The heat that had once strangled the cavern began to bleed away, the molten glass and bubbling sand on the floor finally cooling, hissing and cracking under the breath of the retreating dark. Celestine, weak and trembling, pushed herself upright as the chains of blackness coiling around her body faded into thin air, dissolving like mist scattered by a dying wind.

  Her legs betrayed her immediately, sending her stumbling forward, her vision swimming with broken images of stone and smoke and light, until a figure rushed toward her, arms outstretched to catch her frail form before she collapsed completely. She blinked through the haze, her cracked lips whispering the only name her battered mind could conjure.

  "Vega...?"

  The icy knight caught her gently, his arms cool and steady, his breath forming small clouds in the thick, suffocating warmth that still clung to the cavern. His armor, once pristine and gleaming with the purity of the Northern Liberatorium, was now cracked and battered, the once-impervious surface bearing the scars of the desperate battle he had endured today.

  But Vega made no complaint as he steadied her faltering form, one arm bracing her shoulders while the other worked swiftly, his gauntlet glowing faintly with the power of ice. Carefully, he lowered his hand and pressed it against her fevered skin, releasing a slow, concentrated wave of cold, cooling her burning body in gentle pulses until her frantic breathing began to ease and her flushed cheeks regained a whisper of their natural color.

  Only then, when her skin no longer scalded his touch, did he reach into the folds of his battered cloak and extract a small, glimmering green snake—one that writhed weakly, its magic nearly spent. It was Elsie, her tiny vampiric form reduced to little more than a sliver of life, and with a grim, silent determination, Vega placed her carefully against Celestine’s chest. The snake shuddered once before burrowing into Celestine’s clothes, her healing magic stitching her broken strength back together thread by fragile thread.

  A little color returned to Celestine’s face, enough for her to wrench herself free from Vega's grip, enough for her to stagger forward, her steps clumsy but filled with a desperate speed. Her gaze, though blurred and pained, locked instantly onto the smoldering ruin of Regulus lying sprawled among the cracked, half-molten stone.

  The ground beneath him was still molten, the sand bubbling and hissing like boiling tar, and faint, stubborn flickers of flame licked at the edges of his shattered armor. His helmet’s plume, once a proud and fierce blaze that had led so many into battle, now sputtered like the dying breath of a soul too stubborn to extinguish.

  "Cool him down!" Celestine ordered sharply, her voice cutting through the cavern like a dagger. Vega hesitated, the shame painting his face more starkly than any wound. His hands, so skilled with ice, trembled slightly as he bowed his head.

  "I... I cannot," he admitted, the words tasting like ash on his tongue. "This heat... it is beyond me."

  Celestine did not waste time with gratitude. She did not thank him for saving her, nor for trying. Desperation had hollowed out the princess of the world, leaving only the will to save what was left. With a fierce, almost violent urgency, she seized Vega’s hand, forcing it down onto Regulus’s armor. Vega recoiled instantly with a hiss of pain as his palms sizzled against the unbearable heat.

  A single tear escaped Celestine’s eye, cutting a clean line through the dirt and blood staining her face. "I will have no more people die for me," she whispered, her voice shaking with fury and grief.

  Without waiting for Vega’s protest, she ripped the blue scale from his armor—a sacred piece of his battle attire and an heirloom given to him by the very person the princess was trying to save—and pressed it hard against Regulus’s chest. The air screamed in protest, thick plumes of steam blasting into the cavern as the enchanted relic sacrificed itself without hesitation.

  Vega stared, wide-eyed, not speaking a word, not even moving to stop her. Deep down, a part of him, the part still tethered by blood and honor, was grateful. Grateful that someone was doing what he had thought he had not been strong enough to do.

  As the clouds of steam thickened, Vega knelt beside her, summoning every scrap of his remaining power, sending waves of biting cold against the molten armor. Yet the fire fought back with every breath, his ice melting almost as fast as he conjured it, water pooling around Regulus’s prone form. He gritted his teeth, muttering under his breath. "Just a little longer... Just a little longer..."

  Celestine, still half-delirious, ripped Elsie from her chest where the tiny healer had been latched on, and, without thinking, shoved the girl against Regulus’s body. Instantly, Elsie’s body convulsed, her delicate form igniting in a blaze of agony. She let out a piercing scream, shifting violently into her human form, her boots kicking Celestine away with a desperate blast of strength.

  Vega, reacting without thought, broke his focus for a heartbeat, blasting Elsie with a wave of pure cold to smother the flames licking at her skin. Elsie coughed violently, hacking up water and blood, before collapsing beside them, unconscious but alive.

  Celestine barely noticed. Her entire world had shrunk to the smoldering knight before her. She scrambled forward again, grabbing at the empty air where Elsie had been, her mind unable to process that she had already removed her once, twice, three times before. She pawed at the burning armor with her bare hands, heedless of the pain, frantic and wild with grief.

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  "Please," she whispered. "Please..."

  And then, against all odds, a sound escaped from the knight. A rasping, broken sound, but a sound nonetheless Regulus's gauntleted hand twitched. His eyes, pale and flickering beneath the cracked visor, blinked open with the barest sliver of consciousness.

  Celestine cried out, her voice shattering the silence. "Regulus!"

