We found shelter beneath a ridge carved out by years of wind erosion — a shallow cave, just deep enough to feel hidden, dry enough to settle for the night. The silence inside was heavy. Not oppressive. Just… full. The kind that holds things unspoken.
Violet sat near the mouth of the cave, blanket still wrapped tight around her frame, knees drawn up. Her purple eye caught the fading light as the sun dipped below the Wasteland's edge, casting her in hues of shadow and violet glow.
I watched her quietly for a while, tending the small flame I'd coaxed to life from the last of my striker kit. She hadn't said much since we got here.
Didn't blame her.
But after a while, her voice broke the quiet.
"Scarlett really kept looking for me?"
I nodded without hesitation. "Every damn day."
Violet didn't look at me. She stared out into the red horizon like she was trying to see a version of herself she left behind out there.
"She always was stubborn," she whispered, a trace of a smile ghosting her lips. "I told her I'd catch up. I didn't think… I didn't think I'd never see her again."
"What happened?" I asked gently.
She was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, she spoke.
"We were supposed to rendezvous after a scouting run. Just me and Ren. The others stayed back. Scarlett was injured — fractured ribs, I think. She needed rest."
"Ren," I echoed. "The one hunting you now."
Her jaw clenched. "Yeah. Him."
"What happened between you?"
Her hands tightened in the blanket.
"He wasn't always like this. At least… I didn't think he was. But something changed. Somewhere along the way, he stopped caring about the mission. About people."
She paused. Swallowed.
"I think he made a deal. With the Dracus. Or maybe just wanted power so badly he convinced himself it didn't matter. Either way, the moment we got isolated during the run, he changed."
"How?"
"He turned on me. Tried to subdue me. Said I'd 'seen too much.' That I'd ruin what he was building. He'd been gathering forbidden tech, mapping Null traces. Trying to tap into the Interlogue behind everyone's backs. I think he was trying to awaken something in himself. Or maybe merge with something. I still don't know."
I stared at her. "So you ran."
She nodded. "I barely got away. Set off one of the old Echo mines to cover my escape. Got my leg torn up, lost my gear, my comm. I didn't even know if Scarlett had made it out until now."
"And since then?" I asked. "Where've you been?"
Her eye flicked to me for a moment. Not cold. Just tired.
"Everywhere. Nowhere. Surviving. Sleeping in collapsed ruins, scavenging from burnt-out caravans. Hiding under broken skyplates during Dracus sweeps. I stayed away from cities — too many Null sensors. Too many eyes."
"And Ren?"
"He kept tracking me. I don't know how, but he always found my trail eventually. I started leaving false signs. Blood trails from other animals. Burnt cloaks. Even cut my own hair to throw him off."
I raised an eyebrow. "You did all that alone?"
Violet finally looked at me — really looked. Her expression wasn't prideful. It was tired.
"Alone's the only reason I'm still breathing."
The fire crackled. For a while, that was the only sound.
Then I said, "You shouldn't have had to go through that. Not alone."
She didn't respond right away. But her voice softened when it came.
"I didn't want to be alone. But being with people… it felt like putting them in danger. Scarlett… if she'd come with me, Ren would've tried to kill her too."
"He'll try again," I said. "You know that."
"I know."
"And when he does, I'll be there."
She looked away again, but I caught the way her fingers curled slightly tighter around the edge of the blanket.
"You really mean that?" she asked, almost like she didn't believe it.
"I don't say shit I don't mean."
A long silence.
Then her voice, quieter now. Barely a whisper.
"I didn't cry. Not once. Not when Ren turned on me. Not when I was bleeding in a tunnel, praying they wouldn't find me. Not even when I thought I was dying under that collapsed highway."
I didn't speak.
"But hearing you say that just now… it almost made me."
I shifted closer, rested a hand gently on her shoulder.
"You're not alone anymore, Violet. Not ever again."
The moment hung there — fragile, real.
And when she finally exhaled, it wasn't just breath.
It was the weight of everything.
