"Raihan…?"
Lian Yue's voice was a cracking thing in the frozen wind as she looked at him—the man she had bled with, trusted, nearly died beside. But the way he was now looking at her was wrong. Cold. Alien.
His irises were no longer 100 percent human. Gone was the hazel warmth, now spiraled the luminous sigils—symbols of the Celestine set amid the broken ciphers of ancient fire. They changed every blink, rewrote themselves time and again as if they were a spell that wouldn't hold still.
He tilted his head.
"Who are you?" His voice was calm, empty.
She advanced one quaking step. "Raihan… it's me. Lian Yue."
His eyes slitted, examining her as if she were a riddle.
"I'm acquainted with that name," he said slowly. "But it means nothing."
Her breath caught. The Orb. The Wyrm's Eye—it had rewritten something in him, deep down. And, maybe, something more than memories.
"No," she whispered. "No, please. Fight it. You're in there — I know you are."
He looked out over their immediate area with a soldier's eye. They were in a valley of ice and broken cliffs, the sky overhead teeming with frost-born storm clouds. No apparent cover, no enemy in sight. But his posture — too composed — told her that danger was on his mind already.
"You're supposed to stay away from me," he said. "Not now."
Lian Yue moved closer and pulled his arm. "I'm not leaving you. Whatever the Eye says, we'll say the opposite."
He didn't kiss her again — but his next words cut her.
"I don't want to undo it."
"What?"
"I see it all now," he said. "I know the truth about the gods. The rewritten myths. The shards of history they buried. The Eye didn't break me, Yue. It freed me."
She shook her head. "You sound like them."
"I'm not them," he snarled, then his voice was icy fire. "I am something new. I was chosen."
"By whom?"
He hesitated.
The response was there, in his mind--from the Veil itself.
But even he had little idea what that meant.
Before he could answer, there was a rustling sound in the snow along the edge of the ridge.
A giant creature shifted below him.
Liang Yue didn't hesitate to pull out her sword. "We're not alone."
Raihan whipped his head around. "I know."
A serpent, that had been sleeping in the snow, burst up and out—a beast of black-bone crystal and fifty feet long and lamped with divine hunger. It screamed; the sound tore through the air like shards of glass.
A divine guardian.
The gods had sent a hunter.
It was Lian Yue who struck first, her moonlit blade cutting into the creature's side. Sparks flew but the beast barely flinched, and it reared around, snapping its prehensile tail at her, sending her flying into the snowbank.
Raihan advanced coolly, the Eye pulsing in his hand.
He didn't summon a blade.
He became one.
Fire spread from his shoulders in waves, loosening into wings. His internal body was burning as runes wrote themselves across his skin, taking the last of his own hesitation with it.
He raised his hand.
Under his tread the snow disappeared.
Again the monster screamed — but this time it lurched.
"Raihan, what are you—?" "Stand up," Lian Yue began to say, pulling herself up.
But he wasn't Raihan anymore. Not fully.
He murmured something in some forgotten language, and fire erupted from his fingers—black fire, tinged with memory and fury. It beats the guard's chest and splinters the armor of the living flame which is its heart.
The beast squirmed in agony.
Then fell.
Raihan walked to it as it was dying, its final breaths wheezing out like prayers in a collapse. He sank to his knees, touching its great forehead.
"I see you," he whispered.
And he saw through the Eye the memories of the creature how it was created in the Vaults of Light, how it served the High Pantheon, how it had wept silent tears every time it had been bidden to slay mortals.
When he arose, he said nothing. He immediately turned back to Lian Yue again.
She looked kind of awed and kind of terrified.
"What did you do?" she asked.
"I gave it peace," he said. "For the first time in hundreds of years."
"Raihan…" Her voice trembled. "You're changing."
"I have to. If I'm going to stop them I can't be human any longer."
"You're still you."
He paused.
"No," he said. "I'm turning into what they were afraid of."
She moved closer to him and he put her hand over the Eye in his chest. It was hot, it burnt her flesh almost.
"You don't have to do this alone."
For a moment, his eyes softened.
"I think I always did."
All of a sudden, the clouds opened up above our heads.
A voice boomed up from the valley — deep, malicious, heavenly.
"You have touched the Eye. The seal is broken. The Price must be paid."
A ray of holy light hit the ground of the valley a couple of feet away, shaping to a golden set of stairs.
Down that first marching line Elysar the Judgment Bringer had descended—a god of balance; famed for mercy before the world; infamous for cruelty at back.
His armor flowed like liquid justice. His gaze landed on Raihan.
"So," he said. "You're the hybrid."
'I'm no hybrid,' answered Raihan, in a chill tone. "I'm gonna be the answer to your tyranny," he says.
Elysar smiled faintly. "You speak like a rebel. But your spirit is burnt with flame. I wonder… Will it scream when I burn it clean?"
Lian Yue moved beside Raihan. "You're going to have to get by me.
Elysar's smile faded. "You're the failed weapon. The girl who disobeyed. You should have been dead centuries ago.
"She will even outlive you," Raihan snarled.
He and the two forces were facing each other in silence creating a tension that was becoming charged by residual energy.
Then Raihan's hand was jutting up.
He waved a hand causing a black flame to surge out.
Elysar responded by raising up a barrier of divine ice.
The two forces collided—
And the valley shattered.
---
The blast flung Raihan and Lian Yue apart, buried beneath tumbling shards of sky and magic. Snow and ash rained down.
Lian Yue again stood up, coughing as he tried to find him.
Then she saw it—
Raihan, floating in the air surrounded by the spinning stones, which whirled in a perfect, terrible ring.
But his expression was blank.
Too blank.
As if he couldn't remember her name.
Like he didn't care.