"Lady Corrin. Lady Corrin, it's time to wake up." Flora's voice, calling her up out of the dark.

"Five more minutes," she said, turning over, pulling the covers tighter around herself. She couldn't have said why, but she was more tired than she'd ever been in her life, her legs begging not to move and her head refusing to rise from its pillow. She cracked her eyes open, saw the stone of her room in the Northern Fortress, let them close again.

"I'm afraid five minutes may be too late," her maid said, and something ticked inside of Corrin's head. She sat up, pushing the covers back, turned to look at the woman who had been one of her closest confidants since she was small. Flora's expression was neutral in her refined, practiced way, and nothing seemed amiss at first glance but something itched at Corrin's thoughts. "Oh, good. I suppose I won't have to prescribe the Ice Tribe's cure for laziness."

She looked around the chamber, and it occurred to her what was wrong. "Why are we alone? Felicia's usually with you, and Jakob's always waiting for me to wake up."

"Felicia is tending to your armor, Lady Corrin. Jakob is making sure that she doesn't destroy it in the attempt."

Cotton in her head, crowding her thoughts, making it hard to link things together. "That... makes sense. Felicia's more enthusiastic than skilled, for that sort of work. Listen, when you said five minutes may be too late—"

"Of course," Flora said, whipping the covers off of the bed, folding the sheets evenly and crisply as she talked. "Prince Xander is waiting for you on the roof. You're going to be late for your sparring session if you don't hurry and fetch your armor."

"Xander's... here?" She swung her feet off of the bed, wasn't sure if she felt up to standing.

Flora stopped, looked at her, and in the stillness Corrin realized on a conscious level that something was very wrong. What had happened here? "Where else would he be, my lady?"

A scream echoed across her thoughts, a voice so frantic she did not recognize it, pulling her out of her reverie. Her thoughts were scattered and she reached out to each of them in turn, grabbing at them like falling leaves, pulling them close to her. "I was... I was with him. Something was wrong. I remember Ryoma was there... Ryoma?" She nearly dropped it all, nearly let it all slip into oblivion. Ryoma, the Hoshidan prince, and Xander, in the same place? An image of a lightning blade danced across her thoughts, and a woman in white whirling as she raised her voice, and a wall of black fire. "Xander... Xander tried to kill Azura, and I... jumped in the way." The leaves had ceased to fall, and she looked at Flora, who she had watched burn to nothing in a snowy village, far to the north. "Flora. Am I dead?"

The maid shook her head. "No, my lady. You linger, still, as I linger—though not for the same reason." She reached out with one hand, and Corrin took it, letting Flora pull her to her feet. The smaller woman was strong, so much stronger than her frame would suggest, just like her sister. "You still have a choice to make. The world is calling to you, begging you to return to it, but that is not the only option. You can let go, and leave the world and all of its concerns behind. What happens there won't be your responsibility anymore, and you would stay here, outside of time."

Flora had been here for weeks, ever since before that battle with Leo where the world had changed again. She thought of her here, alone, and Corrin's heart broke in her chest. "What's kept you here, Flora? Why do you linger?"

Her maid, her friend, reached up with both hands and cupped her cheeks, a thing she had not done since they were girls. Her palms, her fingers, were very cool. The world around them softened, the stone of the Northern Fortress blurring and becoming less concrete in its shape, brightening. The wind picked up, cold, so cold that Flora's hands felt warm in the gale, and the open sky yawned above them. Corrin did not need to look to know that they were in the village of the Ice Tribe.

Flora smiled, and like every time she had smiled in life it was an expression of sadness.

"Regret, I think."

"Corrin! Corrin! CORRIN!"

She fell and Xander screamed her name and Ryoma crossed the distance with the Raijinto splitting the air.

He struck, the blow scoring Xander across the chest, catching against Siegfried's blade, throwing the Nohrian prince's guard open for a second strike. The second blow cut Xander's armor across his shoulder, and Ryoma swung again. Xander swung the Siegfried to intercept the blow, but even that motion opened his guard from another angle and Ryoma swung for a fourth time, slicing clean through the gambeson protecting Xander's armpit, not quite biting through his flesh. He swung for a fifth time and Xander turned to meet the blow in full, Siegfried and the Raijnto clashing openly in the air between them. Arcs of fire and lightning peeled off from that point, tearing up the floor around them, striking the walls, the ceiling, the entire temple shaking as the sacred weapons tried to eat each other.

