BT - Chapter 9

I blinked, the world blurring then sharpening around the winged figure. Regal, imposing, and those eyes… they triggered something. A memory surged, hot and fast, stealing the air from my lungs. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the images were already there, vivid and terrifying. This wasn’t a bad dream; it was a recollection I’d buried.

“Krowen!” he boomed, his voice rolling across the plain like thunder. He stood some distance away, the setting sun framing him in gold. “In case your shattered fragile mind doesn’t remember, I am Redken Flarion, revealing myself to you again.” He rose to his feet and began to stalk forward, each step measured and powerful. “Before anything else,” he continued, “… steady your mind.”

I understood why he’d opened with that - there hadn’t been room in my head for anything else until now. My thoughts pulled back to what had happened at the Asuya station, what felt like only yesterday. “Where’s Shiinx?” The heat rose in my face before I’d even finished asking. “Is she with Kiara?”

“Kiara holds her,” he said. “But she is unharmed. Neither Kiara nor the Sun Jin soldiers have laid a hand on her.”

Something in me eased, just slightly. Alive. That was what mattered. I dropped to one knee, not out of reverence, just to get lower, closer to something solid to help level thoughts. I pressed a few fingers into the dirt and tried to do what he said, focus. He wasn’t wrong. I needed to settle down. But it wasn’t easy with the noise crowding my skull, louder now with him standing right there. “Alright… good. Steady my mind.” I said, shaking my head. “Lock in. Look as in control as you do, I suppose.”

He didn’t appreciate that. His forward claws came down hard against the dirt. “Do not-” He stopped. Reset. “I have spent a millennium,” he began again, “standing between Jethro and everything he would unmake. I have watched worlds fold under his reach.” His gaze pinned me down for a good second, then softened slightly. “I feel your blood boil in my presence. Yet I trust you can calm it.” He dipped his head with solemn weight. “A feat we cannot yet explain, and one you must master. Lest your inner Bloodtiger break free, again.”

“So you know what’s inside me.” I pressed my fingertips into the dirt.

“I know that you know who I am,” he said, “And you know what is inside of me.”

“Yeah, I remember you.” The sweat trickled into my hair. “Things are starting to come back. Pieces anyway.” There was an ease to being near him I couldn’t account for - not reverence, not the godhood the Templar tribes pressed onto him. Something older and less voluntary. The piece of Jethro behind my eyes, recognizing its host the way a splinter recognizes the hand it came from.

Whatever I’d expected from the creature that haunted the edges of my fractured memory, it wasn’t this. He paced with the patience of someone who had nowhere to be and all of the time to get there. No snarl. No static behind the eyes. I knew what it looked like when something dark was running the show. I’d seen it from the inside. This wasn’t that. So what was he when Jethro was in control?

Flarion stopped pacing. “You know who I am. Good. Kaisara made sure of that.” He let the silence sit for a moment, that confident smile working at the edges of his beak. “Forza Ninetails of Amber Krowe.” He said my full name the way someone sets down something heavy. “Given our little… mutual friend in there,” he tapped his temple once with a talon, “I can see further into that head of yours than you’d probably like. So then. Let’s shake some of those memory fragments loose.” He tilted his head. “How does a man like you end up on Tier?”

“Vaguely,” I said, “I remember this being entirely your fault.” My thoughts were still catching up to my mouth.

“My fault?” One of his brow ridges arched slowly. “A heavy accusation.” He let the silence stretch, his gaze unwavering, making it clear that in any contest of wills, he had centuries on me. “Pray,” he continued, his tone dangerously smooth, “enlighten me.”

Fragments from Caisteal were surfacing, slow and incomplete. Days or weeks after escaping Sun Jin’s captivity. I couldn’t pin it down. Trudging through endless snow with Rio, the Caistealian woman I’d tried to describe to Shiinx. I could still place her scent before I could place her face. Somewhere in that cold stretch of time was my first encounter with Flarion: gunshots, scrambling for my weapons in a village I was actually there to protect, not- …the rest frayed at the edges. Whatever had happened, it had landed me here, on Tier, with something dark burrowing deeper into me by the day. I held him responsible for both.

