Bosch coughed.

The sound was wet, ragged, and it broke the silence like a snapped twig.

Aria flinched, then scrambled to his side. "Bosch! Stay still—don't move!" She slid to her knees, fumbling to brace him, her hands frantic as she tried to lift him upright. Blood slicked her fingers. "You're hurt, you—"

Kaiser's shadow fell over them.

The spiders clinging to the walls reacted first, shivering, legs curling in, retreating in waves until the hallway rang with the scrape of their flight. Even Aria's breath caught at the way the air thickened, heavier with each step he took.

"Move," Kaiser said.

Aria hesitated, clutching Bosch tighter. His frail body sagged against her shoulder, his lips barely moving as he struggled to breathe. "He'll die if I let go!"

Kaiser's eyes narrowed, but not in anger. One hand pressed gently against her shoulder. "Move."

Her arms trembled. At last, she let go.

Kaiser bent, lifting Bosch with one arm as though the old man weighed nothing. Bosch's glasses were gone, his golden eyes clouded, searching at nothing in the air. He turned his head, confused, until Kaiser steadied him with an arm across his back.

Aria hovered, torn between relief and panic. "What are you doing?"

Kaiser didn't answer at first. Instead, a breath of frost spilled from his fingers, spreading across Bosch's skull. The wound at the back of his head hissed as ice sealed over it, closing the worst of the bleeding. A thin sheen of frost crystallized in his hair, sharp and pale against the blood.

Aria gasped. "You're freezing him—!"

"Stopping blood is simple," Kaiser said, his voice even, as if speaking of a blade stroke. "But it buys him minutes. No more."

Aria's heart pounded. "Minutes? That's all? He—he'll die if we don't heal him. Don't you have a med-pek in your pouch? Please—"

Kaiser's gaze cut to her, and the words froze in her throat. "Listen. His Sol Core is shattered. Ground to dust. That is the heart of a man, and without it, there is no Sol, and he can't live long without it. No med-pek will rewrite that. I can halt blood, but I cannot stop death."

Her throat tightened. The spiders around her legs twitched once, then scattered, vanishing into cracks in the walls as though echoing her despair.

Kaiser adjusted his hold on Bosch, his voice firm. "Go. Celestine is fighting alone. She needs you more than he does."

Aria shook her head hard, tears cutting quick lines down her cheeks. "Don't say that. Please—please try! There has to be something—freeze him, drag him to the teleporter—anything! Don't just—"

Kaiser's tone sharpened. "Girl."

The single word broke her voice. She looked at Bosch, pale and slipping further with every breath. A sound escaped her, half sob, half whisper as she pressed a hand against her mouth. "I'm so sorry."

Bosch's fingers twitched weakly. With a snap, a faint thread of Sol sparked. Aria and her spiders vanished in an instant, blinked from the hall with no trace.

Her last words still echoed faintly. Don't let him die.

Bosch coughed again, blood flecking his lips. "I… sent them," he rasped, his voice no stronger than ash in the wind. "That girl and her spiders... They're already at the end of the hall. Close enough… to do whatever they wish to."

Kaiser inclined his head, just slightly. "Then I thank you." His tone was smooth, polite even, but so hollow it was almost cruel. Bosch felt it, that emptiness, and his ruined eyes clouded with something like sorrow.

Kaiser's gaze sharpened. His voice dropped lower, colder, edged with something harsher than anger.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"Why? Why did you do that, when you must know, at least somewhere in your bones, that your wife isn't what she was? Her place of origin was left broken a month ago, and you never fixed it. You left her to fester in ruin."

Bosch's lips trembled. He coughed blood, his chest rattling, but still he forced the words out. "No… a month ago she was still herself. She laughed, she—she was Rosaline." His blind eyes shifted, searching the dark he could no longer see. "I thought… if I just held on… if I just stayed by her, it would be enough. That I could be good. Good enough to just be a man. A man with his wife. At the edge of the world."

Kaiser's lip curled faintly, the expression halfway between anger and disqust. He didn't bother to hide it, though Bosch couldn't see it anyway.

"You must know." Kaiser said at last, each word deliberate. "That I'll help my comrades end her. If she is still Rosaline, then she will die Rosaline. But if she is already a bleeding mess of rot… then she is nothing to mourn."

Bosch's breath hitched hard, a sob tearing loose before it drowned in a fresh cough of blood. His chest heaved against Kaiser's arm, wracked with pain and grief, but he shook his head weakly, refusing to let the words end there.