That one exchange told Ryoma everything he needed to know about why his father could have lost to this man: meeting the blow from the black sword sent a shockwave through his entire torso, and if not for the bracers supporting his wrists he was certain that it would have broken his arms. He squared his feet, tried to push, but the Nohrian prince was immovable, and their faces were inches away from each other and he looked into the eyes of the man who had just tried to kill two women that they both called sister. Those eyes were frantic, tear-filled, frightened, but then they saw him and focused on him and something came to life there, a fire that burned as surely as actual flame and he did not know what to name it because no one had ever looked at him with real hatred before.

"Thief," Xander said, and shoved.

"Form a line!" Camilla's voice behind him, a command that grabbed hold of Hoshidan and Nohrian alike. "Protect Corrin! Protect Azura!"

Ryoma braced himself for the blow that would follow the shove, but Xander looked to Azura and swung again. Ryoma came in low, bringing up the Raijinto with all the force of his body, striking Siegfried so that the horizontal arc of the blow was thrown upward. He watched the destructive power of the sword sail toward the singer, saw the bandit Shura tackle her to the ground before she could react. The power passed so near to the two of them that Shura's cloak caught fire before they had even hit the ground, but he dared not look to see what damage had been done.

"Prince Xander," he said, and the Raijinto sang in his hands as he swiped at the other man's throat—there was no point in being gentle, especially against the speed at which Xander deflected the blow. "You must gain control of yourself. We are here to help you, not to harm you!"

"Thief!" The black sword flashed and it took all of Ryoma's skill to deflect it, not daring to block it, and even the act of turning it away sent a shockwave through him, cracking his ribs. He struck Xander with the back of his left hand, felt his bracer crack against the other man's jaw.

Ryoma lost himself to the rhythm of their blades, lightning splitting the dark over and over as the world shook around them, his body moving automatically, his training the only thing keeping him alive from moment to moment. What could drive the other man so, could put that word on his lips with so much hatred, so much open bile? What had he done?

Tears were running down Xander's face, flung wide as the swords clashed, and Ryoma understood two things: first, why this man called him thief, thief of the treasure of his heart. Second, that he was not going to survive this encounter, that he had lost before he had ever swung the Raijinto.

Still he fought, roaring defiance against his doom. Xander scramed too, but it was not a sound of hate, or rage, or pain, or fear.

Flora let go of her face, stepped back from her. "I wanted so much to go with you, Lady Corrin. Please understand that I wanted nothing more than to walk with you on the path of righteousness, to stay with you through the end."

"Flora..."

"No. Please. I know the choice was not mine; I have had time to reflect on that, since we last spoke. But still I carry the burden of regret, and it will weigh me down forever. I turned against you out of cowardice, betrayed my sister and my principles because I was not willing to fight against the things I feared. Everything I had built with you, with both of you, I threw it away. I deserved everything that happened to me."

As they spoke, Corrin's eyes tried to shift out of focus, but she fought to keep them on Flora, to see what she could not see before: Flora was burning, engulfed in flames as she had been in the real village.

"Flora!"

"That was my just punishment, lady Corrin. For my cowardice, and for my faithlessness. Resentment and fear were stronger than love, stronger than justice, and I burned for it." The fire ate at her, but she looked serene, her flesh untouched even as her silhouette began to shrink. "I will burn for it again. And again. And again, until my regret is eaten away."

Corrin did not think as she ran across to the other woman, plunging through the heat of the fire (what fear had she of burns when she was dead?) to wrap her arms around Flora. The touch was unbearable, a pain like she had never felt before, and she could feel her hair catch fire in Flora's conflagration.

"None of that matters, Flora!"

"Lady Corrin!" Flora's hands were against her shoulders, her chest, trying to push her off. "Let go!"

