The hunter curled onto their side and remained there unmoving. Then, with a deep inhale, they rolled onto their knees and brought their feet beneath them. The broken blunderbuss sat forlornly in the snow alongside the bloodied whittling knife. Ignoring them, the hunter instead took the discarded repeating pistol and spun the wheel; powder deposited in the pans, but it held no bullets. They tossed it aside. The saw spear was lifted, settling heavily back into their hand. With trembling fingers, they also grasped the elaborate pommel of the chikage. Blood slid from the blade and puddled upon the stone as they picked it up. The hilt still held remnant heat from the crow's grip.

The knotted strips of the bedsheet slumped over the wall and dangled against the portcullis archway. The hunter's thigh was still steadily bleeding, but they limped over to the makeshift rope and looked out at the broken bridge. After a long moment, they tossed the saw spear and the chikage over the parapet edge. Both clattered against the ground below. The hunter wiped their palms against their shirt, grasped the sheet, and descended.


The water looked like obsidian. Dark, choppy waves sent glinting crests to break against the foundations of the bridge. The hunter sat upon the shattered edge and stared at the scattering curves. Wind chilled the wound upon their thigh, and they saw a pinkish blanket of frost growing over the blood that had spilled onto the stone. They brushed the back of their hand against their forehead. It was hot and damp with sweat. Their stomach lurched.

Corruption now coursed through them, and the fever marked its path, but the hunter knew that they only felt ill because every part of their body hated the depth of the black water below.

They lifted their gaze. The other end of the broken bridge was a dim and distant thing. Their hand crept a little further upward to tap the golden rim of the crown.

Why had the martyr even given them the damned thing? They would have had a far easier time escaping without it. They could have fled the keep and crossed the mainland bridge with ease, still accepting of the illusions that the queen maintained— but, they realized, such an escape would have been possible only if Annalise had been unwilling to dispel her falsehoods on her own. Based on the nobles' unmasked misery, she had no qualms with doing so.

Her control of the castle was absolute. Her control of the hunter—

Was the fire in their veins not a comfort? Was the hearth built within them not pleasant? Had the hunter not claimed a home, and had they not pledged absolute obedience to their monarch, their mother-of-blood, their—

More-than-marionettist. Would the crown protect them from the queen's powerful persuasion? The hunter now realized that they had only been allowed to flee the throne room because she had wanted to grant the crow the chase. If her whim had been otherwise, then they would have remained beholden to her call. The crow could have placed the knife in the hunter's hand, and the line they would have cut through their own gut would have simply made sense— because she would have made it so. Her restrained attempt to slit their throat in the library, while limited in length by her mask, had shown the hunter that a moment would have been more than enough. Their will, when placed in her hands, would have them happily dying at her feet.

The wind battered their ears, but the hunter could hear a distant sound: something mechanical, with gears slotting into gears as a counterweight swung. They did not turn to watch the portcullis rise. The water sat far below, waiting.

The hunter dragged their hand over their face and rubbed at their eyes. They were suddenly quite glad that the crown hadn't fallen from their head during the fight with the crow. However, there was a tight feeling in their cranium centered somewhere along the crossing of their optic nerves. It thudded like a headache. The hunter looked upward and let the void stretch of the sky fill their sight. It was darker than the water below, deeper than the water below. Not a single glimmer of light. Empty in perpetuity—

A trickle of heat slipped over their lip and the hunter tasted iron. A small murmur of worry escaped them. They pressed their fingers to their bleeding nose and closed their eyes.

With this crown, the queen had sought out a king that could withstand the absolute truth of the world— and where was he now, really? Had the martyr killed him, or had his end been found beneath the crushing clarity of the golden band?

Despite the skyless dark, a red light bloomed through their eyelids.

"I will tell thee that it cannot be withstood forever," Annalise said with some exacting measure of sadness. "Thy ken crosses not with Logarius' line. Fool as he is, he may weather a weight that thou mayst not."

The hunter shivered. They did not turn around.

"For thee to sit here so…" She sighed, and although the hunter could not see her, they could surmise that her attention had shifted to the broken bridge. "If thou'rt truly considering throwing thyself to the water, then know that it is futile," she added. "Be it by net or by tempest, thy body can be brought to shore."

