The wind howled through Vel'Thara's shattered gates like a dying animal. Carrying with it the scent of scorched earth and something fouler. The metallic tang of Spiral corruption.
Raka stepped over the threshold. His boots crunching on blackened bone and warped steel. The Spiral Seed in his chest pulsing in time with the academy's dying breath. Each step sent jagged pain radiating through his borrowed body, a constant reminder that this flesh wasn't his own.
"Papa, hurry!"
The child's voice slithered between his thoughts, sweet and urgent. Raka's hand twitched toward a dagger that wasn't there again. His fingers brushed against the empty sheath at his hip.
Not real. Never real.
Just another ghost clinging to his borrowed flesh. He exhaled sharply, watching his breath fog in the ashen air, the vapor curling like the whispers that haunted him.
"Cheerful place," Claire muttered, kicking aside a broken helmet. Its visor was fused shut by Spiral corrosion, the metal warped into a silent scream. She nudged it with her boot, revealing the skeletal remains still inside. "Remind me why we're rebuilding in this graveyard?"
Kael's shadow stretched long across the rubble as he adjusted his splinted arm. "Because every stone we reclaim is one less for the Spiral to corrupt." His gaze, sharp as the sword at his back, lingered on Raka. "You've walked these halls before."
It wasn't a question.
Raka's borrowed fingers—too young, too smooth for a warrior's hands—brushed against a crumbling wall. The stone trembled under his touch, whispering memories he couldn't grasp.
-A woman's hands, quick and sure, bandaging a wound.
-The scent of pine resin and iron.
-Laughter that wasn't his own.
The Seed hissed in his ribs, a warning that burned like frostbite.
"Maybe," he said, flexing the scout's unfamiliar muscles. "The bodies remember things before I do."
Claire's dagger pressed against his throat before he could blink, its edge kissing the pulse point of his stolen life. "That's not an answer." Her breath smelled of mint and blood.
Raka didn't flinch. After so many deaths, he knew the difference between a threat and a promise. This was both.
"He's clean," Kael said, though his sword hand hadn't relaxed. "For now."
Claire scoffed but stepped back, her blade disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. Raka rubbed his throat, feeling the dead scout's pulse flutter beneath his fingertips. This one had a daughter, he remembered distantly.
The knowledge came in fragments. A tiny hand clutching his fingers. A promise to return before the first snow. The way her braids bounced when she ran.
Not my memories. Not my child. But the Seed didn't care about such distinctions. It hummed, pleased, as the ghost of guilt coiled in his gut like a serpent.
The war room stank of burnt parchment and desperation. The air thick with the sweat of too many bodies crammed into too small a space. Maps of the ruined academy sprawled across the scarred oak table, marked with blood-red ink where Spiral nests festered beneath the stones.
Raka leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, counting exits without conscious thought. Old habits died harder than he did.
"Eastern vault's still unstable," Sylva announced, jabbing her knife into the map. The blade quivered between two inked towers. "Glyph echoes clustered there like flies on shit. Worse, they're learning."
A murmur ran through the gathered survivors. Raka watched their faces. The novice with singed eyebrows, the senior missing three fingers, the girl who couldn't be older than sixteen with eyes too old for her face. All of them looking to Kael for answers he shouldn't have to give.
"We clear it at dawn," Kael said, his voice cutting through the murmurs. His gaze found Raka's. "You're on suppression duty."
Raka's left pinky twitched—a nerve misfire from some long-dead corpse. "Suppression. Right." The word tasted bitter. He'd done this dance too many times. Hold the line, burn the corruption, struggle untill death.
A glint of metal caught his eye. Claire tossed something onto the table. A dagger. It's hilt carved with a serpent coiled around a crescent moon. The blade clattered against the wood, spinning like a compass needle before settling.
"Found this in the rubble near the eastern breach," Claire said, her fingers drumming the table. "Spiral work?"
Raka's hand moved before he could stop it. The blade fit his grip perfectly, its weight familiar in a way that made his skull ache. "You'll lose that damned knife one day, brother," a woman's voice teased in the back of his mind. The Seed seared his ribs in warning, a white-hot brand against his soul.
"No," he said, too quickly. He set the dagger down with deliberate care. "Older."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "You've seen it before."
Raka met his gaze without blinking. "I've seen many thing. But that doesn't mean I know it all."
Nightfall brought no peace to Vel'Thara.
Raka sat alone on the broken ramparts, the stone cold beneath him as he picked at the dead scout's rations. The hardtack tasted like ash, but he chewed methodically, forcing each bite down. Bodies need fuel. He'd learned that lesson the hard way. Starving to death in a ditch outside Kael's Reach had been particularly unpleasant.
"Papa, you promised!"
The voice came clearer now, sharp with childish betrayal. Raka's head snapped up but the rampart was empty save for the wind and the distant glow of Spiral corruption on the horizon. His hands shook. This isn't the scout's memory. The realization slithered down his spine like ice water. This is...older.
"Can't sleep?"
Kael's shadow fell across him, blocking the sickly moonlight. Raka forced his fingers still. "Don't need to."
"You should." Kael sat beside him, his armor creaking as he stared at the shattered horizon. "We fight at dawn."
Raka snorted. "You say that like death cares about schedules."
For a long moment, there was only the wind and the distant screech of Spiral echoes. Then Kael said, quietly, "Do you know? When it's your last life?"
The question hung between them, heavier than the sword at Kael's back. Raka studied his hands. The scout's hands, really. Unscarred. Unbroken. For now. He turned them over, examining the callouses from a bow this boy would never draw again.
"No," he admitted at last. "But I treat each one like it is."
He didn't mention the child's voice that wasn't his to remember. The crescent dagger that fit his hand too perfectly. The woman in his dreams who called him brother with affection that cut deeper than any blade. Some ghosts were his to carry alone.
Kael stood, his silhouette black against the bleeding sky. "Then don't waste this one."
Raka watched him go, the Seed throbbing in time with his stolen heartbeat. Somewhere beyond the ruined walls, a child was crying. Somewhere in the depths of his shattered memories, a woman whispered his name.
And beneath it all. Patient as the grave. The Spiral waited.