"No! I'm here for you, no matter what, because I couldn't be before." The fire ate at her, but she spoke clearly, her words coming from a place that pain could not reach. "How could you regret what you did, Flora? You did what you did to protect your people from Garon, to keep your entire tribe from being wiped out like a dozen that had preceded it. You knew he would kill them! What choice did you have, no matter who got hurt?"

"I betrayed you," Flora said, but she wasn't trying to push Corrin away anymore, and Corrin pulled the other woman hard against her. The fire did not even hurt anymore, had given way to something else, a thing from past where pain stood, and she wondered if her frame was burning away as well.

"I love you, Flora. You've been a sister to me, even when you had every reason to hate me. Please don't regret what happened. Please. I'm not angry at you. I never could be."

Then it was over, and the fire was gone. The cool wind blew all around them, biting cold, and Corrin felt it blowing through her hair, which she had thought burned away.

"I loved you, too." Flora's voice was muffled, her face pressed to Corrin's body, and she would not look up. "Even when I hated you, hated every person in that castle, I loved you too. You were a prisoner, just like me and my sister. That's... that's why it hurts so much."

"Look at me." Flora did look at her, turning her head up, and Corrin looked down at her and saw a lifetime of restraint and servitude and pain and quiet reflected by the light in her eyes. "I'm going back. When I get there, I'm going to finish what I have to, and then I'm going to take Felicia and we're going to go visit your village, tend to your grave. No matter what happened between us in the end, that doesn't change who we are or what we had before. All right?"

Flora nodded, sniffed, pushed lightly against her, and only then did Corrin let her go. Flora stepped back, straightened her skirts and apron, squaring away her appearance, a meditative act that went further back than Corrin's memory. "All right. I'll be watching you, Lady Corrin. Be strong, because where you are going you'll need your strength. Promise me."

She smiled, because it was the sort of thing she had not heard the other woman say in years. "I don't know if I can promise strength, but I can promise I'll try. For you, and for everyone else."

Flora bowed deep, from the waist, not a motion of fealty but of gratitude, respect. "Thank you." The wind picked up, howling so much that she had to raise her voice. "Before you go, there is one other person who wants to speak with you."

The snow grew thicker, denser, drowning out the world in white so that the village beyond them was gone, and it was just Flora and her standing in the storm. "Who?"

"You will have to see for yourself," Flora said, with her old, sad smile. "Goodbye, my lady. May the gods watch over you, as I will."

The whiteness engulfed her, and Flora was gone, obscured by cold and by snow. Corrin shielded her face against the wind, squeezing her eyes shut from the flakes that were getting caught in her eyelashes. The time that passed like that was interminable, sliding over into infinity, and she wondered how the world of the dead related to the world of the living. It was an odd question to contemplate.

The wind died, the snow becoming something more like a regular fall rather than a magical blizzard, and she stood on stone, surrounded by crenelations on all sides. The moon hung high above her, and the wind was bitter but not quite so cold. She breathed deep the familiar air of the Northern Fortress once more, and then looked across the roof of the tower to the other who stood there.

A black cloak, trimmed in white fur, the high collar obscuring the face completely as the figure stood turned away from her. The stance was that of a man, the set of his shoulders that of a giant, and as he turned she saw the white hair, the thorned black crown, the purple sash of office worn over a warrior's armor in black and gold.

"Garon?"

Xander swung with a twist of his arms, catching the Raijinto at an angle that broke Ryoma's grip, sending the sacred blade spinning through the air. Ryoma traced the arc of its flight with his eyes, watched it clatter to the stone flooring, turned to look at Xander again. The Nohrian prince might have shown an expression of triumph, but there was nothing like that; just more anger, more pain. The Nohrian swung again and Ryoma ducked under the blow, pivoting his entire body, rolling across the floor. The shockwave of Siegfried's power caught his left foot, and he felt the ankle break in its passing. A roar, another swing, this one an overhead strike, and it was all he could do to use his good foot to lunge out of the way. He never stopped moving, and his hands went to the scabbards he had kept strapped to his back, where they were protected, not meant to be used.

He drew the Hagakure blades and Xander turned to face him, slowly. The other man's eyes focused on the swords for the moment. Recognition, perhaps.