When they offered no response, she continued, and each word dripped with sweet gloss. "Such a needless struggle," she said. "I was rash in introducing thee to Our customs. Thou'rt easily upset by matters of the arcane, and I should have been sensitive to thy fear. But for thee to cast thyself to the depths would be an unforgivable foolishness. Would it not be easier for us both? For thee to turn back, and for us to act as if naught had happened?"

Their jaw tightened. Annalise's voice moved, and there was the light sound of her step; the hunter fought the urge to turn and look. "The sight of thee still enrages me. I admit to wishing thee agony," she said, but her voice was still honeyed and low. "I admit to needing thee. Needing what thy body brings, and the grand tether of thy Dream. But I admit to—" she said, and she faltered. The hunter wondered how calculated the stumble was.

"I admit to wanting thee," she said plainly, and the hunter's chest ached. "Carry the crown upon thy brow, if that be thy wish. Thou'rt aware enough of the costs involved both in keeping it and casting it away. I will not ask thee to remove it."

The hunter steadied their breathing.

To fill the silence, Annalise spoke. "Did the crow cut thee? Dost thou still feel Our pulse in thine? The warmth?" She paused, expecting an answer, but none came. "Our crow. Wouldst thou care to know? The last talon of Cainhurst lies broken by thy—"

They shook their head, and, to their relief, Annalise fell silent.

"Guilt is thy only true anchor," she murmured. "Thou'rt so very guilty of living." Her voice strengthened. "Such a deep well of mercy that thou'rt drowning in. The world is undeserving of both thine and mine, and incapable of receiving it, besides— know, good hunter, that this is true: this long night was made for thee. Death drips filthily from thy hands. Thy touch only sullies. The tarnish only spreads. A hunter must hunt, no? Thou doth dearly miss thy Church-called whited sepulcher. But truly, wouldst thy hand better hold a blade beneath lunar auspice, if to do the same for me causes thee such disgust? To which violent ends must thy blind comfort be found in serving?"

"It's not the same," the hunter said. "You're—"

"Thy belief is truly that the old man by the lake was some doddering innocent? That the spider he tutored into perfect idiocy simply plucked her new eyes from trees? Thou'rt sickened by Our rule due to the abundance of graves. What difference can be claimed from any other effort upon the mainland? How many graves line thy little false home? More, I expect, than even thy true one. And I speak not of the tombstones that thy Doll decorates with her tears. I speak of the stolen dowry that the Church used to seduce thy patron and conceive thy Dream. The only currency is sin. I offered an ocean. They offered a pyre. Art thou truly so naïve as to not notice that the Gods only offer their attention when something is wrong?"

The hunter hunched forward, curling in a little further in upon themself.

"And what art thou playing at now? Art thou made sessile in thy cowardice? Art thou fastened to the stone?" Anger honed her tone, but the hunter could tell that it was now mostly affected; she was aiming to get a rise out of them. "Either do the useless thing that requires a strength thou'rt severely lacking, or face Us with some last manner of pride. We do not wish to speak to the back of thy head."

The hunter answered with silence. They waited for her ire to fade.

"Your king," the hunter finally said. "What did he see when he looked at you?"

"Thou holdst no trust in my telling," Annalise said, her voice low and flat. "See for thyself."

The hunter rose. The hinge of the saw spear had been damaged by the toss from the barbican, but the handle settled into their palm all the same. The engravings whorled across the chikage's hilt jutted against their hand until they found the proper grip. They turned.

Annalise was no more than herself. But through her, around her—

It was a scab-black thread that had long ago scorched its way along the paths of her pulse. The shape was looped heaviest at her throat, but in the spans that it weaved down beyond her heart, it hooked into the world— the frigid air, the empty castle, and the crowded earth beneath. Each portion of her sovereign reality was snagged upon a barb and fed by a bleeding fount. By its mark, the world was excoriated, scarred. The burning shape pierced and spread through everything like a net of red dodder.

So, this was the runemark made by the blood that Annalise had claimed from the college, the living brand seared in by her will. It was in the hunter, too, as a vine leashed along their veins. Still, the crown now warded them, like an axe taken to surrounding briar.