I rose slowly, finding my footing. “Why is everything before Tier so fractured? I know I was on Caisteal. I remember Rio. I remember villagers,” my jaw tightened, “,the good kind. Not the ones I…” I shook my head and dropped into a squat again, forearms on my knees. “But now that you’re standing in front of me…” I looked up and let a beat pass, “…your, ah… greatness,” the corner of his beak pulled into something satisfied as I smirked, “…it’s coming back together. You were there. Soldiers were there.”

Flarion stopped and settled back on his hindquarters about ten meters out, upright, watching me. The sheer size of him. “Surely you’ll keep at it and let me know what else you remember, won’t you?”

“Yeah, of course.” I swallowed hard. We had met before - at least once, and I was certain it was on Caisteal. That black and red silhouette, the white chest, those red eyes. Not Jethro’s eyes. The years I’d spent with the Sun Jin Empire bled into the time after my escape, and sorting through all of it while keeping the shard of Jethro in check, choosing my thoughts just right to stop it from crawling up my spine wasn’t making any of it easier.

A few moments passed. Flarion tilted his head, then apparently decided I'd had long enough. "Would you accept a handout?" he inquired. "Of all my mystical tricks," he said, swirling a talon lazily, "I've saved my most devastating for this moment: the ability of 'I was there'." He was a smartass, but when he chuckled, the low sound vibrated in my bones, a deep resonance that seemed to bend the air between us.

Something about the whole thing was off in a way I couldn’t name. Not tense, not formal. Just… easy. The kind of easy that made me more suspicious, not less. Still, I caught myself leaning into it. “Yeah. Help me out.” The memories were surfacing but not landing clean. A barn. The Varunium swords cutting through Sun Jin armor on Caisteal. Kaisara’s swords. Had I been carrying them that far back? And where had they ended up?

“Your mind holds the shape of Caisteal,” Flarion said, “but not the thread that pulled you there. And before that, less still.”

I breathed out slow through my nose. “I’ve been drifting. Keeping my head down, staying clear of the Alliance and the Empire both. Caisteal, then Tier. Wherever felt far enough.”

“Then start at the beginning… I’ll help you fill in the gaps.”

I shook my head, exhaling until my lungs emptied. A cold breeze ruffled my fur, and I fought to keep my thoughts on Shiinx, to steady myself. The darkness squirmed inside me, a hungry thing drawn to Flarion’s presence. Jethro was close, and part of me was thrilled by it. I had to fight that feeling, just as Flarion had told me to.

“Amber Krowe,” I started. “Orphaned young. The system picked me up, and the military was the way out—someone flagged my abilities early on.”

“Swift of foot,” Flarion interjected. “And as with any powerful body of people, they sought to make of you a weapon.”

“They tried to make me a gunman first.” I chuckled, but it didn’t quite land. “Came back from the range every day with bruised shoulders and ringing ears and nothing else. Then Kaisara showed up.” My claws found the dirt. “She was the first one who handed me a blade. I still remember the first time I got it away from her, the way she smiled at me right before she put me on my back. Warm at dinner, merciless at dawn. I never figured out which one was the act.”

Flarion’s head dipped slightly, his red eyes steady on me. A slow breath moved through the nostrils of his beak. He was still on that last part - Kaisara. She had told me how close she was to Flarion.

“She brought me into the Templar’s world. Varuna and the Red Sun, the goddess at the center of all of it. She explained how that energy seeded itself into the early universe, how it became what the Templar carry now. In Shrike, most of us were soldiers. A few of us were something else. Her, Dare, me. Dare was the kind of man you wanted at your back and across the table from you in equal measure. She made me into a fighter, and for a while, that was enough. She talked about you, too. More than once.”

He nodded slowly. “She is a remarkable woman.” Something in his voice had shifted, quieter, more careful. “And she chose you. That was never a small thing, believe me. I’m sure it meant the world to her to be able to train you.” He tilted his great head. “But I was not there for any of it. Tell me what happened next.”

Oh, so he doesn’t know everything? Heh.

“You raised her, right?”

“Kaisara?” A pause. “Yes. For reasons long and difficult to explain, she was raised by me rather than her father, Kukri Tanuki. Myself and my mate-”

“-Majora.” I cut him off.

His eyes held on me for a moment, unblinking. A creature like Flarion probably hadn’t been interrupted in a long time, and even setting that aside, I’d been told enough to know this particular topic was something he didn’t walk through lightly.

