The blade at Lira's throat bit deeper, a cold kiss that burned. Eclipse's breath smelled of antiseptic and something sweetly rotten like fruit left to mold in the sun. Her eyes Lira's eyes, but hollow, hungry glinted in the crypt's sickly green light.
"You're afraid," Eclipse murmured, tilting her head. A perfect mimicry of Lira's own gestures, down to the way her silver-streaked hair fell across her brow. "I can taste it."
Lira's fingers tightened around the chalice. It pulsed against her palm, a heartbeat not her own. "You're a copy. A cheap one."
Eclipse's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Father says copies improve on the original."
Ryen's gun clicked behind them. "Let her go."
"Or what?" Eclipse didn't turn, her blade steady. "You'll shoot me? I've seen your aim, wolf. You'll hit her too."
The crypt's walls seemed to press closer, the air thick with the stench of formaldehyde and the low, persistent hum of the amber tanks. Lira's gaze flicked to the rows of clones floating in their glass prisons her face, her hair, her eyes staring blankly through viscous fluid. Failures, Orion's journals had called them. Until her.
"He's lying to you," Lira said, forcing her voice steady. "Orion doesn't want perfection. He wants control."
Eclipse's grip faltered. For a heartbeat, Lira saw it the flicker of doubt, the ghost of the girl this creature might have been before the syringes and scalpels. Then it vanished, smothered by the void in her gaze.
"And you?" Eclipse hissed. "What do you want?"
To not become you.
Lira slammed the chalice into Eclipse's ribs.
Light erupted blinding and vicious. Eclipse screamed, a sound that split the air like shattered glass, and staggered back. The blade clattered to the stone floor. Ryen fired three shots, precise but Eclipse was already moving, a blur of silver and shadow vanishing into the maze of tanks.
"Go!" Ryen grabbed Lira's arm, dragging her toward the exit. "The whole place could blow!"
She resisted, her boots skidding on damp stone. "The clones we can't leave them!"
"They're not alive, Lira!"
A tank cracked. Fluid gushed across the floor. Something inside stirred a hand, small and pale, pressed against the glass.
Alive enough.
The chalice hummed louder, its light throbbing in time with the clones' awakening heartbeats. Lira wrenched free of Ryen's grip and raised the relic. "We burn it. All of it."
"You don't know what that thing will do "
"Trust me!"
The plea hung between them, raw and fragile. Ryen's jaw tightened, but he stepped back, his gun trained on the shadows where Eclipse lurked.
The chalice's light swelled, consuming the room. Tanks exploded, one after another, their glass shards glittering like cursed rain. Clones dissolved mid-scream, their half-formed bodies crumbling to ash. Eclipse howled a sound of pure, animal rage and lunged.
A shot rang out.
She dropped, a silver round buried in her thigh. Ryen didn't lower his gun. "Next one's between the eyes, prototype."
Eclipse bared bloodied teeth. "You'll regret not killing me."
The crypt shuddered, dust raining from the ceiling. Somewhere deep in the lab, machinery whined, overloaded.
"Lira!" Ryen grabbed her wrist, pulling her into the corridor as the ceiling collapsed behind them.
They emerged into the Eclipse Wilds' downpour, rain sluicing blood and amniotic fluid from their clothes. The tavern's UV lanterns glowed in the distance, a fragile beacon.
Ryen didn't let go of her hand. "That thing …Eclipse she's still out there."
"I know." Lira stared at the chalice. Its light had dimmed, but the hum remained, a parasite nestled in her bones.
"And the clones?"
"Gone." Mostly. She didn't tell him about the small hand, the one that had pressed against the glass. The one that had reached for her.
Kael met them at the tavern door, his gaze flicking to their joined hands. "Trouble?"
"Orion's got a new favorite," Ryen said, pushing past him. "We need to move."
Mira bandaged Lira's throat in silence, her fingers lingering on the half-healed bite marks. "This isn't a life, you know. Chasing monsters, becoming one…"
"I'm not like them."
"Aren't you?" Mira nodded to the chalice, now crackling faintly on the bar. "That thing's changing you. I can smell it."
Lira touched her reflection in the UV lantern's glass her eyes still heterochromatic, her hair still streaked with silver. For now.
Nina slid a sketch across the table: a chalice overflowing with black veins, its stem cracked. Beneath it, two figures one with Lira's face, one with Eclipse's reaching for each other.
"The shadows say it's not over," Nina whispered.
Jax snorted, reloading his grenade launcher. "When is it ever?"
In the ruins of Orion's crypt, Eclipse crawled through rubble, her leg mangled, her perfect face smeared with ash. The chalice's light had scoured her insides, left her trembling, hungry. But not broken.
A hand gripped her ankle small, pale, attached to a half-formed clone buried in debris.
"H-help," it gurgled, its voice a wet mimicry of Lira's.
Eclipse stared, then smiled.
"Yes," she murmured, digging her claws into its chest. "I think I will."
The tavern's roof creaked under Lira's weight as she watched the storm swallow the stars. Ryen found her there, his silence louder than the thunder.
"You should sleep," he said finally.
"I can't." She touched the chalice, now cold and dormant. "It's in my dreams. His voice. Her… hunger."
He sat beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed. "We'll find a way to destroy it."
"What if I don't want to?" The admission hung between them, sharp as a blade.
Ryen turned her face to his. "Then I'll follow you anyway."
The kiss tasted like blood and rain and endings.
Somewhere in the dark, the trees screamed.