The crunch of their feet pounded through the otherwise eerie silence.

Clary, walking beside her brother, shuddered, and not due to the cold winter blasts of air clawing at her face. Whereas her eyes were fixated on the battlefield she was approaching, her mind was set on those she had abandoned back at home, and those who she would soon betray. She wondered how it had escalated to this. Six months ago she hadn't been informed of this world's existence, and a small fraction of her longed for the ordinariness of Brooklyn again, strolling around the city aimlessly with Simon.

But for the most part, she wouldn't change the path she was walking, not now, being so close to her brother in order to be the one to drive a dagger through his black heart. Clary was the only one Sebastian trusted enough to allow her to get so close to him. Now all she had to do was wait for the inopportune moment.

An abrupt blaze of brilliant light broke her out of her reverie. She froze midstep, and stared in horror.

When she had awoken this morning, dreary eyed and groggy, Sebastian had told her nothing of their destination, only informing her that tomorrow the Nephilim would be no more. Clary had wanted to launch him there and then but had steeled herself, knowing it would not work to her advantage to throw a temper tantrum. But she had never imagined, never conjured what she was witnessing now.

Clary stepped through a shimmering wall of some sort of damp substance that reminded her vaguely of the Malachi Configuration, with her brother at her side and the red-clad Endarkened marching obediently in rows on either side. And suddenly, she emerged onto the chaotic street of Fifth Avenue that belonged to New York.

Only, the city was unrecognizable. Black smoke clogged the air and blotted out the rising sun, the crystalline structures of the skyscrapers rising out of the fog like jagged sparkling teeth. Fires blazed up, bright in the dimness: there, a car burned to a cinder, a sparking exhaust clattered on the ground beside its remains; here, a small hound, its fur charred to ashes, half-supported by a sobbing little girl whose face was streaked with soot. And people! They were everywhere: abandoning their houses and tearing off down the street, avoiding rocketing pillars of glass as buildings came crashing to earth; Clary spotted an elderly woman stumbling over a garden fence in her haste as the windows of her home blew outward, spraying glass.

Their screams, combined with the insistent wailing of car alarms, ripped the air.

Clary whirled on her brother, who was watching the destruction unravel with a gleeful look on his face. "What did you do?"

"Surprised, little sister?" Sebastian asked, never taking his eyes off the chaotic street. "We have that in common, you and I."

"You said we were marching to battle at dawn!" Clary shouted over the screams. "You said -"

"I said," he interrupted, with slow precision, "what you were hoping to hear. You disappoint me, Clary," he said, and now his tone really did sound sad, though it didn't last, however, because a moment later he had turned on her, his dark eyes cutting into her like daggers. He was so close that she could see the flames reflected in his pupils. "Did you honesty believe that I would inform you of my intentions? Did you really think that I had forgiven you for that stunt you pulled with Glorious? You took me for a fool, sister."

Clary was breathing hard, smoke choking her lungs. "You won't accomplish whatever it is you're trying to do," she said. "You think - Do you really think you can win? The Shadowhunters will hunt you down like rabbits, Jonathan, and I won't stop them from driving a sword through your heart when they come for you."

Sebastian grinned down at her, and she was once again reminded of how small she was to him in comparison. "That's what I was hoping for." And then, at her bewildered expression, he narrowed his eyes and said, "Think, Clary. Why else would I have my forces destroy this city until it rains blood? Nephilim - they are duty-bound to protect civilization. Think, Clary. Think."

She thought, and then she knew. And suddenly the chaos surrounding her dimmed and faded away into the smoke, and the screams muted to near-silence. There was only her brother and herself, and the pounding of her broken heart. "You planned this all along," she whispered, to herself, not caring whether he heard or not. "You knew, that if you were to invade the city, the Shadowhunters would come after you. Just like they did at the Citadel. And you would trick them, just like you did at the Citadel. You want them to come, so you can round them up like sheep and slaughter them." She raised her eyes to his. "Why?" She had meant to sound accusatory, but her voice came out in a plea.

He shrugged. Clary grabbed his wrist in a frenzy. "Answer me!"

