The sword in her hand wasn't hers.
It was too long for her arm, too heavy at the hilt, blood already rusted at the guard. She didn't know the name of the guard it had belonged to. She hadn't looked at his face. Only saw the way the blade glinted beside his body, and knew she'd need it more than he would.
The street in front of her bled smoke. Cobblestones were slick with melted ice and mud. Shop signs dangled from twisted chains. She ran with her head low and her grip tighter than breath.
"Nadia," she whispered once.
Then again. "Dima."
She passed a body slumped in the corner of an alley, arms still shielding something that wasn't there anymore. Flames licked at a second-story balcony. A child's toy, wooden, cracked, lay abandoned beside a well. There was blood on the well's rim.
Yula didn't stop.
Every turn was a memory. Every corner, a possible grave.
She rounded the edge of the west alley and ducked under a collapsed frame, once a cloth stall, now just ash. Her boots snagged a torn banner.
"Nadia."
More smoke. A man stumbled past her without seeing her. His coat was half-burned, his arms cradling a child with a limp leg. He didn't look back. Just ran, panting something that wasn't prayer, but felt like one.
Across the street, two women fought to lift a beam off someone pinned beneath it. One sobbed. The other screamed for help. No one came.
Yula kept going.
Her chest burned worse than her lungs. Her ribs ached. She couldn't remember when she started running. Couldn't remember stopping.
A bell clanged, somewhere ahead, broken, irregular. Not a warning bell. Just noise now. Metal screaming into sky.
"Dima—"
The name hit harder. She stopped for a breath at the fountain's edge, now cracked and vomiting black water. Her sword hand trembled. She tightened it.
Then she ran again.
Smoke followed her now. Shadows moved overhead, winged things she didn't look at. Screams rose and dropped and rose again. Footsteps rushed behind her, then away.
She passed a boy kneeling over his mother's body. Passed a guard missing half his arm, shouting orders to no one left to hear. Passed a burning cart that smelled like syrup, like the market stall Dima always visited for the sweetroot glaze.
She turned hard at the butcher's lane.
Because maybe.
Because maybe they had gone there.
Because maybe they were still alive.
Her breath hitched in her throat. Her feet didn't stop.
Then, there it was.
Yula saw it before it saw her.
Just past the wrecked vendor stalls, behind the splintered remains of the sugar-glazed fruit cart, Dima's favorite stand, the Hollow Maul crouched in a haze of ash and shattered stone.
Its shoulders rolled like breaking walls. Metal scraped against fused bone. Every breath it took hissed steam from its side vents, glowing dull orange in the haze. Its claws dragged lines in the street, deep enough to swallow ankles. Snow hissed as it melted under its feet.
Yula's hand tightened on the guard's sword.
Not fear.
Not this time.
She moved into the open slowly. Deliberate. No shouting. No wasted noise. Her boots crunched over broken tile and scorched paper. She passed a body, half-crushed under a fallen arch. Didn't look.
The Maul twisted its head.
It saw her.
The metal-jawed face opened just slightly. A low hiss. A rumble in its throat. Plates shifted along its back like tectonic armor.
Yula didn't move.
Not yet.
The Maul turned fully now, rising to its full height. Taller than the carts. Taller than the doorway behind it. One arm dragged across the ground like a scythe too heavy to lift. Its mouth began to open.
Steam vented again, louder.
The light inside its jaw flickered.
There.
That was the moment.
That orange core, small, coiled, like a burning throat muscle, glowed faint behind its split metal jaws.
Yula gritted her teeth.
Waited.
It charged.
The scream that came with it was not animal. It was mechanical rage, like a forge caught in collapse, its agony expelled through rusted pipes. It threw its weight into the charge. The stones beneath it cracked. The air behind it split with pressure.
Yula didn't run.
She stepped sideways just once.
Her right hand guided the blade up, not to strike, not yet, but to feel the weight of it settle into her wrist.
The Maul crashed where she had been, claws digging into the earth, head swinging.
She rolled low.
Its tail came next. She ducked beneath it and came up beside its flank. It twisted, but not fast enough.
Its jaw opened again.
There was the glow.
She struck, not at it, but to draw its attention.
It turned.
And this time, she moved first.
She dropped to one knee as it roared. The sound split her skull. The ground beneath her shook. But her eyes didn't flinch.
The mouth opened wide.
There.
The core.
She threw herself forward, not with the sword, but with her full weight behind the blade, bracing it across her shoulder as she went low.
Then, twisting upward, she thrust the sword up into the open mouth with everything she had.
The tip struck the core.
It didn't stab through. It sank.
For a half second, everything froze.
Then—
BOOM.
The explosion didn't throw her.
It pulled her, like the world sucked inward and then erupted in a single pulse.
Heat seared the edge of her coat. Shrapnel from its rib-plate burst outward like a scream turned physical. Her body hit the ground three steps back, rolled once, and stopped only when her shoulder cracked against a pile of broken tiles.
She lay there, stunned.
Not broken.
But shaking.
The Maul's corpse smoldered. Nothing left but a molten skeleton and the black shell of its jaw. One of its claws still twitched as the last heat vented into the open air.
Yula coughed once.
Then rose.
Her legs shook. Her right hand trembled. But the sword was still in her grip.
She turned toward the smoke.
And kept running.
***
Smoke blurred the corners of her vision. It clung to her skin, not just in scent but in weight. Her boots left streaks of ash through the melted snow as she ran.
Past the destroyed inn front. Past the bakery Anna loved. Past the old bell post where Dima once tied a scarf to distract a patrolling hawk.
Nothing was where it should be.
