The single word hung in the fetid air between us, heavy and sharp as a shard of ice. How?
How was I alive? The question was logical, brutal in its simplicity. It scraped against seven years of ingrained guilt, seven years of believing he was the ghost. My throat felt tight, raw. Words jammed behind my teeth.
"How?" I echoed, my voice trembling, cracking on the single syllable. Tears pricked at my eyes – hot, angry, bewildered tears. "How am I alive? Caelum, I saw you… At the bottom of the ravine… You didn't move. You were…" The word dead refused to form. It felt like blasphemy, standing here before him, solid and terrifyingly real. "They said it was too late. They left you!"
My voice rose, echoing unnervingly off the slimy brick walls. Beside me, Kaelen shifted, placing a warning hand lightly on my arm. His gaze darted between me and Caelum, wary and protective.
Caelum didn't flinch. His glacial eyes held mine, the faint light from the grating above catching the sharp planes of his face. That face… it was his, yet achingly not. The softness was gone, the open curiosity replaced by a guarded stillness that felt colder than the sewer air.
"They?" he asked, his voice dangerously quiet. "The soldiers who took you?"
"Took me?" Confusion warred with rising indignation. "They saved me, Caelum! Two of them… they shot their own comrades who were advancing on us. They showed…" I faltered, remembering their faces etched with remorse. "They showed mercy. Tended my wounds as best they could. Said… said you were gone. They carried me away, delivered me to the Resistance."
A flicker of something unreadable crossed Caelum's face – was it disbelief? Contempt? He'd seen Ecclesiarchy soldiers murder unarmed villagers, hunt children. The idea of any showing mercy, especially after Havenwood, must have seemed ludicrous.
"Resistance," he repeated flatly, as if the word tasted foul. He glanced dismissively at Kaelen, then back at me. His gaze travelled briefly over me, taking in the worn leathers, the way I held myself – no longer the frightened child on the cliff edge. "They trained you well. Turned you into one of their shadows."
There was no approval in his tone, only a detached observation that stung more than outright criticism. This wasn't the Caelum who had shared secrets with me by the falls, who had marvelled at the patterns I traced in the dirt. This was a stranger wearing his face.
"They kept me alive," I retorted, lifting my chin, the heat rising under my skin again, fuelled by indignation now, not just battle adrenaline. "Which is more than I thought possible for either of us! Seven years, Caelum! Seven years I believed you died shielding me! That your blood on my hands," – I gestured towards my shoulder, the scar throbbing – "was the price of my life! Every day, carrying that…"
My voice broke. The sheer weight of those years, the crushing guilt I had organised my entire existence around, threatened to buckle my knees. I had defined myself by his sacrifice. And he was here.
"You thought me dead," he stated, the ice in his voice cracking, just slightly, revealing something raw beneath – not grief, perhaps, but a deep, resonant bitterness. "And I thought you lost. Taken by those butchers, dragged away to their torture chambers or worse. I woke up alone in that ravine, Caelum. Broken. Surrounded by corpses. You were gone."
The pieces slammed together in my mind, brutal and ugly. He hadn't abandoned me. He'd woken up, injured and alone, believing the soldiers who took me were the enemy, that I was doomed. He thought I was dead, or as good as. And fueled by that belief, by the destruction of Havenwood, he had become… this. A vengeful weapon honed by grief and rage.
The silence stretched, thick with unspoken horrors, filled only by the drip of water and our ragged breathing. We stared at each other across a chasm carved by seven years of mistaken beliefs and separate agonies. The ghost wasn't him. It was the boy I remembered. The boy who had died in that ravine, replaced by this hardened, scarred angel of vengeance.
Kaelen cleared his throat, breaking the suffocating tension. "Azara. Commander Valerius will be expecting a report. We need to move. This tunnel could be compromised." His voice was low, pragmatic, a reminder of the immediate danger we were still in. He eyed Caelum with open suspicion. "Who is he?"
"He's…" I started, then stopped. How could I explain? He's the reason I fight, the reason I live with guilt, the boy who saved me, except he didn't die, and now he's a ruthless killer I barely recognize? "He's Caelum. From Havenwood."
Kaelen's eyes widened slightly. He knew the stories, of course. Everyone in the Resistance knew fragments of the Havenwood massacre. He looked from me to Caelum, understanding dawning, mingling with his inherent caution.
Caelum ignored Kaelen, his attention fixed solely on me. The ice seemed to be reforming in his eyes, the brief crack of emotion freezing over. "The Resistance," he said again, his voice hardening. "Hiding in the shadows, scrambling for scraps, while the Ecclesiarchy grows stronger, while Zuriel's poison spreads." He gestured vaguely towards the surface. "I strike at the heart. I make them pay."
There it was. The chasm between us wasn't just time and mistaken beliefs. It was purpose. The Resistance fought to survive, to protect, to find a way to endure, maybe even rebuild someday. He fought to destroy.
"Is that what you were doing back there?" I asked, unable to keep the edge from my voice. "Making them pay? Or just adding more bodies to the pyre? Those technicians…"
"Were building cages to torture souls!" he snapped, the first real flash of heat entering his voice. "They were cogs in the machine that slaughtered our people! They made their choice."
"We all make choices, Caelum," I shot back, thinking of Jarek and Lyra, the soldiers who chose mercy. "Not all of them lead to butchery."
His jaw tightened. The cold aura radiating from him felt like a physical force, pushing me away. We stood inches apart in the stinking darkness, yet miles separated us. The synergy we'd felt in the alley, that strange, instinctive harmony, was gone, replaced by jarring discord.
"We need to go," Kaelen repeated firmly, stepping slightly between us. "Are you injured?" he asked me, his gaze flicking to my shoulder, then assessing Caelum quickly.
"Bruised. Exhausted," I admitted. The adrenaline crash was hitting hard now, leaving me feeling hollowed out, shaky. "You?"
"Minor cut," Kaelen said, touching his arm where a lucky glaive swipe had sliced his sleeve.
We both looked at Caelum. He hadn't appeared wounded, but the Searing Gaze attack must have taken a toll. He gave a curt, almost imperceptible shake of his head. "Functional."
Functional. Not fine, not unharmed. Functional. The word summed him up perfectly. A machine honed for a single, grim purpose.
"Which way?" Caelum asked, his voice devoid of inflection again, turning practical. He might despise the Resistance, but he was pragmatic enough to know staying here was suicide.
Kaelen hesitated, clearly reluctant to trust him, but nodded towards the deeper darkness of the tunnel. "There's a junction half a klick down. Leads towards the lower market district catacombs. Safer than staying here. We move now."
He started off, expecting me to follow. I lingered for a second, looking at Caelum, at the stranger wearing the face of my oldest grief. Seven years. He was alive. The knowledge should have been joyous, a miracle, a lifting of the crushing weight I carried. Instead, it felt like the ground had crumbled beneath my feet all over again.
He met my gaze, his expression unreadable. Then, without another word, he turned and followed Kaelen into the oppressive darkness of the sewer tunnel, his scarred wings tucked tight against his back, a ghost walking away from the grave I had built for him. I took a shaky breath, the foul air doing little to steady me, and plunged after them into the darkness, the chasm between us stretching out, vast and uncertain.