"No… no, listen to me." His voice cracked, but carried a raw edge of stubbornness. "She is Rosaline. Even if the world rotted around her, even if that witch twisted what I saw, she was her a month ago. She laughed. She held me. She was my wife. Not some monster."

Blood dripped from his lips, his body failing, but he gritted his teeth, forcing more. "If she must die, then it won't be as some… some corrupted husk. She will stay Rosaline. I'll make sure of it. Even if it breaks me." His blind eyes quivered, a sheen of tears spilling uselessly down his cheeks. "We'll die as ourselves, not as their puppets. She will end as Rosaline. And I… I will end as Bosch."

The words faltered, his breath rattling to silence for a heartbeat. Then, weaker, more broken, but still insistent, he whispered, "At least this way… I can have closure."

Kaiser regarded him with a strange, calculating silence before shifting his hold. Bosch's head lolled toward him.

"Bring me to..." Bosch whispered, the words barely more than air. "The painting… farthest left. By the window."

Even with his disdain, Kaiser turned. He started down the hall, boots ringing against the fractured stone, Bosch hanging in his arms like a frail shadow of the man he once was.

Bosch's voice broke the silence. "Tell me… what truly happened. The Tale you're on. What was it?"

Kaiser's gaze hardened as he walked. "You've been tricked. From the start."

Bosch froze in his arms, his lips parting in a breathless tremor. "Then it was… a month ago."

"Yes."

Tears welled in Bosch's blind eyes, slipping down his bloodied cheeks. "I knew," he whispered hoarsely. "I knew it was too good to be true. Damn him…"

"Don't waste your hate on him," Kaiser cut in coldly. His eyes flicked to the block of ice down the hall, where Masamia's form lay frozen in perfect stillness. "Save it for her. For Masamia."

The name hit Bosch like a blade. His chest convulsed, blood bubbling in his throat. "Masamia? What… what happened? Did you… kill her?"

Kaiser's reply was calm, merciless. "No. She'll be executed by Celestine later. Because she was Unborn."

Bosch's breath snapped sharp. His fingers clenched faintly against Kaiser's armor. "Unborn…?" His voice cracked, shaking. "All this time… she was…"

Kaiser went on, implacable. "She tampered with your sight. Warped what your glasses showed you. The white cats you thought you painted were her ink-born. The seas you thought eternal blue were her green, her siphons. Every brushstroke you poured Sol into, every monster that gathered it… she hoarded. All that Sol is stored elsewhere. Somewhere even I cannot yet name."

Bosch shook his head weakly, tears spilling as if he could scrub the truth away. "No… no, I—" His breath shuddered, breaking under the weight of it. "I painted lies. All of it… her lies."

"Not just lies," Kaiser said. "Chains. The purest kind. Chains you forged with your own hand, and placed upon yourself and those closest to you."

The words struck harder than steel. Bosch sagged, wracked by another coughing fit, blood flecking his lips and chin. Kaiser stopped before the painting, the farthest left, framed by the tall window. He set Bosch carefully upright, though the man swayed in his arms. "Is this the one?"

Bosch's blind eyes glistened. "Left of the window?"

"Yes."

With trembling fingers, Bosch touched his cheek, catching a tear. He dragged it down across the canvas in a single wavering streak. Blue smeared across the painting like a wound torn open.

The effect was instant.

An ocean's worth of Sol tore through Bosch. It burst from him in waves, a flood too vast for a shattered core to contain. His body convulsed, blood spraying from his nose, his mouth, even his ears as the power shredded what little was left of him. His veins lit faintly, yellow fire racing through them before they ruptured.

Still he pressed on, forcing it, dragging out the last ember of his soul. His teeth ground, his fingers clawed against the canvas as if to anchor himself against the current. Every second was agony. Every second shortened the pitiful minutes he had left.

Outside, the sea answered. A streak of impossible blue burned itself across the horizon, a scar of color smeared over the endless green waters, as though the world itself had been corrected with a brushstroke. Waves heaved against the cliffs, the ocean's voice thundering like it had been waiting centuries to breathe again.

Bosch collapsed forward, wheezing, his body a ruin in Kaiser's arms. His tears and blood mingled, streaking his face with red and blue.

Kaiser looked through the window, the faintest curl touching the corner of his mouth. Then his eyes hardened again, the softness gone as quickly as it came. He adjusted Bosch's weight in his arms, already turning toward the next step.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.