“Yes,” he said at last, quieter than before. “Majora.” One great claw pressed into the dirt and lifted, pressed and lifted. “Continue with Amber Krowe, Forza.”

I cleared my throat. “Once I’d earned her trust, Kaisara let me in on what she was really doing on Amber Krowe. Hunting Tanuki. The Alliance wanted her for her blade arm, but she wanted them for their eyes. Every report, every feed, every intercepted signal. She was running her own operation inside theirs the whole time.” I exhaled slowly. “It didn’t take as long as either of us thought it would. Even now, it’s not one clear picture. Just flashes. Tanuki on the rooftop, a silhouette against a burning sky. The impossible shape of the dragon. The orbital cannon charging… and Kaisara’s scream.” I stopped. “I’d never heard a sound like that from her.

Flarion let out a long breath. A real one. “Tanuki’s death cut deep into the body of the Templar. Whatever lay between him and me, and there was much, I never wished for his end, nor for what it meant for those of his tribe sheltered on Amber Krowe. The work he and his people were doing… it is not mine to speak of. But the universe is lesser for losing him.”

I tilted my head at him. “Kaisara never got into the specifics with me… Just that he had people there, that they’d had a hand in shaping the planet early on, and for millions of years. Like he was a father to the Amber Krowen race.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “After that rooftop, she disappeared into herself for a while. When she appeared again, across the galaxy, something had changed. The handful of people around her became hundreds, then more. That’s how the Empire started, or that’s how it looked from where I was standing. And not long after that, I was taken. Ended up on Caisteal.”

Flarion leaned forward slightly. “Then there are pieces you never saw. Moves made beneath the moves you were watching.”

“Such as?” I said, my brow creasing.

“Kaisara is no simple revolutionary,” Flarion said. “What she is building, her faction, her cause, will pull the galaxy apart at its seams. And she is far too calculating to march straight into that fire.” His claw lifted toward me. “So instead, she found a door. You know the name Ukatan.”

“Yeah.” The name sat wrong in my mouth. It always had. Shiinx had been filing her reports to him for months.

Flarion let a beat pass. “Your labors held steady even after Kaisara vanished from your life. Even after the assassination. The change in senior leadership it forced.” Something in his tone suggested he found this either admirable or foolish. Maybe both.

“What did you mean?” I asked.

“Maolong Ukatan.” He tilted his head, those red eyes going somewhere behind mine. “I see his face clearly in your thoughts. But I wonder if you see what I see when I look at him.”

“All this time,” I said, “Ukatan has been working for the Sun Jin Empire.” It wasn’t a question anymore. “Right after Kaisara started her rebellion, he surfaces as this rising intelligence prodigy. That assassination - the cabinet member who had his hands in every covert operation, Shrike included - Ukatan stepped right into that vacuum.” My jaw tightened. Having Shiinx call me ‘Liam’ in her reports had bought me something, at least. “He’s the one who sent me on that mission. The ambush. Caisteal.” I’d always felt it. “He had a hand in all of it.”

Flarion regarded me steadily. “Maolong Ukatan is old. Wise. He holds few allegiances and owes nothing to anyone. A creature like that does not move without a purpose that serves him.” A beat. “He is not a simple villain, and his aims are larger than you know. Whatever Kaisara promised him, it was not small.”

“Well, he’s the Director of Defense Intelligence for the Alliance now, so I’m-”

“Something grander than a title.” Flarion cut me off, something tightening around his eyes. “I have my own notions of what it may be.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

He tilted his great head and looked at me evenly. “No.”

Something moved through my chest that came out as a snarl. Still keeping secrets, Flarion. I wish I could reach into his skull the way Jethro lets him reach into mine. “So this was Ukatan’s design from the start. Not a mission gone wrong - a door built to close behind me.” My claws found the dirt without my telling them to. “Shiinx has been dropping reports at his feet this whole time, and I’ve been running in the dark.” At least I’d thought to have her keep my name out of it.

Behind my eyes, unbidden: Exarch Skithix, that insect bulk filling the corridor, mandibles working, my blade skating off his carapace like it had somewhere else to be. He hadn’t beaten me so much as the whole situation had - and now I could see the shape of who built it. Ukatan at the center. Kaisara somewhere behind that, in a room I hadn’t even known to look for. “Does Ukatan know where I am? That I’m on Tier?”