"All right then," Ryoma said, hefting both blades in his hands, testing the weight, finding them exquisite, perfectly balanced. A good weapon to hold as one died. "Come on!"

He had fought Xander for the space of twelve seconds. He wondered how long his father had lasted. A stupid thought, as the other prince's sword was raised for the killing exchange.

A wyvern screamed—a wyvern he knew—and a tremendous weight crashed into him, tossing him into the air like a child's toy. He hung there for a moment before he hit something, a pair of arms that wrapped hard around his torso. The sound of leathery wings beating as they rose into the air.

"Hold on to me!" Scarlet's Chevois accent came out in that moment, and he embraced her, face-to-face, as she used the reins in her right hand to try to control her wyvern, craning her neck to see over his shoulder, around his hair. "This isn't going to be pretty!"

Siegfried roared beneath them, from a place that Ryoma could not see around the wyvern's bulk, and he felt Scarlet pull hard on the reins. A wave of destructive force slammed into them, shattering the wyvern's armor, and the beast screamed. Not fatal, from the sound it was making, but then they began to tumble through the air.

"Shit!" Scarlet's left arm tightened further, squeezing hard against his cracked ribs. "Sorry, Your Highness. This is about to get bumpy."

Another buffeting blast passed by them, missing the wyvern by inches, blasting its wings around as if it were in a hurricane, and the three of them crashed against the stone flooring. The wyvern rolled, hard, and the two of them were thrown clear from the saddle. There was a sense of weightlessness as Scarlet wrapped both of her arms around him, tensing every muscle in her body for the impact, and then there was an enormous crash that was more of a sound and not a feeling because he did not feel anything at all.

He knew he had lost some seconds as he lay on the ground, and that one of his legs was broken. He was not sure of where he was, then, though he held two swords in his hands.

Xander was charging across the floor at him, and he remembered then that he had been preparing to die. Had he been flung so far in one exchange? Impressive that he had survived at all, then. The Nohrian prince was a magnificent opponent—a wonder that he had not been on the front lines, seeking to tear down Hoshido with his own hands. In some remote part of his brain Ryoma was glad that he had been able to fight against someone so powerful, even if it had not been for very long. He had bought some time for the others, though he could not say if it would be enough.

Then there was a glittering red blur in front of him, charging to meet the Hoshidan prince. Her armor was the color of blood, and her short-cropped hair had a streak of crimson in it from a gash in her scalp, and her spear was decorated in mosaic patterns that threw a hundred lights in a hundred directions as she thrust it in the light of the torches.

"Scarlet." What was she doing there? She shouldn't be fighting Xander—the man was her prince. That was a mistake. He had to tell her, before something happened.

She thrust and retreated, dancing with the tip of the spear in patterns that tricked the eye of swordsmen, moving her feet in and out to extend or shorten her reach. Siegfried swung through the air and she batted the weapon aside, using its momentum against it, throwing off a blow that spit corrosive power at the ceiling. She danced in, thrust at the swordsman's throat, pulled back as he deflected the thrust with his gauntlet. He stepped in, too fast to dance away from, brought Siegfried around in an overhead smash. She threw her spear up, catching the blow—and the force of it drove her to one knee, the shock rupturing the binding that held glass to steel, sending her armor's decorations scattering in all directions like shooting stars, twinkling in the air as they sailed.

"Get away from him!" She pushed with all the strength in her body, slipping out from under Xander's sword, sweeping to the side and away from him, stepping back between him and Ryoma. The fallen prince had never seen anyone or anything so beautiful in his life. "You won't kill him, do you understand me? You have to get through me first!"

Xander looked at her, and Ryoma could not see her face but he could see his, the acknowledgement in his glowing eyes, acknowledgement both of her and of the necessity of her death, and Ryoma knew where he was again.

"Scarlet!"

The king's face had not changed in all the years she had ever known him, but he looked different now. His flesh did not sag on his face with the weight of something more than age; it just creased in lines that suggested old laughters, old rages, old tears. The beard that made up so much of his profile was trimmed down, still as snow-white as his hair but now forming a clean line that accentuated his jaw rather than hiding it. His eyes had only ever been burning coals, but now they were softer, quieter, sadder, echoing the eyes of his oldest son. Garon was handsome, Corrin thought, handsome like Xander might be in another twenty or thirty years, a man who carried the weight of empire and did not delight in its pressures.