She sprinted through a fractured alley, turned a corner too fast, caught herself on the wall. Her breath burned in her chest, but she didn't stop. Her coat snagged on a broken cart axle. She tore it free without blinking.
The sword in her grip was heavier now.
She passed a family huddled in a stairwell. A mother covering her child's ears. A father clutching a pipe like it could make a difference. The father looked up as she passed.
His lips moved. "Please—"
She didn't stop.
Not because she didn't care.
Because if she stopped, she wouldn't find them.
And if she didn't find them—
Then what was the point?
She reached the edge of the market.
It wasn't a market anymore.
It was a graveyard of food stalls and shattered beams. The glass canopy that once shimmered like a lake in spring was shattered across the flagstones. All that shimmered now were shards and spilled sugar.
Yula climbed over the rubble, past the half-burned barrel that still smelled like spice root, and ducked under the fallen sign of the spice merchant who used to give Dima free cloves.
Then she heard it.
"GET BACK!"
The voice was hoarse.
It came from the ruin of what used to be the northeast pavilion. One wall still stood. Barely. The rest had collapsed into jagged timbers and fractured stone.
Yula didn't think.
She ran toward the sound.
Another voice, softer, pained.
"N-Nadia, it's—don't move—it's still inside—"
Dima.
Her blood stopped cold.
Then boiled.
She turned the last corner and saw it.
The scene burned into her ribs.
Nadia stood, one arm limp at her side, the other holding a broken sword. Her hair was matted with soot. Her face streaked with blood. She bled from her temple, but her stance didn't falter. Her feet were planted, wide and steady, like a dying tree refusing to fall.
In front of her, three wolves.
Teeth like broken icicles. Eyes like hollow glass. Their fur rippled as they moved in a wide arc, trying to flank.
Behind her, under the lean of the broken wall.
Dima lay half-curled, pale, one hand clutching the jagged beam impaled through his lower side. Blood soaked the stone under him.
And he was laughing.
Not loud. Not sane.
Just the kind of laugh you make when everything is pain and somehow you're still here.
"I told you I could handle a delivery run," he rasped.
Yula didn't shout.
She didn't warn.
She moved.
Down the slope, across the debris, past the scorch mark.
The first wolf turned, too late.
Her blade caught it under the jaw, right through the soft seam in its throat.
It didn't even yelp.
The second turned to her.
She turned faster.
Parried the first bite. Slashed low across its ribs.
It lunged again, grazed her thigh.
She staggered, gritted her teeth, and drove her heel into its snout. Her sword came down a half-second later, not clean, but hard enough to break the spine.
The third bolted. Disappeared into the wreckage.
Yula stood above them, panting.
Her eyes locked on Nadia's.
Neither spoke.
Then Nadia stepped back, almost collapsing. Yula caught her by the elbow.
"Yula, what are you—" Nadia muttered.
"You left me to clean the damn bar," Yula snapped.
Nadia gave a short, dry laugh.
Yula dropped to her knees beside Dima.
He was still grinning. His eyes unfocused.
"Hey," he mumbled. "Did you see? I almost got one."
"Shut up," Yula said.
She looked at the wound.
She pressed down around it. Dima screamed.
"You idiot," she whispered. "You absolute idiot—why'd you—"
"I thought I was fast," he gasped.
"You're not."
"I am now. Bleeding makes you aerodynamic."
She pressed harder. He passed out with a groan.
Nadia dropped beside her, breath shallow. "Yula…"
"We're going home," Yula said, voice cracking.
She braced herself, got under Dima's arm, lifted him carefully. His weight was awful. But she didn't care. Nadia pulled herself up beside them.
"We'll make it," Yula whispered. "We'll all make it."
They moved like ghosts.
Dima's arm hung across Yula's shoulder, blood soaking her side. His head lolled, but he breathed. Nadia limped beside them, arm tight across her ribs.
Yula adjusted his weight. "You better not pass out again," she muttered.
A laugh. Weak. "You still owe me three months cleaning."
"Four."
"You idiot."
She didn't smile. But she felt it. Almost.
The street ahead flickered with broken light. Fires burned behind shattered windows. Smoke bled across rooftops in waves. The market had collapsed into flame and ice.
But here, in this narrow corridor between two ruined rows of shops, the air had stilled. Not quiet. Just still.
Yula counted each step.
One. Two. Three.
Don't look back.
Four. Five.
They turned the next corner, past a wrecked tailor's shop, its entire wall peeled away like a ribcage. Ash drifted downward from above, soft and slow. Nadia paused once, breathing shallow.
Just a few more steps.
Just to the alley. The tavern was beyond that.
She could already see the edge of the courtyard fence through the smoke. The line of crates stacked beside the kitchen window. Home.
Yula adjusted her grip on Dima's shoulder.
"Almost there," she said.
Then—
Shnk.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just final. Enough to destroy a world. Her world.
Dima jerked once. His weight vanished.
Yula turned.
An icicle jutted from his back.
Long. Thin. Clean.
It pierced through bone like it belonged there.
His mouth opened slightly.
Then nothing.
His knees folded. He dropped.
"Dima!"
Nadia screamed, caught his head before it hit stone. Her hands smeared red. "No—no no no—look at me—look at me—!"
Yula stared.
Her fingers hovered in midair.
She didn't move.
She couldn't.
The blood spread out, a slow red bloom on the frost.
The silence afterward was worse than the sound.
She heard her breath. Her heartbeat.
And nothing else.
Nadia shook him. "Wake up. Please—wake up."
But he didn't.
The icicle glistened like it hadn't touched him at all.
And the sky above cracked open, red light spilling through, burning the edge of the city with flame-colored veins.
Yula didn't speak.
Didn't cry.
Just knelt there.
In the blood of her brother.
And forgot how to breathe