Sebastian looked down pointedly at her small fingers circling his wrist, then back up at her. He glanced behind her then, and nodded once. A moment later two hands came down on her shoulders, pulling her back. She gasped and released her brother's wrist, turned to run, but Sebastian wrapped his arms around her waist and carried her, lifting her off her feet until she was able to land a solid blow to his stomach. He doubled over and released his hold, sending her crashing to the ground and landing painfully on shards of broken glass.

And then she sprang to her feet, and ran.

Jace struck the ground, hard, the headless corpse of an Endarkened at his feet. He watched with detached sadness as his seraph blade sizzled and burned away from the blood slicking its blade. He always felt an overwhelming sadness whenever he lost one of his blades, for they felt like an extension of his arm, and their absence was like losing a limb.

He pushed that feeling aside and scanned the space around him: The city was burning. Smoke shrouded the air and blocked out the rising sun, tendrils of thick black fog curling up from the burnt remains of vehicles, the brilliant blazes of flames in houses, and rising toward the sky to create a massive spiral like a whirlpool. Streaks of lightening sliced through the coiling smoke like glowing seraph blades.

And it was raining - ash, Jace thought. It showered down from collapsing buildings, carrying with it the jagged shards of broken glass. The ground beneath him had erupted underfoot a while ago like an earthquake, leaving in its destruction jagged peaks of tarmac protruding from the ground and massive indentations like gaping mouths.

The cries that ripped through the street made his heart contract in his chest. He had worked for the majority of his life to conceal his feelings from those around him, those who cared for him, even Alec, whom could read him like an open book. He had thought that he could never love anyone, would never be capable of feeling at all. But now, as he scoured his surroundings in abject horror did he realize that he hadn't been doing such a splendid job of shying away from his emotions and denying what he felt. Being a Shadowhunter - you had to care about others, their safety and their well-being and their lives, for he would not have thrown himself so blindlessely into battle, would he not? If he did not care, he would not have put his life on the line for the benefit of mundanes, would he have?

And Clary. Jace remembered the conversation they had shared the night Sebastian had trespassed into Idris. He recalled the way her hands, fingers gentle enough to grip a paintbrush and strong enough to grasp a dagger, shaking as she recalled what Sebastian had done to her. He remembered feeling so utterly useless, not knowing in which direction to take - he had held himself back from choking off his oxygen, from reaching up and tearing out his hair. And he knew, without question, that Clary would do the same. Would steel herself, let Sebastian have his way with her, if it meant the promise that she could save them at the cost of her soul.

Jace felt a burning rage seep up into his bones, making his vision focus until he could glimpse the red whirls of colour through the smoke: Endarkened. They whipped about him like sprays of blood, appearing in brief flashes to drive a blade through the chest of a mundane, or to slice their swords across their throats, only to blink out of existence again. Jace knew they had only faded into the smoke, and that if he were to step forward into the darkness, he would be welcoming his death with open arms. If Sebastian accomplished his intentions, the existence of the Nephilim would be wiped off the face of the earth anyway. But he had been born a Shadowhunter, loyal to the oath of the Angel, and he would not die cowering on his knees in the shadows. He would die standing, grinning into the face of Death itself with a weapon in his hand.

Alec and Isabelle and Simon and Magnus had all emerged through the Portal beside him, but they had immediately thrown themselves into the battle, Izzy with her whip coiling like a snake, Alec with his bow and arrows, Magnus with blue sparks firing from his fingertips, and Simon baring his fangs. Jace knew that this was it, the final battle of life and death, and his friends would either rise from the destruction as heroes or be remembered as one. They would fight till the end.

Though for Jace, it was never the end. This, he thought as he rose slowly to his feet and whipped out another seraph blade, was just another day at the office.

"Ithurial," he shouted over the screams, and then he launched forward and ran into the darkness.

Clary knelt to retrieve the fallen dagger. It had clattered to the ground after an Endarkened man had dispatched a Shadowhunter, but what else was she supposed to do? She was weaponless - Sebastian had snatched Heospherous out of her hands before he'd taken her to Pandemonium, and God forbid she hoped he hadn't wasted its secret strength - and defenseless, and she knew only too well, in many situations, how useless you felt when defenseless.