Still she reached for the Yato, the reflex faster and stronger than her curiosity. The sword wasn't there, and she looked down in shock before she remembered where she was.

"You won't need a weapon here," he said, and that voice made her look up so fast it hurt her neck. He sounded so different it was as if he were a totally different person. "What I was... I am no longer. No harm will come to you here, even if it could."

Her mother was dead, and her father, and she could not guess at what has happening now that she was lingering between the worlds. She couldn't keep the anger, the fury out of her voice, and if she could have she wouldn't have wanted to. It was all she could do not to attack him with her bare hands. "What are you doing here, Garon?"

The wind howled, billowing his cloak out and away from him, and he looked strange in the moonlight as he stared at her in the quiet, as if seeing her for the first time. Maybe he was, she thought, but she begrudged the thought its existence. "You are right to hate me, Corrin, but for now you must listen to what I say."

"Why? What has that ever gained me, save heartache?"

"Anankos held me to his breast for decades." His words cut through the wind, cut through her anger. "Decades I spent in which I was not myself. I was empty, and hollow, worse than dead, until you killed me. In the end you saved me." He stopped, looked at her. "Does that gall you?"

She said nothing.

"Perhaps it should. But I know more things about Anankos, and about his machinations, than anyone. I know the power you face as you and your gathered families fight Xander in the heart of that terrible place." There was a howling, then, and it was not the wind, came from the very sky, filling everything. "I know what you have to do to win."

The sound of the voice from the sky was like a knife in her chest, and she found tears in her eyes before she had even processed that it was a voice. "What is that? Why is it so loud?"

"That is my son," Garon said, looking up, not at the moon but past it. "He thinks he has killed you, and in his grief his heart is more open to Anankos with every moment. He has been seized by madness, and his pain will cut a swathe of devastation across the entire world."

"I won't let that happen," she said, and meant it, not daring to even think of Xander doing anything so horrible. That was impossible; it couldn't come to be, if only because she wouldn't let it. "If I stop Anankos then Xander will be free, right?"

"Yes. That is true." He tore his gaze from the sky, looked at her again, and she realized the crease in his brow was just like his eldest son's, told of the same worry. "But with things as they are now, you will fail. The Yato cannot kill Anankos."

Xander's fury slung Scarlet around like a doll, his every blow that came anywhere close to her lifting her from her feet and flinging her across the room, and for every four times she landed on her feet there was a fifth where she hit the ground hard, rolled, regained her footing with a roar. He was focusing on her now rather than on Ryoma, which had been the whole point, but she knew she would die for her prince. She, like Ryoma before her, faced that certainty with valor. Xander charged her again, and she readied her spear, thinking that if she could just pierce his skin even once—

Camilla struck Xander across the face with one of the Hoshidan dual clubs, rocking his head. Then Beruka was on his other side, the same weapon in hand, and she struck him too, not so powerfully but just as cleanly, smashing the armor on his shoulder. Selena, wearing the armor of a wyvern lord, slid into position in front of him, bringing her dual-headed weapon up in a smash that caught him on his chin, whipping his head up.

"Together, girls." Camilla pulled a second dual-headed club from her storage pouch and tossed it to Scarlet, who caught it by reflex, and then understood and fell in behind the prince, boxing him in completely.

Xander roared, turning on them, and they struck him from every angle, their clubs and their stances specially made to fight against the orthodox style of the prince wielding Siegfried. The line that had just formed in front of Corrin shrank as Benny charged out of it, spear in hand, face set, and he fell in behind Beruka as she deflected a blow from the sacred sword. So they fell to keeping the prince contained, the four Swordbreakers and Benny, who loved one of them.