Flarion shook his head. “No. Caisteal is where he last placed you, and where he knows I found you. Skithix ran you to ground and delivered you there himself. That is where they built what you became. Where the Nightfall Templar’s instruments were tested on you, through you. Where you met the woman who pulled you out of it and kept you breathing long enough for our paths to cross.”

My fur rose. The memories never came clean. They came in fragments, out of order, the way bad things do. Blood on walls that belonged to people who had never heard of any war. Streets that had been quiet until I walked through them. Rio’s warmth against my back in that shelter, the only heat left in the world. Flarion, backlit, the first time I ever saw him. My claws found the dirt. “So after all of that, you put me on Tier.” The Shard of Jethro shifted beneath my skin, pressing upward like it wanted out. I didn’t move. “The Sun Jin Empire made me into something. Pointed me and let go. I killed whoever needed killing.” I met Flarion’s eyes carefully, keeping the heat in my chest where it was. “So why did Kaisara let them do it?”

“She,” Flarion said, each word landing with the weight of something long considered, “was not aware of what was done to you.”

“If Ukatan was feeding her reports the whole time he was running me into that ambush, how could she not have known?”

“I know what you were to her.” His eyes didn’t leave me. “She would not have permitted it. Not to you.” A slow, deliberate breath. “But I also know what Skithix is. Ukatan serves a cause, however twisted. Skithix serves only cruelty. It is a simple, cleaner logic to assume the torture on Caisteal was his own perverse initiative, not hers.”

I kept my eyes on the dirt. Kaisara had warned me once that the most dangerous thing you could do was believe you understood who was pulling the strings. She, who had tamed the Nightfall Templar, admitted she never saw all the hands moving beneath the surface. I was only now starting to understand what she meant.

“How long.” He leaned in, just slightly. “How long have you been carrying that blame. How long have you held Kaisara responsible for all of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The denial was out before I’d decided to say it. I was still catching up to myself.

“Forza.” Something almost gentle entered his voice. “Jethro binds us. Your pain is not hidden from me. I am not asking whether you blame her. I am asking how long.”

I bit my lower lip, staring at the dirt. A small, cracked voice emerged. “I…” My eyes stung. “Always. Even in that containment unit… sedated… before any of this…” I took a ragged breath. “I hated her. I blamed her for every atrocity. It had to be her - they were her swords in my hands, killing those people. She wouldn’t entrust those blades to just anybody.” Words caught in my throat as my vision blurred.

“She didn’t know, Forza.” The voice was closer now. He’d slid forward without my noticing. His massive claw came up and gripped my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. “I’ve studied the rise and fall of civilizations. I’ve seen how easily loyalties can be twisted. Here’s the most plausible version: Sun Jin Kaisara arranged an assassination and replaced a high ranking intelligence official with her mole, Maolong Ukatan, to keep you under surveillance and manage her rebellion’s narrative. When open war loomed between the Systems Alliance and her empire, she ordered Ukatan to have you extracted to safety, because once war broke out, you’d be sent behind enemy lines to defuse it, just as she and you had done innumerable times before. I suspect Skithix corrupted Ukatan’s orders, redirected you onto a solo mission where Skithix ambushed you. Now Sun Jin Kaisara believe you’re dead, and Ukatan has not told her the truth.”

My throat tightened around the question before I could get it out. “Then how…? If I really was at that research facility, turned into a living weapon wielding her personal swords, why didn’t she know I was there? How could she not recognize the one they were testing?”

He shook his head slowly, black and red feathers shifting with the motion. “I don’t have all the answers. But if Skithix was the one who put you there, don’t make the mistake of underestimating what he is. His kind are older than anything you’ve encountered, a dying race that once came close to consuming the universe whole. It took the combined strength of the greatest Templar Dragons to stop them. Ukatan. Tanuki. Bezekira of the Neverborn. Even then, it was barely enough.”

“Kaisara mentioned it once,” I said. “Billions of years back. The war that left Varuna so broken she had to wrap herself around a star just to survive - that’s the Red Sun. Magnum, the closest planet in that system, is where the Nightfall Templar are. Where Kaisara ruled before she crossed to Amber Krowe to find her father.”