After she'd torn free of Sebastian, he had shown no evidence of pursuit; she had been swallowed up by the smoke. She stood amid the writhing fog now, coughing as it choked her lungs, staring around her as she clutched the hilt of the sword in her hands. The tumult of battle erupted all around her: the scrape of sword against sword, the cries of the injured, the gurgles of the dying - and a zapping sound, very familiar to Clary's ears, that sounded very much like the coil of Isabelle's whip.

For a moment relief flooded through her - and then horror and realization dominated her, dragging her under until she swam in it. This is what Sebastian had been holding out for, the Shadowhunters, coming together one last time, and they would die here, at Sebastian's hand. Isabelle and Alec and Jace, her mother and, knowing he would not let her go alone, Luke, too. She kept telling herself that Sebastian was the reason for them being here, but that wasn't the entirety of the truth at all, was it? Of course their main intention was to destroy Sebastian and the Endarkened along with him, but for the most part they had come to save Clary. Jace - he had come for her, just like she had come for him when Valentine had taken him to Renwick's, just like when she had broken him out of the cell beneath the Silent City, when she had asked for him at the shore of Lake Lyn. And Jocelyn, too, had come for her, including Luke. Come for her, risking their own lives.

Just then, an Endarkened woman emerged from the smoke. It was as if the smoke had curled into the figure of a woman, shaping her until she became - a Dark Shadowhunter. She was brandishing a normal silver dagger and wearing a feral grin. Her red gear was soaked in blood, blood as red as rubies, Shadowhunter blood. Smeared across her face and mixing with the soot there. She took a step toward Clary, who tightened her grasp on the blade she held.

The Endarkened clucked disapprovingly. "Little Morgenstern," she said, her voice almost drowned out by the sounds of battle. "Your brother sent me ahead to find you and deliver you to him. Come now, little girl, and you will remain intact."

"If you're so loyal to your master, then why risk his wrath of betraying him?" asked Clary, who was merrily stalling.

"He said nothing about delivering your body to him, little girl," she drawled. "I could easily cut off your head and stick it on a spike for him."

Out of the corner of Clary's eye she caught a bob of fair hair in the smoke, making its way toward her. Clary kept her eyes on the Endarkened, forcing them to stay fixated on hers. "So go ahead," Clary said. "Disobey Sebastian's demands. He'll only kill you, you know that."

The Endarkened woman hesitated - only a fraction of a second, but it was enough. Jace emerged out of the shadows and sprang like a lion, all blazing gold eyes and fire. The woman turned, her moment of weakness vanishing, and swung out with her blade. With a cry Clary brought up her own sword, and the two daggers clanged together like a pair of scissors, leaving Jace just enough room to drive his glowing seraph blade into the woman's heart. She went down with a shriek and collapsed backward.

Jace turned to Clary, and Clary caught the spark of something circling his index finger - the Morgenstern ring. A jolt went through her. He hadn't worn the Morgenstern ring since he'd given it to her the night he went after Sebastian. "Clary," he said, frantically. "Clary, I need you to listen. I need you to come with me."

Clary just stared. She was vaguely reminded of the Jace-who-hadn't-been-her-Jace when he had been connected to Sebastian. Something inside of her told her that this wasn't her Jace. He seized her wrist, opened his mouth - and toppled forward into her. She caught him - dropping her dagger as she did so - and stared up at the looming figure behind him.

Sebastian.

He was grinning as he lowered the brick he held in his raised hand. "You aught to know better than to run, Clarissa," he said, throwing the brick aside. "I will always find you."

Before she could answer, two Endarkened warriors emerged once again from the smoke and pried Jace's unconscious body out of her arms, moving so that his boots dragged across the ash. Clary let out an outraged scream and tore after them - only to be jerked back by Sebastian, who suddenly had his arms around her. Clary turned and pumped her fists against his chest, screaming, "I hate you! I hate you!" over and over again in a torrent.

But Sebastian only rolled his eyes and raised his other hand with a hammer in it. Clary froze. "I'm sorry it had to come to this," he said, and he brought the hammer down.

