YAN

  FIVE BODIES ON THE FLOOR. Yanick refused to believe what happened, though he knew well who did it. The other mind.

  Yet the truth whispered otherwise. It was him who held the blade, painted red. It was him standing in the puddle. He looked around. Whole room was painted red.

  Red across the floor, across the walls. Spattered across the flipped table. Across the chairs. Dripping from the wiring in the ceiling. His clothes were slick with it, clinging to him like guilt.

  Everything painted red.

  Except it wasn’t paint.

  The other mind laid to rest now and the reality awaken.

  Yanick let go of the sword. It fell with a sickening clang, sliding across the wet floor. He gripped his wrist with the other hand, because the pain woke up as well. With all of its might.

  White hot lightning through the bones. The freshly healed break has been rushed, strained. The other mind didn’t care, it was impatient. Could not afford to wait, had to act. But the bones hadn’t been ready.

  And they were forced to be. Over and over. Swinging. Blocking. Killing.

  Now the joint was screaming. Each tendon burned. Every nerve throbbed.

  Fingers twitched uncontrollably, bent at odd angles, like they no longer remembered how to be a hand.

  Pain pulsed from the wrist up to the elbow, sharp and constant, as if someone had shoved a knife inside and was slowly turning it.

  It didn’t just hurt. It howled.

  There was no clean break anymore—just shrapnel under skin.

  He staggered, knees buckling, nearly slipped in the blood.

  Biting down a curse, he pressed his forehead to the wall, breathing fast.

  Everything painted red.

  Even the inside of him now.

  The breathing was jagged, sharp and hallow. Harsh, like that of the wounded animal. Not his.

  Yanick turned.

  Rayla lay slumped against the wall, half-sitting, half-folded, her legs stretched out useless beneath her. One hand clutched her side, fingers digging in, knuckles white. Red leaked through the cracks, thick and steady.

  Her other arm braced her against the wall, shaking. Her face was pale, lips pressed into a thin line, jaw clenched against the pain.

  She wasn’t crying. She wouldn’t. Her breath hitched again, wet now. It sounded like drowning.

  “Rayla,” Yanick mumbled. “I…”

  “I know,” she whispered, eyes barely open. “I know…”

  He stepped forward. Each footfall a quiet betrayal.

  He passed the table first. Legs snapped, metal dented from the force of his own kick.

  Then Koleth. Lying twisted, a bloom of blood beneath him like a crude throne.

  Varn, arms still tangled with Thirra’s, the way they fought together, always. Even in death. Thirra’s hand still gripped her sabre. Useless.

  Eloen curled against the far wall. Twisted, braided like his hair.

  Brask, face slack, eyes half open. A line of blood traced down from the corner of his mouth like a broken oath.

  Yanick didn’t look away. He knew he didn’t deserve to.

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  He tore a strip from Brask’s coat—fabric still warm—and walked the last few steps to Rayla.

  She sagged as he knelt beside her, but didn’t flinch. Not even when he pressed the cloth hard against the wound. She only hissed once. A sharp breath. And then stillness.

  His hands trembled as he worked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not even realising tears streaming down his face.

  Her eyes fluttered open. Glassy. Dim.

  “They did it to me too,” she whispered.

  He froze for a moment. Then nodded, just barely. Not here. Not now. But he understood. He pressed harder on the cloth, felt the warm spill soak through again.

  “I’m taking you to their medical room,” he said.

  “You better,” she muttered. “Or I’ll haunt you.”

  A faint smile. But she didn’t rise.

  She couldn’t.

  He slid his good arm behind her back, under her knees, lifting her slow, careful. The other hand still screaming with pain, but Yanick knew he should feel it now. Embrace it. Let the pain become his penance.

  Rayla winced, breath catching again.

  She was light. Lighter than he remembered. Or maybe it was guilt doing the lifting.

  They left the blood behind. But it followed. On his hands. On her skin. On the soles of his boots.

  The room grew quiet again.

  In the corridor, they waited. People from the compound. Clothes worn. Faces worn. Eyes frightened. They gathered like ghosts in the twilight, silent, thin-limbed, pale from moonlight and fear.

  All parted before him now, creating a path with their silence. They heard everything, saw the red. No one dared to wake his other mind.

  Yanick walked that path like a condemned man carrying a saint’s relic, Rayla cradled in his arms.