When I looked back up at Flarion, he was staring through me with his beak slightly open, like he’d briefly lost the thread of his own point. “Wow,” he said. “Okay, yes.” He rolled his eyes a little, shook his head. “Stay on track. The point is-” a quick snarl, and he raised a claw and tapped it against my chest- “the point is you need to recognize this wasn’t Kaisara’s fault. You need to learn to forgive her.”

Learn to forgive her. If what he was saying was true, then maybe it had always been more complicated than I’d given it credit for.

“Back to the matter at hand. Caisteal. Your escape. Rio. That farming village, whatever it was called.” He turned his claw over slowly, as if tracing the shape of events. “That is where I found you. You were moments from being destroyed, Forza. I had no choice but to step in.”

“Destroyed by what?”

“The Sun Jin Empire, the attack on the village.” A pause. “My intention had been to wait. To let you recover before giving you your mission. The anxiety, the depression you were carrying - I had hoped to give you time before asking anything of you. But…”

“Flarion, what mission?” He’d lost me. I remembered what I was when Rio pulled me out of that facility - the shaking, the sleeplessness, the way my own hands felt like they belonged to someone else after years of being pointed at people like a loaded gun.

“Kiara,” he said. A pause. A long exhale through his beak.

Something tightened in my chest and I felt my eyes go wide.

“Easy,” he said. “Hold yourself together, Forza.”

I pressed my jaw shut and watched him. Where was this going?

“When I pulled you from that village, it saved your life. But the contact…”

I already saw the shape of it.

“It gave Jethro his opening. He threaded himself into you. Found the cracks your suffering had already made.” A slow breath. “You were not yourself. You were… something else. Not a Bloodtiger,” he shook his head, a hint of concern. “Something, worse. Something new.”

A memory of Shiinx, just the other morning she had recalled out loud the state I was in when she first found me, before I had felt the love of her soft hand, taming the beast. But I knew. That fleeting memory of our first meeting was real. The infection - it was entirely his fault.

“So why?” The words came out rough. “You pulled me out of that hell just to hollow me out and fill me with something worse? Why, Flarion? Why did you do this to me?”

“Jethro is not the subject right now.”

My eyes narrowed. Don’t brush past that.

“I cursed the day I sent you here under such dire omens,” Flarion rumbled, each word striking like a thunderclap. “The raid on that village shattered my caution and forced my hand. Tier was no random dot on the star. I chose it because it’s where I sent her… Kiara.”

A savage spark ignited inside me as the truth settled. She’d been thrown into this hell alongside me, tainted by Flarion’s touch just as I had.

“Yes, Kiara Quall,” he continued, “I am the one who set you both on this path of conflict. I brought you here to save your life, and to force you to save hers.”

“Why?!” I bellowed, my voice ripping through the turmoil inside my head, a coil of anger and dread tightening around my heart. She held Shiinx captive! Yet something twisted in my gut, a dark pull I couldn’t deny. “Help me get Shiinx back!” I shoved myself to my feet, every nerve ablaze. “After everything Kiara’s done to me. I deser-”

In an instant, Flarion surged forward like a dying star imploding, his obsidian wings unfurling with godlike menace. My muscles locked, but his talons shredded the air and pinned me. One massive hand crushed beneath my muzzle, the other rammed into my chest, ribs groaning in protest as fear coiled in my veins. The monster within me rejoiced at being this close.

His claws sank into my fur, promising bone-shattering force without breaking skin. “You make no demands!” he spat, his beak brushing my trembling muzzle, hot breath stinging my nostrils. “Her salvation runs through you whether you consent to it or not - and that path was carved by my hand alone.” His grip tightened, sending bolts of agony through my torso. “In single combat you will never defeat her. Kiara wields a power you refuse to accept. It’s… astonishing that you’ve resisted the Bloodtiger at all, a feat that surprises both me and Jethro, but that only underscores your current weakness. No amount of you pretending you have a say will alter your fate. Your veins run black with Jethro’s blood, and this quest is the only way to find yourself free. And me? I am the host of Jethro itself. You think he would let me save her myself, halfwit?”

He flung me aside like a spent rag, and I collapsed onto the scorched ground, lungs burning as I gasped for air. Pain lanced through every breath. Flarion rose on all fours, drawing a ragged, triumphant breath.