Izzy reeled back just as a fountain of black blood sprayed skyward like an electrical cable sent sparking and whirling through the air. Her whip recoiled, wrapped around her wrist. The scorch of the blood as it wrapped her arm helped clear her head and sharpen her vision.

As the Endarkend woman fell, it revealed Alec in the process of letting an arrow fly. It zapped through the darkness and vanished, lost to her eyes. Alec had used a Night Vision rune to get clear shots at the enemy, with Isabelle covering him. She knew it was selfish when her skills were needed elsewhere, but she would not leave her brother defenseless, even if the world was turning full circle.

The fog parted where they stood, like the way mist opened as you waded through it. Izzy could glimpse figures dancing at the edge of their clear circle as if they were dancing on the edge of a precipice. Screams ripped through the air, car alarms wailed, fires blazed up in the windows of houses and vehicles, animals howled, swords clashed. The noise was deafening, even to her ears, which made her battle instincts ignite with the ice of battle. It was a strange thing, she thought, to feel your blood ignite like fire and yet to be so cold midst the chaos.

"Cover me!" shouted Alec suddenly, notching another arrow.

"What do you think I've been doing for the past fifteen minutes?" retorted Isabelle. "Admiring the view?"

Alec raised his bow. "Maybe. I don't know. You could be searching for hot Silent Brothers."

Isabelle let her whip fly. It parted the darkness like a strike of gold lightning, slicing a path through the fog, until it curled around something, and she jerked. The whip pulled tight, and she reigned it in as if she were reigning in a boat at the docks. An Endarkened emerged on the ground, writhing and spitting profanities, his ankles caught in the teeth of the whip. Izzy pulled her whip free and it flashed down again, silencing him for good.

"Who needs a hot Silent Brother when there's Zachariah, who is, in fact, no longer a Silent Brother?" said Isabelle, her whip arcing out again. She raised her head when a streak of lightning cut through the sky.

"He is pretty hot," Alec mumbled. He was firing arrows one after the other, letting them fly before notching another.

"Alec!" For once Isabelle was astounded.

"What? You said he's hot. I said he's hot. He's hot."

"But - but Magnus -"

"He's hot, too," said Alec.

Isabelle smiled. For so long she had worried that Alec would never find love, for his stubbornness and suspiciousness would force anyone to turn in the other direction. She had been surprised when Magnus had fallen for him, not because she thought he was shallow enough to never find love in anyone, or because he was cautious, or because he didn't deserve or that he wasn't capable of love, but because it was shocking for him to have found someone who loved him for all those little quirks that made others dislike him. Those little quirks made him - Alec, and Magnus loved him for that.

It was only then as Izzy listened that she realized each arrow struck its target with a sickening thump. She was proud of her brother, and she knew then, without a doubt, that they were going to survive this.

A red-clad Endarkened loomed up over him, grinning from ear to ear, swinging an axe.

Jace rolled aside, but there was no need for him to have moved, for when he looked up, a sword protruded from the man's heart. It pulled out of him, and the man slumped forward with a gurgle.

A Shadowhunter fitted in black gear stood over him, a blood-slicked seraph blade in hand. A boy, who looked no older than twenty, with dark hair spotted with ash and glittering shards of glass, with dark eyes that regarded him affectionately. Angular cheekbones set in a very young and handsome face, pale skin smeared with black soot and blood.

"Jace Herondale," said Zachariah, and his voice caressed his name as if it were a gift. "Are you harmed?"

Jace scrambled to his feet, so fast it made him dizzy. "No, thanks to you," he said. A witty retort rested on the tip of his tongue, but there was something ... unnerving about Zachariah, almost an unusual air to his aura, that made Jace refrain from the sarcastic comments. "I owe you."

Zachariah smiled. "Nonsense," he said. "It is an honour to be in debt to a Herondale like yourself, especially the last of his name. I owe you my life, Jace, and don't you ever forget it."

"I gave you your life back," Jace pointed out. "Mayrse told me, when I was bound to Sebastian, you spoke up for me against the Clave to continue the search for me. And I gave you back your life. I was no longer indebted to you, but this kind of throws a weight in the balance, doesn't it?"