Takumi commanded from the line, sending Hinoka, with Sakura carried on her saddle, to tend to Ryoma. The Hoshidan princesses crossed the gap like the wind, bringing healing magic to their eldest brother, setting his leg and ankle and retrieving his sword. Hinoka knew the blades he had in his hands but asked no questions as he sheathed them again. Peri barked orders to the Nohrians, including Elise, and between her and Takumi they formed a line of warriors that would keep Xander back from the fallen princesses, even if not for very long. They did not move forward, did not fling their magic or their arrows at him, because they knew that the length of Siegfried's blade did not dictate from how far it could end a life.

The din of steel on steel was unbelievable as Xander twisted and swung, catching incoming blows that he shouldn't have even been able to see, pivoting on his foot and turning aside blows that should have caught him blind. He did not catch all of them, or even most, but it was enough to make Selena curse out loud.

"Gods! How does he even do that!"

"Less talking." Beruka leaned in, swung, cracked his armor, leaned back out, scowled at how little affect the blow had. "More hitting."

"Easy for you to say! His Royal Highness the Prince of Punch-A-Babies is blocking everything I throw his way, and I'm not going easy on him. What, is he psychic on top of everything else?"

He was a hurricane in the middle of them that seemed to face all directions at once, and of a sudden they stopped being able to strike him at all, and his voice was raised in a scream. Every swing of their clubs bounced off of Siegfried's blade, sending shockwaves up their arms and into their skulls, and every time he struck out his blade came closer and closer to their faces, their throats, their stomachs. They had stacked on every possible layer of advantage, and he was pushing through it, implacable, unstoppable.

Beruka's eyes flicked up as he turned on her, and she saw the arc that the black sword traced as he raised it in the air. She could read his motions perfectly, a result of a long time training to kill swordmasters, and she could also see that she wouldn't be fast enough to block this one, or strong enough to withstand the shock of the blow. He was going to cut her in half, from the left shoulder to the right hip. His eyes flashed. She brought her club up anyway.

Then Benny was in front of her, and there was an interminable gap before the crash. Benny's shield, held over him like an umbrella, exploded into shards that were scattered all over the floor, and he stepped back and she saw his shield arm was broken, but he did not fall. "It's all right," he said, and his voice did not waver from the pain. "I'll protect you."

She moved past him, swinging up at Xander's face, catching him in the jaw, slinging his head around. Scarlet caught him with another blow, and Selena whooped aloud before striking him in the back of the skull. Beruka stepped in front of Benny again, warding him back, signalling for a healer, and saw that one of the Hoshidan monks was waving a healing rod from a ridiculous distance. She looked at Benny in the gap between blows, and their eyes met amidst the din. "I'll protect you too."

They both knew that promise would not hold up for long, and Xander swung, and Siegfried roared, and the temple shook.

"What do you mean 'can't kill him'? The Yato—"

"Was not prepared as it should have been." Garon was not trying to argue with her, or even especially correct her; he was just speaking facts, absolutely sure of them, and he seemed sorry to be saying them. He kept his hands folded behind his back, beneath his cloak, his posture very regal and very straight. "The holy blade was created for this purpose, yes, but the Rainbow Sage... misread certain signs. The path you walk on now should have ended with my death and the door between worlds being shut. Tell me, what is the state of your sword?"

Even without it in her hand she could feel the Yato's weight, the curvature of its blade, the sound it made as it moved through the air. "It's synchronized with the Fujin Yumi, the Raijinto, and the Brynhildr. I've taken to calling it the Howling Yato."

"An appropriate name." He reached up, touched his head as if to massage the spot where she had cut through a dragon's skull, and then lowered his hand self-consciously. "But not a form it was supposed to take. If you were on a path where you would kill Anankos, the Sage was supposed to complete the preparation of the Yato before it had synchronized with any of the sacred weapons, to make it more receptive to all of their power and to help define its final shape. Even if you were to combine its power with Siegfried's, it would not take on its ultimate form. When you fight Anankos, it will be without the Fire Emblem."

"Oh." She looked at him, realized he wasn't lying, had no reason to lie. "Then... is it pointless? How can Anankos be killed without the Yato's true power?" And how could Xander be rescued?

"Corrin." That was it: he even had Xander's voice, aged by smoke and war. "You are more than a sword." He held up his hand to her, gestured to the veins of his wrist. "The blood of dragons runs hot and bright in you, more than me and more than in any living person. If the sword will not do the work then you will have to make up the difference."