“He may slumber upon his obsidian throne,” Flarion roared, eyes aflame, “but I AM JETHRO!” With a snarl that shook the heavens, he reared up, talons raking the earth, wings thunderous in the charged air.

So that was it. He truely did carry Jethro inside him, like he said. He had some grip on it, some leash, but Kiara was where that leash ran out. The jokes, the theatrics, the almost paternal warmth from a few minutes ago - none of that applied here. Kiara clearly was not a topic to dance around.

I pulled myself upright and steadied my breathing. Watched him. “Majora,” I said. “Your mate. The one I brought up before.”

His eyes fixed on me.

“She was a feline.”

“Majora was what kept Jethro quiet in me. What held the darkness back.” A beat. “Majora was my version of your Shiinx.”

“Kiara is feline.” I let that sit a moment, working through it. “And she matters to you. Enough that you’d make a move to protect her the same way you protected me on Caisteal. And you infected her. The same as me. Didn’t you.”

Flarion said nothing. His eyes moved between mine, slow and deliberate, The silence stretched. Then, quietly, “She’s my daughter.”

I’d already landed on it. Gods don’t bleed for strangers. But hearing it out loud hit different. My jaw tightened. “And you picked me because of Kaisara. Because of my training under her.”

Something shifted behind his eyes. “That is… a mostly fair assessment.” The pause that followed felt loaded, like a held breath. “And because he told me you were the right choice.”

“Who.”

He just looked at me. I already knew. Jethro. Always Jethro. Hands moving pieces across a board none of us could see.

“Fine.” I got to my feet, jaw tight. “Then tell me why. Why me specifically? You’ve got him living inside your skull - so ask him.” My voice came out harder than I meant it to. “Skithix. How does someone like Skithix get inside a mind like Ukatan’s? How does he turn him against Kaisara’s own wishes? How does any of that happen without something bigger pulling the strings?”

“Ukatan,” he cut back, eyes locking onto mine, “acts in the interest of Ukatan. He would not be swayed by a creature like Skithix. His motives are his own, and they run deeper than any simple allegiance or hunger for power.”

“Then why? Why me?”

Flarion didn’t answer right away. Several of his feathers drew inward slowly. When he finally exhaled, it came out long and unsteady, ike something he’d been holding for years.

“I don’t fully understand it myself.”

I stared at him. “Say that again.”

“Jethro.” He said the name like it had weight. “He should not be allowing this conversation to happen. Should not be letting me walk you through how to break his own curse.” His eyes dropped, then came back up to mine, and for the first time since I’d met him, something behind them looked genuinely unsettled. “But he is. He is letting me do this. And the mission I’m sending you on-” a pause, jaw tightening- “involves taking possession of the Rainru.”

He let that land.

Something sharp cut through the dread. Finally. A way out.

“Are you ready?” he asked, settling back onto his hindquarters.

“Explain, Flarion.”

“The Rainru was forged by Kaisara’s father. Kukri Tanuki.” He let the name sit. “Before me, Tanuki was what Jethro rode. The great dark beast. The first host.”

I had heard this tale. I let him keep going.

“For thousands of Amber Krowen years, Tanuki tore through the Templar Tribes but couldn’t finish them. So Jethro changed tactics. Started building. Relic weapons - instruments designed to corrupt all life at scale, bend entire worlds to his will.” His voice dropped. “That’s when I stood with the greatest Templar warriors I had ever known. Bezekira of the Neverborn. Maolong Ukatan. A few others. We raised an army. We came down on a fledgling Amber Krowe to end it.”

“And instead,” I cut in, “you became the new host.”

His head moved, slow and unsteady, like something heavy shifting inside it. “There was no battle, Forza. We arrived. And Jethro simply… took me.” A stillness settled over him. “There was no host more irresistible. I am the offspring of Varuna herself.”

“And the Rainru?”

Flarion’s eyes dropped to the grass between us. When he looked back up, something in them had changed. “Kukri Tanuki forged it. The greatest weaponsmith the Templar ever produced - and a man who spent centuries as Jethro’s instrument of ruin.” His talons pressed flat against his chest. “He made the Rainru to undo everything he had done. A weapon built to stop Jethro himself. “A relic that I-” his jaw tightened- “cannot retrieve myself.”

“Because Jethro won’t let you.”