The hunter tried to pull their focus back to the foreground, but Annalise's slim figure was blurred and lost in a field of red. There was a single glint. The queen's blank silver mask was still held high and proud. Through her ambition, the corruptive shape had wormed out countless capillary roots, and though the castle had been cut off from all else by the martyr's efforts, they still grew. Thickets of them proliferated ever tighter, and each threadlike growth was was warm with the heat of a coming immolation. But it hadn't only corroded what it had ensnared— despite the burning heat, false life had flourished in the fever.

Life had flourished, too, in the captured corpses beneath her feet, in accrued dregs deposited—

Some natal thought pushed at the hunter's awareness. They exhaled slowly. Their vision trawled over the way her power had weaved into the world, each twist and knot of it sending their stomach into a vile lurch, but in its tangles they felt something unfamiliar. As strange as the sight of the strings she pulled was, the hunter's acquaintance with Annalise's blood still felt uncomfortably intimate. It was something that they had once welcomed. As the hunter peered at the narrow gaps left between the threads, the tiny holes left in her tapestry, they instead sought the thing that they could see but not recognize.

It squirmed.

There was something behind her. There was something hiding in the space between her heartbeats, in the interstitium—

something pushing like a skullcap burst through a caul like a breech birth like a breach in the firmament

something steaming on the altar scalding amniotic stillborn, reborn

The hunter wanted to clutch at the pounding in their temples, but their arms were leaden, unmoving; the shock kept them still. They made a quiet and wordless sound as they stood like a stone. The queen had gathered death in such density that it had collapsed and became its opposite. She was now only searching for its inducement. A child of blood found birth in rot.

Finally, the sight of movement made them jerk. Annalise had stepped towards the hunter with one hand outstretched, as if wanting to steady them. But around her, tugged by the locus of her movement, the infesting strings shook as if plucked, placental portent built behind her hemorrhagic deluge

Their thoughts spun together and tangled in terrible knots, even as the crown was heavy on their brow. They crushed their eyelids shut to hide the sight and fought the pain of their pupils as they dilated diluvial aperture rupture the force of the crowning will make the world rip free of its axis

With another step, she would touch them.

"No," they cried out, their voice raw and distant to their own ears, and they lifted the sword in an attempt to deter her. The sharp tip weaved unsteadily through the air and snagged at the draping of her gown. The hunter struggled, then steadied; the point stilled just beneath her sternum.

The silver helm inclined, and there was a tired sigh.

Annalise strode up the blade. In their wrists, the hunter felt the resistance of the sword sliding alongside her spine. Her grasp on the world twitched and drew infinitesimally tighter, and though the blood flowed, there was no wounding. The hunter could not breathe; there was a gasp trapped deep, airless, and harsh in their lungs as crimson seeped a circle from the piercing steel. They could not move; the crown could hack at the thicket but each thorn would leak sap until they were engulfed.

She was close to them, now, and speaking words that swaddled them. They were weeping; a hand brushed their cheek. She said their name, the name she had exhumed for them. Her encasing helm gleamed silver, strangely bright beneath the empty sky.

"In living, we scar the world," she murmured, and the hunter felt her resting against them; blood dribbled over their wrist as her body hit the hilt. "This is true. From forefather and further, the sins weigh so heavily, forever— and so too are my own not so easily forfeit. This is Our only absolution. I will not beg."

Her touch ventured higher. Perhaps it was to brush away the hair stuck sweatily to their temples, or perhaps it was to lift the rim of the crown. Perhaps her king had once truly seen the potential behind her and had accepted it.

The hunter could not.

They thrust their arm forward, and she staggered, forced away from them by the way the chikage's hilt jutted against her chest. In return, the hunter fell backward— the heel of their boot scraped against the sudden slope of the broken stone, and then it struck against nothing. The wind shrilled. The hunter glimpsed the ribbon-wrapped mask and a pale hand reaching for them before they plummeted out of sight.

When they hit the water, their ribs cracked and a vertebrae low in their back fissured apart, bursting the broken shards into their abdomen; their battered lungs did not even hold the strength to drown by bringing in water. Ice rushed up past their ears. The pain and the cold flowed together until both felt like nothing. They did not move. They only sank. Still, the hunter's eyes were open, unblinking; the dark water above them had been fractured at an odd angle, brightened by a sudden and inevitable light.

The hunter died within the reflection of the moon.