She leaned into the warmth of my hand like she hadn't felt human contact in years. Maybe she hadn't. Her body was still trembling, but the tremor was different now — less survival panic, more the slow unraveling of everything she'd been holding in.
"Thank you," she whispered.
I nodded. "You don't have to thank me."
"I do," she said, looking back toward the fire. "People say they'll be there. But most just mean until it's inconvenient."
"You don't ever have to worry about that with me."
She swallowed. Her voice cracked when she asked, "Why?"
That caught me for a second.
Not because I didn't have an answer.
Because there were too many.
"I saw what you did in the forest," I said, watching her expression carefully. "You didn't hesitate to stay by my side when I was nothing but a liability. You could've run, saved yourself, but you didn't. That told me everything I needed to know."
Her lip quivered.
"You think that makes me brave?"
"I think it makes you real."
She hugged her knees tighter to her chest.
"I didn't even know who you were back then," she murmured. "Didn't know what you were. But there was something in the way you clung to life. The way the air bent around you. I felt it… like a pull."
"Nyxia's influence," I said quietly. "Or maybe just fate."
"Do you believe in that?" she asked. "Fate?"
I stared into the fire.
"I believe the world tries to push us into corners. And we either let it, or we start shoving back."
She smiled at that. A real one. Faint, but alive.
For a while we sat like that — no words, just silence and fire and the ghosts dancing behind our eyes.
Then she spoke again, and her voice was even quieter than before.
"There's more."
I looked at her. "I figured."
Her hand reached up slowly, pulled her hood down.
Her hair spilled out — matted, messy, but unmistakably tinted with soft violet streaks that caught the firelight. And then she turned her head just enough to reveal the glint of her eye.
Not both.
Just the one.
The other was clouded.
Scarred.
Like it had seen something it shouldn't and never fully came back.
"They took my eye when I was captured," she said flatly. "Before I escaped. I left that part out."
My jaw clenched. "Dracus?"
She nodded. "High Captain. He caught me while I was sheltering in a blackglass ravine. I didn't know it was one of their drop zones. He said I was a 'test case.' Wanted to see how long it'd take before I broke."
I said nothing. Let her speak.
"I didn't. Not all the way. But I begged for death more than once."
Her voice didn't waver. She wasn't telling me for sympathy.
She was unloading.
"I escaped after six days. Don't know how. I was half-dead, hallucinating, but… something guided me. Pulled me out through a breach in the ravine wall."
She looked at me now, and there was something raw behind her eyes.
"Sometimes I think it was her."
"Nyxia?" I asked.
Violet nodded. "I dreamt of her. Not clearly. Just shapes. Emotions. A voice calling to me. When I got free, I could feel something had shifted."
My breath caught.
"She showed herself to me the same way," I said. "Right before I blacked out the first time. Only during near-death moments. Only when the veil thins."
"Then it's real," she whispered. "I'm not crazy."
"No," I said, with all the weight of truth I could offer. "You're chosen."
We locked eyes.
And for a moment, the silence between us wasn't empty.
It was sacred.
"I'm scared," she finally admitted. "Not of dying. I already made peace with that. I'm scared that what Ren's trying to awaken might actually work. That he'll find me. Or worse—Scarlett."
"He won't."
"You don't know that."
"I don't have to," I said. "Because if he gets close again… I'll end him myself."
She didn't argue.
Didn't protest.
She just stared at me like she believed it more than she believed her own heartbeat.
And then, softly:
"Okay."
That single word carried more weight than a hundred.
Outside, the wind howled again. But inside the cave, the flame burned steady.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt like the pieces were starting to move into place.
I let the fire die low, only embers left flickering in the stone ring between us.
Violet had curled herself under the blanket, but her eyes stayed open — that violet hue glowing faintly in the dark like a watchful flame. I could tell she was trying to rest, but her body was stuck between exhaustion and defense. The kind of sleep-deprivation you only earn by being hunted.
I didn't blame her.
I'd known that edge for years.
"You don't have to keep watch," she murmured suddenly, voice groggy but awake. "I can take the next shift."
"I'm not sleeping yet."