A slow, grim nod.

“Which means he’s letting you tell me how to get it.” I held his gaze. “It’s an obvious trap, Flarion.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Maybe.”

“I imagine even thinking about going for it yourself lights him up inside you.”

Something dark moved behind his eyes. That was answer enough.

“Bezekira of the Neverborn.” He said her name like it cost him something. “She’s the one it was entrusted to. She’s the one who used it against Majora.”

The air between us went still, again.

“Kaisara told me Majora attacked the Neverborn. That that’s where she died.” I watched him carefully. “Is that true?”

“Half true.” The word came out like gravel. “First, you need to realize in the great scale of time this only just happened. Thirty Amber Krowen years ago. Just after Kiara was born.” His eyes had gone somewhere else. “Majora had been beside me for longer than most civilizations have existed. She was the reason Jethro stayed buried. The reason I could think. Could speak.” A long pause. “I didn’t see it happening. The infection doesn’t announce itself. It moves like water through stone - slow, patient, invisible until the damage is already done. Instead of infecting Majora quickly like you and Kiara, Jethro took his time. It was probably the best he could even do, being suppressed so deep. He made her certain - absolutely certain - that the Neverborn were going to kill Kiara. That Bezekira herself had ordered it.” His jaw tightened. “Bezekira, who would sooner cut off her own paws than murder a child.” His voice dropped to almost nothing. “He needed Majora gone. So he used the thing she loved most to destroy her.”

Something shifted in his face then - something deep and structural, like a wall taking on weight it wasn’t built to hold.

“Stop.” The word left me before I’d decided to say it. I knew that look. I had worn it myself, in the dark, when the mind starts pulling at threads it has no business touching. Of all the things in this universe I did not want to see - Flarion losing that grip was at the top of the list.

“I’m in control.” He raised a paw slowly, like he was steadying something invisible between us. “After losing her—I shouldn’t be. Jethro should have had me completely, a long time ago.” His eyes didn’t move from mine. “But he doesn’t.”

“If he did,” I said, “you wouldn’t be sitting here telling me how to go get the one thing that can stop him.”

Something unreadable crossed his face. “Like you said.” His voice came out quieter than before, almost careful. “Sounds like a trap.”

Neither of us said anything for a bit - a good long bit. I stared at the ground between us. Kaisara used to tell me about the Templar, about Jethro, about the old wars - the way you repeat a name before sleep so you won’t forget to be afraid of it. Half warning, half prayer. I had filed it away like everything else she’d ever told me. Now Flarion was sitting across from me - the actual name, the actual fear - telling me that even he didn’t understand what was happening. That the thing living inside both of us was letting this conversation happen on purpose. My jaw tightened. My hands were still. Our silence, under it, I could feel something vast and patient, already decided, already in motion - and the worst part, the part that sat in my chest like a coal, was that I could feel myself wanting to move toward it. What choice did I have?

“Okay.” A sharp nasal inhale. “For me, Flarion.”

He too came back from wherever his mind had gone and looked at me.

“Tell me what I need to do. I’ll make Bezekira understand our situation. If it ends this-” I stopped, then kept going. “I don’t want to kill Kiara. She’s Jethro’s victim the same as I am.”

A single firm nod. “Where I’m sending you, I can’t follow. After what Majora did on Eveny, the Neverborn won’t have me.”

“Right,” I said. “And definitely not because you’re Jethro’s actual host.”

The corner of his mouth moved. He raised a claw, worked it slowly into his ear. “… I mean, there’s that, too.”

“Last time you did whatever you did to me, teleporting me from Caisteal to Tier, I spent weeks as something I didn’t recognize. Months, maybe.”

He extended his arm. I let him take hold of me, same as before. “You think this makes it worse?” A short exhale through his nose. “You understand what you’re doing, Forza.”

My pulse climbed. The weight of everything waiting on the other side of this pressed in close. I nodded.

“Get the Rainru. Return to Tier. Save Shiinx. Save Kiara.” A beat. “Yourself, too.”

Blue crept in at the edges. I held his gaze until the smell of rain on Tierian soil filled my senses. The stars swallowed him whole. The universe creased at its center, pressure building behind my eyes—a steady, strange weight. Then, nothing. Only the falling. I blacked out - fourth time in three days?