She looked at her own hands, the creases in the gloves of her gauntlets. The power of her dragon self wouldn't be enough to fight Xander, much less Anankos, by itself. Not a chance. But something in that suggestion felt right, as if it were next door to the idea she would need to be victorious. She opened her hands, clutched them into fists, opened them again.

Maybe it would be enough in the end.

Xander's scream filled the heavens again, and she looked up. "All right. I'm ready to head back, I think, and do what I can to put an end to this. In spite of everything, Garon... thank you. I think you helped."

The sound of armored boots crunching snow beneath them, the gait of a warrior crossing the roof. He stopped only a few feet away from her, and would not meet her eyes. For a long moment she didn't understand, until she saw him wrestling for his words.

"Corrin. I've never been a father to you, and I was... not a king, in the end. A king does not do what I have done." He still would not look at her. "All of the evils in your life... they are at my feet. Even driven by Anankos's power, I first had to accept him into myself. Everything. Your father, your mother, forcing you into isolation. I can't." He looked up at the sky again, trying to compose himself, and Corrin felt something inside of her change.

She reached out with both of her hands, took hold of both of his.

He looked down at her hands as if they were serpents that he had been told were defanged, but still he was waiting for the bite. "Garon. Look at me." He looked at her, then, and she saw him for what he was: tired, so very tired, and a man who had paid for all of his crimes in a way that beggared human imagination. 'Hollow' was the word he had used, and the thought of it chilled her, to be conscious without consciousness, unable to act, or think, or even be within the realm of one's own power. She thought of what Ryoma had told her, in the chamber before they had found the Hagakure blades, before the world had come crashing down on him. She thought of Flora, wreathed in flames. She saw Garon's pain written across his face, she saw his mistakes, his years that had been taken from him and perverted, and she saw Xander there, and that as much as anything was why she spoke: "It doesn't matter what you did. In the end you were a victim, too. I can't imagine what's happened to you since that day, and I can't imagine the punishment that's been visited on you. You're expecting me to hate you, and for a long time... maybe all my life... I did."

He nodded, swallowed.

"But I don't want that anymore. Not toward anyone, and not toward you. No one has suffered like you have, and I can't add my resentment on top of that suffering." She breathed deep, steeled herself. "I forgive you, Garon. I forgive you everything." And, happily, it was true. How light she felt, in that moment.

He squeezed his eyes shut, turned his face from her as his mouth twisted into an enormous scowl, and then he fell to his knees, still holding onto both of her hands.

"My son isn't like me." He was sobbing, not trying to hide it, and finally he looked at her in earnest and she thought the weight of his fears and his sorrows would knock her from her feet. "Xander never asked for any of this. He is a good prince—a good man. What is happening to him is worse than death, and it's not his fault. Please. I was never your father, and never your king, so I'm asking you as, as a man who knows nothing else, please, please save my son." He pressed his forehead to her hands. "Please."

"I will." She meant it. The world began to brighten around her, its edges softening, and she knew that she was leaving. "I promise I will, no matter what it takes. Xander will not suffer as you have."

She was rising, then, and still he held her hands, and she his, and she kept rising and he rose to his feet and held her for just a moment longer, his grip loose, their hands sliding apart until only their fingertips touched—and then she went up, up, and the world was whiter and whiter as she rose.

He looked up at her, and his face was the last thing she saw, and he was weeping.

Xander's left hand caught Scarlet in the side of the head, sending her spinning until she hit the floor. Benny and Beruka had already been forced to retreat, and Selena was unconscious, Felicia having dragged her back to the defensive line to heal her in relative safety. Camilla stood against him because there was no one else left, save some few who he would kill in the first exchange.

He swung and she caught the blow, forcing the sword down into the floor, turning his strength against him to bury Siegfried's blade nearly half its length in the stone. He heaved and tore it out in a single motion, but in that time she struck him in the body, the left knee, his neck. She moved him by sheer force of the blows but he did not stagger, and when she swung hard at his face he brought Siegfried up and blocked the strike. She shoved hard, with all the strength of her body, and the two of them were face-to-face, then.