She turned her head toward me. "Why not?"
I shrugged slightly. "Too much noise in my head."
Her smile was soft, tired. "You talk like someone who used to be a soldier."
"I talk like someone who buried a lot of them."
That silence came back — but now it wasn't cold. It was shared.
"I used to think surviving would get easier," she said after a while. "That I'd adapt. Harden. Learn to breathe through the fear."
She paused. I didn't interrupt.
"But all it did was make me quieter. Number. Like I was watching someone else live my life from behind glass."
"That's what they want," I said. "Dracus. Ren. All of them. Not just your body — they want your mind. Want you so hollow you stop fighting."
"I don't want to be hollow anymore," she whispered. "I want to burn."
I looked at her.
And in that moment, I didn't see someone fragile.
I saw someone becoming.
"You will," I said. "You're already starting to."
She didn't respond. But the way her eyes finally closed — slow, heavy, like surrendering wasn't something she had to fear anymore — told me she believed me.
She trusted me.
And that made my grip tighten on Voidscar.
Because I knew what came next.
I stayed awake until the fire was nearly out. Until her breathing evened. Until the Wasteland wind quieted.
Then I let myself lean back against the stone wall, one arm wrapped around my ribs. I wasn't planning to sleep. Just rest my eyes.
But the moment my lids closed—
Everything shifted.
Darkness.
But not the cold kind.
Not empty.
It breathed.
I was weightless. Drifting through a void that pulsed with a soundless rhythm — like a heartbeat too old for flesh.
And then I heard her voice.
"You are nearing the fold, Matte."
Nyxia.
I spun around — but I had no body. Just awareness. Consciousness wrapped in memory and intent.
"Nyxia," I said — or thought. "She saw you. Violet saw you."
"Her essence is tethered, but fractured. She has not awakened… yet."
"She said she felt your guidance. Was that you pulling her from the ravine?"
"Not me. Not fully. Something older within her responded. An echo of what she once was."
"What does that mean?"
"She is more than she believes. And Ren knows it."
The void twisted. I felt it shift like a massive sea turning beneath my feet — and suddenly I was falling.
Through stars.
Through light.
Through flashes of something ancient.
A city — made of crystal and ash. Violet standing at the edge of a shattered balcony, her eyes glowing brighter than ever. Ren, kneeling in front of her, something pulsing in his chest — Null mixed with something else.
Then it was gone.
I hit the ground.
Hard.
I woke with a jolt.
My breath caught in my throat, hand gripping Voidscar before I was fully conscious.
The cave was quiet.
But not still.
Violet stirred across from me.
She sat up slowly, blinking. "You alright?"
I didn't answer at first.
Because something was wrong.
The wind was gone.
And when the Wastelands go silent, it's never a good sign.
I rose to my feet, crossing toward the mouth of the cave, every instinct screaming now. The sand outside had stopped moving. The air smelled like ozone — that metallic tang of charged energy.
Violet stood next to me, blanket falling from her shoulders.
Then we heard it.
Click.
A sound not made by nature.
Mechanical. Rhythmic.
Footsteps.
Dracus?
No.
Not enough weight. Too precise.
I stepped forward, eyes scanning the dark beyond the ridgeline.
And then I saw him.
Silhouetted by the moonlight. Standing just beyond the stone rise. Arms folded. Cloak billowing.
Ren.
Violet's breath hitched behind me.
"Stay here," I said quietly.
"No—"
"Violet. Stay."
She hesitated.
Then nodded.
I stepped forward, hand tightening around Voidscar.
Ren didn't move.
He didn't need to.
His presence alone felt like a slow pull into a pit I hadn't prepared for — the kind of threat that didn't bark or charge. The kind that waited.
"Didn't think you'd show up in person," I said, my voice calm despite the fire in my chest.
His head tilted slightly.
"I came for her."
"She's not going anywhere with you."
His lips curved into a grin that didn't reach his eyes.
"That's the part you don't understand. She was never meant to run."
My blade was already halfway unsheathed.
"And you were never meant to live."