer me...?"

He froze when he recognized the voice beside him.

It was the thief princess.

Yona, crouched nearby, her voice hoarse with urgency. In her arms, the dragon child whimpered softly, clutching at her clothes. Her gaze wasn't on him, though, it was fixed on the body before them.

Lenko followed her eyes. The body slumped over him, arms limp, still clutching a pouch. His pouch. It lay open beside it, its contents can be seen faintly with light. Tyron's mother heart.

A shout echoed from above, sharp and distant. Lenko's ears rang again. His hands twitched, instinctively gripping the prince's sleeve, pulling weakly, as if he could make him move, make him wake up.

But the body didn't move.

Too heavy.

Too still.

'A dead body?'

Lenko's heart clenched with a sharp, echoing pain. His hand went to his chest on instinct, where the arrow had struck before. The cloak there was torn and stiff with slick blood, the fabric matted against his skin. He could feel the rough edges of a half-healed scar beneath it, already sealed but still raw, aching in a way that made his breath hitch.

His trembling fingers brushed over another hand, cold, motionless, the prince's hand, still clutching the pouch. Lenko's voice cracked out of him, rough and unsteady.

"W–what happened?"

The words scraped his throat... 'even speaking hurt.' He coughed, tasting iron again. When he lifted his gaze, the scene around him slowly came into focus.

The mage, Aisha, was kneeling a few feet away. Her wide eyes weren't on him. They were fixed on the prince lying still at his side.

A tug at his shoulder broke his trance. Then, sharp pain bloomed across his cheek.

The ringing in his ears wavered, and through the haze he finally heard the shouting.

"---Snap the hell out of it! Listen!"

Yona's voice, close and fierce, cut through the fog on his mind. She was right in front of him, her face streaked with grime and soot, her hand gripping his torn cloak as she shook him hard.

Beside her, the young dragon girl stared upward, eyes wide and frantic, flicking from the crater's rim above and back to them.

Yona's fingers dug into his shoulder as she hissed, "I don't fucking know what's going on! You died, then you weren't, and now the prince is the one not breathing this time!" Her voice cracked, sharp with panic and anger both.

"Lenko, listen!" she shouted again, shaking him once more before turning, pointing upward, in the same direction where the dragon child was looking up and now nodding to someone from there.

He looked up.

Through the haze and the dizzying glare from above, he saw the sixth princess kneeling at the edge of the crater, shouting down at them. Her voice was raw, desperate. "It should work, he's fine! Why? Why isn't he waking up!?"

She thrust her wrist toward them as if to show something, sigils flaring faintly even from where he stood. Tyron was behind her, arms locked around her shoulders, holding her back from throwing herself into the pit.

His face was pale, strained with confusion and fear. Then his voice cracked through the echoing chaos.

"My mother's heart! You can still wish on it, so long as you've got the bargain to pay!"

Lenko squinted up toward them, eyes stinging from the light. It was blinding, like stepping out of the shade to stare right into the sun. He could barely see the princess's form through the swirling dust, the brightness cutting down through the broken undercroft.

Then Yona yanked him roughly by the shoulder, dragging him back to focus. "Shit, did you hear that?!" she shouted over the noise. "You gotta make a wish or something, anything!"

Lenko blinked, disoriented, his chest tightening again. Everything ached. His ribs felt cracked, his breathing ragged and shallow, each inhale scraping like sand through his lungs. The world kept tilting, lights flickering between the gold above and the red of blood below.

Lenko's thoughts were sluggish, mud-thick and dragging. Every breath burned like his ribs were made of splinters. He could feel something clogging his chest, choking each inhale, the weight of his own heartbeat pressing against bruised bone.

Then a sudden tug snapped him back.

He blinked, dazed, and saw the dragon child kneeling beside him. Her wide, slitted green eyes shimmered with tears, her small chest rising in ragged gasps. "...screaming," she whispered, voice trembling, "it's still screaming…"

She lifted her hands, and Lenko saw what she held, a knife, its blade slick with blood, glinting dully in the shifting light.

His breath hitched. The child's hands were shaking, and so was the blade.

In that instant, a memory flooded through him, the darkness he had just crawled from.

It hadn't been peaceful. It was suffocating, endless, and full of voices that weren't voices, the kind of sound that clawed through the mind, that made you want to scream back.

He's like the knives.

He barely realized what she was doing until he saw her lift the knife higher, her trembling hands turning the blade toward her own palm.

Lenko's eyes widened. "Wait---!"

He lurched forward despite the stabbing pain in his ribs, a coughing fit wracking his body as he caught her wrist. The movement made his vision blur, black edging his sight, but he held fast.

Yona was already there, grabbing the girl's shoulder, yanking her back with a harsh glare. "What are you doing?!" she shouted. The child pause and glares at them, her voice breaking. "No!"

The air suddenly shifted, the dust and debris around them lifting in a swirl as mana flared, wild and unstable. The girl's tail lashed, her scales catching faint light as her aura pulsed out of control.

Yona gritted her teeth but didn't let go, her muscles tensing as she held the small dragon in place.

"Why are you all trying to be like that guy?!" she barked, the edge of panic slicing through her words. "He's a lunatic, cutting, burning, stabbing himself like that!"

Lenko coughed again, his grip on the child's wrist tightening as he rasped through the pain, "He… saved us."

Yona froze. Her eyes snapped toward him, blazing, dark, furious, rimmed with that familiar purple fire. "Saved?" she hissed, hands trembling with anger and disbelief.

"If you call that saving, when he can't even help himself, no wonder he never found a better way to use his mana than this self sacrificing bullshit!"

"You're bullshit!"

Both Lenko and Yona froze, turning toward the dragon child. The little girl was glaring up at them, her teeth bared, scales on her cheeks flaring faintly in the glow of mana. Her tail lashed, once, twice, sweeping the dust behind her.

Before either of them could speak, a hand clamped down on their wrists, one on Lenko's, the other on Yona's.

Both froze.

Then they turned, almost in unison, to the body that was now, slowly, impossibly, pushing itself upright.

Lenko didn't even feel him move. One moment, Muzio's weight was slumped against him, the next, that same body was shifting, rising. The movement sent a tremor through Lenko's arm, his entire body still caught somewhere between pain and numbness.

"Muzio---!" he gasped, coughing hard as his hand slipped from the child's wrist, reaching instinctively to steady his young lord, but Yona's boot caught him square in the ribs, shoving him back.

"Get back---!" she barked, yanking the dragon child back too just as something sliced through the air.

A dagger hissed past, close enough that Lenko felt the wind of it cut across his face.

When his vision steadied, Muzio was standing, or half-standing, his posture slack, his head tilted forward. There was no focus in his expression, only the faint glint of light in his eyes, cold and distant. The same glint Lenko remembered from his sister, the same slack from the man who had chased him and the dragon child minutes earlier.

"Muzio…" he whispered, his voice trembling as he met those eyes, dull red and utterly unrecognizing.

Yona had already drawn her blade, moving in fast. Sparks scattered as she caught Muzio's next strike.

Lenko staggered back, pulling the dragon child behind him as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing, heart pounding hard enough to hurt.

Then his gaze flicked past the fight, to the mage still kneeling where she'd been moments ago.

She hadn't moved. Her hands were slack, there was a blood streaking one of her palm, but her lips were curled into a thin, menacing smile. Her blue eyes shimmered faintly, fixed on Muzio.

Lenko felt his heartbeat twist, pain lancing through his chest all over again.

Without a thought, he ran toward the pouch left rolling on the ground. He knew how to break her hold, he just needed to bring his young lord back, just as he had done for him.

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