I AM ASKING YOU TO ENDURE IT.

Who can hear them? Both the rattle of their chains and the buzz in the darkness grow louder. Darkness laps at the reverberating light of their SOUL, the final elimination of their being. In its fading glow they grow ever-dimmer, their voice weakening. Who can hear them here, at the beginning of the world?

Who will listen to their cries, when they have ended many a sound like that with their own hands. Worlds cracked open and light spilt over their palms, worlds sputtered out and dying beneath their blood-red gaze. Again and again and again, an endless loop. Following the threads of time, staining them, weaving the veil that curtained their SOUL so they could finish the work.

No. No one can hear them. The darkness grows teeth and speaks until it is all they can hear. Buzzing and staticky, whispering to them. Terrible things. True things. There is nowhere to hide from them anymore. There is no duty to hold onto.

Dim. Dimmer. Yet dimmer. The feeble shine of their SOUL is the only light here. No longer strong enough to keep the darkness from feasting, but just enough to stay awake through the fading of their very self. It hurts to disappear.

Glimmering chains grow slack around their wrists before falling soundlessly. The musical clatter they might have made already devoured, just like the last words that fell from their body, just like the shadow they left behind.

Within the darkness, a single shining thread.

Within the darkness, a hollow SOUL.

This, and only this, will not be discarded.

I AM ASKING.

What Kris feels when the sword catches the strange blue light in Castle Town is a lurch in their chest. A sudden cold jolt of clarity, winter-sharp. They are shouldered out of their own mind. The sword comes up in a movement so fluid its like a dance. Their body holds itself differently. Their body holds itself still.

"Kris?" says Ralsei.

Their hand, blade out. Their hand, at the sheath. The slide of the blade back in — not sharp enough — and hand off the hilt.

Kris breathes. The thing at the back of their head does not. It has never been so still. Cold radiates outward. It wraps around their body and shivers break out on the back of their neck, on their shoulder-blades, the unarmored parts of their arms. It feels like something is moving underneath their skin.

"Oh," says Ralsei. "Are you cold?"

Kris doesn't quite remember what they told him. What they remember is this: when the darkness receded, when they finally went home with the memory of Susie's hand still warm on their shoulder, when the door to the birdcage clicked shut, that feeling was still there.

Even without the SOUL something had been set into motion. All night they dreamed of black water. Black water against black sand, and a body in the hushing waves. Underneath their skin, an ebb and flow. In the birdcage, veiled away, a pulsing glow.

Heartbeat by heartbeat, growing bright.

YOU.

When a golden leaf flutters past their eyes follow it all the way down. Bubbling in the lake and bubbling sink water hold the same amount of attention, eyes straining like something will appear. No sound is too small to notice, no breath too long to hold. Like it doesn't know how bodies work, except it has to. The sword never falters.

It's at the diner that Kris starts to understand better. Sitting near the window by themselves with a half-empty mug of hot chocolate, still kind of warm in their hands. Window fogged up but nothing on it. Nothing blares at the back of their mind because its all spilled out the front. Swimming in their eyes trying to see.

Every time they blink it jolts like it doesn't understand why. There's a moment of it watching the window glass and Kris reflected in it, where it catches the red shine of their eye and sees itself. Stillness. The quiet of water under deep, deep ice. Cold follows even deeper and settles into the bone. Kris finishes the hot chocolate fast. It tastes wonderful. They think that.

Their hands warm up.

They walk back home with their hands in their pockets, and the world filtering in through another set of eyes. Heat prickles at the back of their neck, on their shoulder-blades, across their arms. Its like they can feel the blood moving in their veins, rushing forward, looping back again and again and again. Their ears might be red, they don't know. It feels like it.

When they fall sleep that night, it feels like the covers are catching on their skin. They toss and turn. The pillow won't stay cold even though its fall and the window is open for the breeze. In the morning, they pick downy feathers out of the blanket with a clogged throat.

The birdcage stays covered.

In the sunlight nothing changes.

ENDURE IT.

Where do the wings go when they're not itching on Kris's back? When they're not straining for a bit of wind, every feather still and waiting? In the mirror, their eyes are still red. Some parts of their skin too, irritated and hot to the touch. At the base of their neck. At the blades of their shoulders. No feathers on their arms but they still feel the flutter of something moving.

Here in the fluorescent flicker of bathroom lighting, Kris doesn't know which glow is the real one. The light is moving inside their bones. Branching into their veins. They watch it pool into their wrists and feathers begin to sprout. Soft, down feathers. They can't look away.

It's happening so fast. These ones don't even itch. When the wings start fluttering they feel cool on their skin. When they look back into the mirror there is no red.

BELOVED.

What does it sound like when someone says your name through the darkness. To Kris, it sounds like this: a thousand whispers, all of them drowned out. Water in the dead of night. The blade, forever steady, the light along its face.

The knight watching through.