  Her blood dripped behind them, a crimson trail across the white tiles.

  No one stepped in it. They had seen the red. They had seen his eyes.

  No one dared wake the other mind again.

  The medical room opened with a hiss.

  Inside, light hummed cold and clear. Counters lined with shining tools. Vials of glowing fluid in strange colours. Tubes that slithered like silver snakes between metal canisters.

  But Yanick only saw her.

  He set Rayla down on the slab—clean and hard like an altar—and stepped back.

  She groaned softly, one hand still pressed to her side.

  “Go,” she whispered, breath shallow. “After them. Go.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Yanick—”

  “No,” he said, quiet but solid. “You bled for this. You bled because of me. I’m not walking away again.”

  He reached out, brushed damp hair from her forehead. Her skin was hot. Fever already.

  “They don’t matter now” he said. “Only you.”

  He turned to the door, hit the console with the heel of his palm.

  Footsteps answered. Two, maybe three of the compound’s caretakers entered—one older woman with hands that trembled and eyes that didn’t, another younger man holding a case shaped like a priest’s box.

  “Keep pressure,” Yanick said, voice flat, pointing to Rayla’s side. “She’s lost too much.”

  “We know what to do,” the old woman said and turned to the man. “Holt.”

  The man named Holt nodded and opened the box. Inside: strange instruments shaped like bones, thin and silver. One let out a soft chime when touched. Another hissed faintly, filling the air with the smell of iron.

  The older woman took a vial of glowing blue and poured a drop into a curved needle that lit from within. She spoke no prayers, but moved like she had once been a healer in a temple.

  Rayla winced as the needle pierced her side. The glow spread under her skin like sunlight beneath a closed eyelid. The bleeding slowed. Her breathing evened.

  Yanick watched.

  Then he collapsed.

  And the other mind woke up.

  *

  When it gone quiet again the was red everywhere and the pain has been ripping his hand apart. Not just the hand. The wrist, the arm, the shoulder, even his ribs.

  It had crawled under his skin like a snake with broken glass for scales. It twisted. Gnawed. Pulled at the bone. He couldn’t even scream anymore. Only gasp. Wet, ragged gasps like lungs made of parchment.

  Yanick was crawling.

  He hadn’t even remembered collapsing. But now he was on the floor of the medical room, dragging his body like a wounded dog.

  Red smeared behind him. Red on his boots. On his fingers. On his chin.

  He left pieces of himself with every pull forward. And they were dead.

  Holt.

  The woman with the trembling hands and steady eyes.

  Yanick turned his head—

  Their bodies sprawled in opposite corners of the room. Blood pooled beneath them like offerings.

  I killed them. I remember now.

  “I asked—” his voice, broken gravel, barely audible, “Where are they? Where did they go?”

  He had screamed it at them before the blade sank. Before the other mind had finished what his own fury had started.

  They hadn’t answered fast enough. Or maybe they had. But the other mind… didn’t care.

  A wave of nausea crashed through him, and he crumpled beside the metal cabinet. It hummed faintly, as if indifferent to the carnage.

  The pain in his wrist roared again. Torn. Torn through the marrow.

  He opened the cabinet with a trembling hand.

  Inside, vials. Glass. Glow. Silver needles.

  He didn’t have to think.

  Take it, the other mind whispered. It’s this one.

  He grabbed a syringe. The painkiller bottle next.

  His fingers barely worked. The needle scratched skin before he even steadied it.

  Then—

  Relief.

  A burning cold slid into his vein.

  He slumped against the cabinet. The tremors in his jaw stopped first. Then the sweat on his brow began to dry.

  The pain was gone. Faster then with vodka. Alcohol was only numbing the pain, this was truly taking it away.

  He loaded more syringes. Two. Three. Four.

  More, the other mind said. We will need more.

  Yanick filled the syringes one by one with the clear-blue venom. Slipped them into the bag he had in his hand. Didn’t remember grabbing it. Took more vials, all of them. All the needles, all syringes.

  Rayla.

  He remembered now. He’d brought her to the entrance of the compound.

  Said he’d be right back.

  Head started to spin. One moment it was him and when he blinked it was the other mind ordering his body to stock up with medicines.

  He stumbled to the door. Pulled it open.

  The corridor beyond stretched out like a wound.

  And everything was red.