The Caligo Saga: Shattered

Ash does not remember what it was before the fire took it.

He wondered if there was mercy in that.

She lay on the broken stone, blood spreading through the cracks beneath her. Above them, the sky burned violet. Smoke curled from the blackened grass, drifting across what remained of the clearing.

His hand pressed against the wound beneath her ribs. Blood slipped between his fingers, warm and impossibly plentiful.

He had seen death before. He knew the stillness that settled over a face when pain began to loosen its hold.

He knew she was dying.

He kept his hand where it was.

“Look at me.”

Her eyes moved towards him. It took her a moment to find his face.

He knew those eyes better than his own: their colour in morning light, the way they narrowed when she was angry, the look she gave him when she meant to kiss him but wanted him to make the first move.

He had wanted to learn what they would look like when she was old.

It was such a small thing to want.

“Stay with me,” he said.

Her lips parted. Nothing came.

He slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her against him. Blood darkened her hair. When he smoothed it from her face, his fingers left another mark against her cheek.

The raven watched from a broken archway, motionless against the violet sky.

She shivered.

He drew her closer.

There had been nights when she slept against him like this, her cheek over his heart, one leg tangled with his. He remembered the weight of her, the warmth of her skin, the faint sound she made when he tried to move without waking her.

Once, she had asked him to stay until morning.

He had kissed her instead of answering.

She had laughed when he told her she would not get much sleep if he did, but he remembered the pause before she smiled again.

He had told himself there would be other mornings.

Her breathing faltered.

His hand tightened against her side. He reached through the damage with every part of his power that would still answer him, searching for something he could mend, something he could hold together.

There was too much.

Her hand found his wrist. He caught it before her fingers slipped away and brought her palm to his cheek.

He pressed his lips to her palm.

“Please,” he whispered.

Her eyes opened a fraction. He bent closer as her lips moved.

“I love you.”

He had heard the words a hundred times, but never like this.

He wanted to tell her he loved her in the quiet, unremarkable moments she would never have thought to remember: when they were angry, when she turned away from him in bed, when she was halfway through a story he had already heard.

There had never been an ordinary moment with her.

Instead, he kissed her forehead.

“I love you.”

Violet light gathered beneath his skin, threading through the blood on his hand.

Her gaze followed it.

“Don’t,” she breathed.

Even now, she understood him.

She had never feared what he was capable of. Yet here, scarcely able to breathe, she was frightened of what he might do to himself.

He rested his forehead against hers.

“Let me.”

Her last breath left her against his throat.

He waited for the next.

And waited.

Her chest did not rise.

He said her name once, then again. He listened for the breath that had always followed his, for the heartbeat he knew as intimately as his own.

Nothing.

The raven made a low, broken sound above him. Somewhere beyond the clearing, a woman was calling his name.

He could hear everything except her.

He lowered his head.

He had thought the worst thing love could do was make him afraid of losing someone.

He had been wrong.

The worst thing was learning he could survive it.

The sun would rise. Doors would open. People would go on with their lives while he remained inside the last moment of hers.

He looked down at her and wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, gently, as though she might complain if he woke her.

Then he held her closer.

“No,” he said quietly.

The air changed.

Smoke ceased to rise. Ash hung motionless above the stone. Fire stirred beneath the blackened earth, water gathered in the cracks, and the wind turned inward, drawn towards a centre that should never have existed.

The violet sky deepened.

Something inside him began to tear.

He felt the pain, recognised its warning, and continued.

Memories moved through him without order: her laughter, a hand against his cheek, the taste of her mouth, the promises he had made and all the ones he had been too careful to give her.

The raven cried out.

A woman’s voice rose behind him, screaming his name.

He did not turn.

He knew what he was risking. He knew what might remain of him when it was done.

And for the first time, he wanted something more than to keep her.

He wanted her to live, even in a world where she might never love him.

He wanted her to have the chance to hate him. To grow old. To fall in love. To wake beside someone who would stay without being asked.

If there was a life in which she could have those things, he would surrender his place in it.

He had wanted to grow old with her.

Now he wanted something far more difficult.

He wanted to be worthy of the way she had held him.

He bent and pressed one last kiss to her forehead.

There had been nights when she asked him to stay until morning.

He has now stayed.

But morning had taken her anyway.