"Camilla," he said, his voice coming out in a hiss, and his expression shifted from dead neutrality to something else, something very much like pain.

"Please, brother." Her shoulders screamed with the effort of holding him back, her every advantage in leverage and technique giving way quickly to his overwhelming power. "Please, fight this. Control yourself. I don't want to hurt you!"

"Sister. Sister... end it." He looked into her eyes, and he was afraid, and that made her afraid. "Don't let me... don't..."

But the truth was that even if she did have it in her to kill him, even if she did want to hurt him to protect the people under her care, she did not have the strength. Maybe none of them did. He forced her back and swung and she blocked the blow, and the eruption of power between the two of them nearly bowled her over. She heard but did not see the masonry at her back exploding, tasted blood in her mouth as her organs slammed against each other. She stepped back toward him, went in with a flurry of blows that was out of a textbook at the academy, each of them so crushing that they would have killed a normal swordsman as easily as a beetle, but his sword intercepted every attempt, and his face had relaxed into that distant, dead look.

She stepped back and with her right foot kicked him hard in the chest, and in response he kicked her in the stomach. She was sent hurtling backwards, felt her ribs break. She managed to land in a kneeling position, pulled herself up to stand, and Xander was not charging at her—he was just walking. She heard Selena, newly conscious, screaming her name in the distance. Effie and Arthur were charging together, leaving Elise behind, intending to slam into Xander's back and strike him down. More of the line was moving, intending to save her as Scarlet had saved Ryoma, as her own little stunt had saved Scarlet. Ryoma himself, on a newly mended ankle, was starting to charge. Each of them would die, and they would be too late, and Camilla thought of the long box tied onto Marzia's back.

"I am sorry," she said, not just to Xander, but to Corrin, and Elise, and to Leo, and to her father, and Hinoka, knowing none of them would hear her. "I'm sorry I couldn't stop this."

Then, from behind the line, there was a burst of light, so bright that even at that distance she had to shield her eyes. Xander turned from her, toward the light, and there was a sound from it, the beating of mighty wings.

The light flew across the chamber, and Xander brought up his sword just before it slammed into him. A blur of motion and radiance as Xander was driven back, steel ringing on steel, and then two feet slammed hard into his face in a full-body kick. He staggered, taking several steps back, and the light touched down on the ground before him.

The radiance faded, and Corrin stood there, Howling Yato in her hand, her dragon's wings shrinking back into her shoulders. They disappeared and she stood straight, turning her body to face Xander in a fencer's position.

"Corrin!" Camilla called out to her, felt her breath catch. "My darling, you're all right!"

Effie and Arthur and Ryoma and the entire line came to a stop, staring at the woman they had thought dead only moments before. Behind them all, Azura finally got to her feet.

"Yeah!" Corrin looked over at her, grinned her too-open child's grin. "Sorry to worry all of you. I'm OK, and I'm ready to fight." Xander found his footing, and Corrin turned her attention back to him. "It's going to be all right, Xander! We're going to work together, and we're going to get you out of here. I made a promise I intend to keep."

Xander looked at her, and for a long moment he did not move, did not speak, did not seem to breathe. Confusion and fear flickered across his face in equal parts, and then rage, rage like nothing he had shown up to now, and he began to scream, a sound torn from his throat by force, a sound that split the world.

"He doesn't know you!" She tried to walk forward, found it hard, and now magic and purple fire rolled off of her elder brother in waves. "I don't know if he knows any of us any more!"

"He doesn't have to." Corrin turned back to Xander, and Camilla could not read her face. "No matter what happens, we're getting through this together. We're putting an end to this right now."

Camilla said nothing, ran to her wyvern as her beloved sister slammed into her beloved brother, as the sound of swords clashing rang out like hail on a metal roof.

Azura rose, saw Corrin fighting Xander in the distance. Shura was next to her on the floor, unmoving, and she knelt and checked his throat, his breathing—he was alive, if wounded. She kissed his temple, rose to her feet, stepped away from him.

Then she began to stamp out the rhythm. The rhythm was first.