  And Vega, the stoic knight of ice, the brother who had thought his elder lost forever, shouted with all the force of his soul. "Big brother!"

  Regulus stumbled forward, his legs like crumbling pillars struggling to support the battered weight of his armor and the far heavier burden of what he knew he had to do. His breath came in shallow gasps, steam rising in faint wisps from the shattered seams of his once-proud plate, and every movement sent tremors through his broken frame.

  Celestine, without a thought to anything else, surged toward him, arms outstretched, her heart overriding her reason, her instinct crying out to embrace the man who had thrown his life into the jaws of death for her. Her hands touched his burning armor, and immediately her skin began to blister, the agonizing heat biting deep, but she did not let go, not until Vega, moving faster than thought, ripped her away from Regulus’s side.

  "Snap out of it Celestine!" Vega roared, shaking her hard enough that her half-healed body almost crumpled in his hands. She fought him, screamed at him, tears of rage and despair streaming down her scorched face, but Vega gritted his teeth and held her firm, his heart breaking alongside hers.

  Regulus tilted his head up slowly, looking at the princess through the cracked slit of his visor, and despite the agony carved into every fiber of his being, he smiled. A smile faint, a smile tired, but a smile nonetheless. His voice was a rasp, barely audible, but full of unbroken command.

  "Vega," he croaked, "Knock her out... take her... and the green-haired woman... to the Jericho."

  Vega froze, his entire body locking up in rebellion against the words.

  "Operate it," Regulus rasped, the fire inside him burning low, yet still stubbornly refusing to die, "Escape. Now."

  Vega hesitated, looking at his brother, at the man who had raised him more than anyone else, standing there like a dying monument against the end of the world, until Celestine, wild with grief, screamed out, "No! I would rather die here then let you go!"

  She thrashed against Vega's grip, her fists pounding uselessly against his armor, her voice slicing through the cavern like a jagged knife, and Vega's heart cracked fully as he now knew he had no choice.

  “Forgive me,” he thought bitterly, as he shifted his weight and, with one swift, brutal movement, slammed his gauntleted fist into the side of her neck. She gasped once, her body stiffened, and then collapsed like a doll in his arms, her golden hair falling across his shoulder.

  Vega caught her gently, almost reverently, as if afraid to hurt her more than he already had. A tear, unbidden and unwanted, welled in the corner of his eye as he walked to Elsie, picking her up as well.

  "You'll find three others near the Jericho," Regulus said hoarsely, his voice growing weaker with every word. "The teleportation tickets... they're hidden. You know where."

  Vega's breathing quickened, panic and grief and duty tearing him in opposite directions. His hand trembled. His legs refused to move.

  "Move, Vega!" Regulus roared, his voice thundering through the cavern with the last dregs of his strength, the ground seeming to shake from the sheer force of his will. "Get your shit together!"

  The younger brother stiffened, instinct overriding his breaking heart. He slung Celestine over one shoulder, grabbed the unconscious Elsie carefully with the other, and steadied himself.

  "What about you...?" he whispered, the words catching in his throat like shards of broken glass.

  "I will hold Chaos off," Regulus said, straightening as much as his shattered body would allow, the dying flame in his chest flaring brighter one last time. "It is only a matter of time before he consumes Kaiser's soul. I have to buy you every second I can."

  Vega knew. In his soul, he knew that standing against Chaos again was suicide. That even Regulus, for all his power, could not win. "It is night outside," Vega said quietly, despair coloring his words, "Chaos will be even faster then the Jericho, far faster...."

  Regulus chuckled, blood dripping from the edge of his visor. "Do not worry about that," he said, voice low and hard. "I will use my Origin. That will buy you the time you need."

  Vega shook his head violently. "Using it in your condition might kill you—"

  Regulus stepped forward, forcing Vega to meet his broken but unyielding gaze. "You are the sixth constellation of the North," Regulus said, his voice soft but unbreakable, "Now, do as your direct superior commands you."

  Vega closed his eyes for a brief moment, clenching his jaw, feeling the iron weight of duty crush down on him. He turned, slowly, painfully, and began to walk, then run, Celestine and Elsie weighing heavily on his shoulders.

  He stopped only once, glancing back at the figure of his brother, standing tall against the molten cocoon of darkness.

  "Make sure my sacrifice is not wasted," Regulus called after him. "Put Celestine on the throne. She is the only one who can save this world."

  Vega said nothing. His voice was gone. His heart was gone. He could only run. The last thing he heard, as he disappeared into the ruined tunnels, were the words that tore him apart more than any wound ever could.

  "I love you, brother. I am so very proud of you."

  The voice of Regulus, strong even in his ruin, fierce even in his final hour, burned itself into Vega’s mind like a brand, a scar he would bear until the end of all things.

  And Vega, the silent knight of ice, the boy who had once believed his brother to be immortal, who had built his entire world around the man he chased through the endless night, whispered back into the broken cavern's dying winds — a voice so low, so broken, it barely carried.

  "I am proud... to have been born of your blood."

  No roar. No war cry. Just those quiet, shattering words, carried away by the ash and the wind, lost to a world that would never deserve the sacrifice made in its name. And then he vanished into the dark, the broken sand swallowing his steps, carrying with him the last flickering light of a brother’s love, and the fragile hope of a world on the edge of death.

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