Zachariah opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, an Endarkened loomed up behind him like the devil himself, all clad in red gear and grinning teeth. Jace spun so that Zachariah's shoulder brushed up against his own, and brought his dagger up in a glowing arc. It flashed across the darkness, slicing open the man's torso in midair. A steaming tangled mess of guts and intestines poured out. Jace reeled back just as they splattered the ground at his feet, the body landing atop the mess.

He wiped the gunge off his blade with his sleeve, and looked up at Zachariah. The boy was regarding him with a thoughtful, almost saddened expression, as if he were remembering something - or someone. "I guess that settles the debt," said Jace. "Unless you plan on taking me to court."

He chuckled. It was a musical sound, soft and gentle, lost to the cries around them. "Herondales," he breathed. "It has been so long that I forget how you all seem to speak a different language from the rest of us. The wit, the commentary - you remind me of someone I once knew, before I became a Silent Brother." Their eyes locked, and Jace had the fleeting feeling that Zachariah was seeing not Jace but the ghost of that someone he once knew. A Herondale. His father?

Jace was about to ask when suddenly the two of them found themselves surrounded by Endarkened warriors, as if they had emerged from the smoke, brandishing daggers and axes and maces. Jace and Zachariah moved so they stood back-to-back, the way sometimes he and Alec positioned themselves when in battle when they needed to protect their backs whilst fighting. Zachariah was little of an inch taller than Jace was, their heads slightly touching, their shoulders melding together like clay, their hands clutching the hilts of their seraph blades as they readied themselves.

"It has been an honour to serve you," Zachariah said, "Jace Herondale."

"How very pessimistic of you," Jace replied, just as the Endarkened sprang, and Jace moved forward to meet them with his dagger.

"Clary."

A voice, floating amongst the darkness behind her eyelids. Jace's voice, though he didn't sound concerned so much as desperate. A sharp throbbing sensation worked its way through her body, starting from her head and shuddering all the way to her toes. She was afraid to open her eyes, terrified that she might be missing a limb or some other essential part of her body. But she realized that the pain was humming through all of her, and that her body was, in fact, intact.

She opened her eyes.

She was in what looked to be an abandoned indoor parking lot. There was no ash here, though the faint screams of battle made Clary think that perhaps she wasn't so far away from the wreckage.

Sebastian lounged against one of the pillars, looking as beautiful and terrible as ever. His red gear was stained here and there with blotches of sticky sludge that looked a lot like oil, and his face and hair were smeared with soot.

"Clary."

Clary cut her eyes to the side and saw Jace. He was sat in a steel chair - highly unflamable - and his wrists and ankles were secured to the arms and legs with massive steel chains. Also unflamable. He looked sleep-mussed, his fair hair sticking up like a startled cat, his eyes dreary but blazing such a brilliant gold that Clary had to fight the urge to look away.

But she didn't want to look away. She was so happy to see him and yet utterly horrified. Sebastian had planned this all along, and they had walked straight into his trap.

"Greetings, happy couple."

They both turned and saw that Sebastian had shrugged away from the pillar and was pacing the space before them. His hands were clasped behind his back, and Clary thought he resembled a professor performing a speech.

"You haven't the slightest idea just how delighted I am," Sebastian went on in his smooth, silk-like voice, "for you to witness what I have created, darling sister and brother."

"You haven't created anything," growled Clary. "You destroy things. Lives, homes, cities. If that's creating something, then I must have missed the point." And then she added, grudgingly, "You obviously didn't hit me hard enough."

"Clary," Jace said warningly, but Sebastian only studied her thoughtfully, as if he were admiring a painting at an art gallery. "You disappoint me, Clarissa," he said. "You and I are so alike in a variety of ways -"

"I'm nothing like you," she said.

"Of course you are," said Sebastian, and suddenly he was inches away from her, his hands gripping the arms of the steel chair she was secured to and leaning over her until their breaths mingled in the inches that separated them. Clary wanted to cringe away from his nearness, but she forced her limbs to lock in place, stubborn and unmoving. "We are the Morgenstern's. The last of our kind. Your blood courses through my veins, just as mine does yours. We are the last, you and I. There is no one left on this forsaken universe that are alike us but ourselves. You are mine," he breathed, and he lifted his hand to gently place his palm against her cheek.

Clary blinked up at him, dazed. She was bedraggled, astounded at how alike he and Jace were. Like Jace, Sebastian was gentle with the things he loved, the only difference being that Sebastian mistook love for giving him consent to hurt those he loved in ways that were unforgivable, so long as no one else did the same to the things that belonged to him.

Sebastian moved his hand from her cheek, trailing it slowly, deliberately, down her throat, his eyes never leaving hers, until it shaped the curve of her breasts and hovered just over her heart, which leaped and skittered and pounded in her chest until she felt as if it were about to explode out of her. Clary's blood hummed as her brother sickened her with his touch.

"Get your hands off her," Jace hissed. Clary knew, and hated the knowledge of it, that lowering her eyes would give Sebastian power over her. So she stared him down, terrified as she was, until finally she won out and Sebastian grinned over at Jace.

He straightened and stalked toward him, prowling like a cat. "Jace - Herondale, is it? Have you finally decided who you are?"

The expression Jace wore as he craned his neck to look at him was one of total loathing. "I've always known who I am. My name is Jace Lightwood, the name everyone will remember when they ask of the Shadowhunter who stuck Sebastian Morgenstern's head on a pike."

"That is, am I correct, how the hero of Scotland, William Wallace, was remembered?" asked Sebastian. Clary couldn't help but notice that although he seemed to be shrugging off Jace's commentary with great restraint, she could see the drumming of his pulse at his throat, the impatient set to his lean shoulders, how he couldn't seem to remain still for longer than a minute. "After the English murdered him, they cut his body into fragments and scattered the remains across the four corners of the world, resting his head on a spike. He was known and is remembered to this day as a hero. Pretty courteous way to die, that." He leaned forward, touching his forehead to Jace's, and said, "But Wallace was murdered before he accomplished his true intentions. Whereas I - I will be the one to wipe this world clean of Shadowhunters. I will be the one to rid the universe of worthless mundanes. I will be the one to rule, and I will be remembered as Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern, he who ruled. A true hero."

"I don't quite believe you have thought this through," said a voice behind him, and Clary's heart leaped. "If you intend to rid the universe of every living creature, humans included, who will be around to remember you? The stale carrot sprouting from the ground? Unfortunate, that."

Clary saw Sebastian go rigid; a moment later he had spun, his hand flying to his belt. For once, Clary had the satisfaction of seeing him flabbergasted, though she wasn't concealing her confusion much, either.

"What's the matter, big brother?" Jace spread his arms wide. "You look … wrecked." Jace didn't look so dashing himself, Clary realized. He looked as if he had been rolling around in black paint. His hair was matted with ash and dried blood, not his own, Clary noticed with relief. His face was a black oval, his eyes blazing a brilliant gold and his teeth a startling white against the stark black of his skin. His eyes flicked briefly to Clary, a question in them; she nodded that she was alright.

And then realization dawned. If the Jace bound to the chair wasn't Jace, then who was he? Who was Jace? Which one of them was the real Jace?

A gasp echoed through the vacant parking lot. Clary snapped her head around - and stared. The Jace who had been sitting in the steel chair was spasming and gasping, and changing. His skin rippled like disturbed water, taking on a much paler complexion that contrasted starkly with his dark gear. His hair tumbled down around his shoulders, bouncing in waves to his waist, and suddenly chocolate was spilling down from the roots and coating the blonde waves until it was no longer blonde. His face moved, the bones beneath the skin reshaping themselves until they formed a pale oval, a face with elegant cheekbones, and eyes that were the colour of the sky before a vicious storm.

It was a girl. A girl Clary recognised, though she didn't know her name.

As they all watched in shocked silence, the girl jerked her hands and ankles free of the chains, now that they were no longer the size Jace's had been. She rose from the chair like a woman goddess, and even Sebastian, emotionless as he was, seemed stricken.

"I don't believe we've officially met," said the girl, in a very kind, sweet voice. "I'm Tessa Gray."