Edelgard ached. Even the strength the Agarthans had imposed on her had its limits. She had lost track of how long she and Myson had traded the roles of cat and mouse as the mages had chased them around the base of the mountain only to be cut down. Bodies of both sides were everywhere that she looked, but she saw far too much crimson and silver

She dared to stop to catch her breath. She couldn't see the plateau from here, but the wind carried to the ring of battle to her ears. She had no faith to pray, but she could wish. Byleth must return to her. Even if her feelings were fruitless yearnings , as long as she and Byleth stood side by side once more and Cornelia was defeated, Edelgard would be content.

Caspar and Ferdinand appeared, hair plastered to their scalps with sweat and blood. Ferdinand took great gulping breaths. "We appear to have earned a moment of respite."

"I don't want to rest. I want to kill the people who killed—" A shudder overtook Caspar. "Dad. He's gone. He's really gone." His body shook with sobs as tears fell freely down his face.

Edelgard winced. She hated watching grief. Wallowing in pain seemed even more useless than wallowing in guilt. You used that pain to spur you onward or you died. "Yes, he is, but we have to keep moving."

Caspar's head snapped up and he rounded on her, his eyes shining with tears. "Shut up! You killed him! You chopped off his head and we left him there to rot!"

"If I hadn't, he would have become one of the Beasts and we would have died with him. Do you think your father would have wanted that?"

"I guess not." He screamed and kicked some pebbles hard enough to send them flying. "Promise me, Edelgard. Promise me that jerk will get what's coming to him."

"More likely that you beasts will get what's coming to you." Myson said. "We will drive you from Faerghus and then the world."

Edelgard turned to find four mages, Myson at their head. A pitiful force under normal circumstances, but she was tired. Nothing for it. She gripped her axe. "And we will drive you into the ground."

Magic whirled around them, dark spikes of energy seeking to impale them. But Hubert had taught Edelgard the rudiments of Agarthan magic and how to avoid it. She waited for the telltale burst of purple and black before sidestepping and cleaving her attacker in two, Still, the remaining mages kept up the assault, striking them with magic blasts that never quite found the target but forced them to dodge with increasingly sluggish reflexes. It was only a matter of time before one of them made a mistake and Myson moved in for the kill.

Edelgard leapt to one side to avoid another spike and stumbled over a lose stone. Time slowed as she put her hands out to brace her fall. Ferdinand and Caspar were locked in battles of their own and could not help her. Myson smiled and prepared more magic. This was how she was going to die. On the battlefield, alone but for her hated enemies and two classmates who held little love for her and without seeing Byleth again. An ignominious end for the Flame Emperor.

The kill strike never came. The air hummed with a different kind of magic. Edelgard hauled herself to her feet and watched in wonder as silver and gold lights hit the mages in the chest. Her gaze stopped the source of her rescue and found Lysithea, gripping Thyrsus and flanked by mages wearing the arms of House Ordelia. She clicked her tongue. "You really should be more careful, Edelgard."

Myson's face contorted into a mask of rage. "How dare you use one of those weapons against me! Know before I consign you to the eternal flames that our battle here has only ensured the death of everyone you love. Come and waste your remaining time."

Edelgard's blood ran cold. That was an oddly specific threat. Any mages with sense would have retreated in the face of overwhelming odds, but Myson and his confederates remained. She stumbled forward to stand beside Ferdinand. "We need to capture one," she whispered. "Find out their plan."

He nodded. Myson would take his secrets to the grave, but the one next to him, who was always a moment behind their comrades as if having to mentally rehearse every spell cast, was promising. Caspar sunk his axe in one of the remaining mages and charged toward Myson with a roar. His armor flashed in the light, his strikes wild with grief. Perfect.

"Die! You b—bastard!" His scream was a sob. Myson's hands glowed with fell power, but it was no good. Caspar lept atop him, striking him with the axe again and again until was barely recognizable as humanoid. One of the Ordelia mages hit the Agarthan Caspar had abandoned with a blast of lightning and she stumbled backward and fell to the ground.

And then there was one.

The mage's hands trembled almost imperceptibly as they surveyed their opposition. Edelgard allowed the power of the Crest of Flames to shimmer along her body and remind them what they was up against. "You must know that you can't win. Why throw your life away for a madman's scheme?"

The voice behind the filter was so like that of the Flame Emperor that it was uncanny. Feminine. Young. "I will never betray Agartha."

Ferdinand stepped forward. "And we would never ask you to. But a nation is more than the mad dreams of its leaders. Have the likes of Myson and Cornelia done anything for Agartha or have they only served their lust for vengeance and power?" He lay his blade on the ground. "Tell us what they are planning and we will allow you to leave."

Edelgard hissed. He had no right to make such a promise. Ferdinand had always been a bit of a fool, but this was idiotic even by his standards. Agartha was a poison that must be purged from the world for it to be truly free. As long as even one survived, they would continue to find pawns for the quest to eradicate humanity. Lysithea paled and the Ordelia mages clenched their fists. They knew.

The Agarthan shuddered. "I don't want to die." She held out her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Cornelia is sending men into the vaults to gather the Crest Stones stored there. When your friends break through the walls, they'll find an army of Demonic Beasts."

It was Edelgard's turn to shudder. There had been dozens or hundreds of Crest Stones in the vaults. Byleth and the army would be slaughtered. "Have they already taken the Stones?"

"I don't think so. We were supposed to delay any reinforcements, but Myson decided sport was more important. Please, I've told you all I know. Let me leave."

Emperor Edelgard would have struck her down without a moment's hesitation. She still should. The mage could warn Cornelia or attack the moment their backs were turned or any number of things that meant the blood of thousands would be on Edelgard's hands. Cold-hearted pragmatism demanded that she act.

But what had her pragmatism ever done except cost her her friends and her crown and murder innocents? Pragmatism would have left her a corpse on the steps of the throne room. If she wished to leave her bloodsoaked past behind her, she must forge a different path. "You may go "

"Really?" The mage removed her mask and threw it to the ground to wipe her face. She looked to be around Lysithea's age with sharp, almost skeletal features and stringy white hair. "Thank you." Her voice was high and quavering. "I won't forget this kindness." She vanished in a beam of purple light.

Caspar let out another scream and Edelgard wished she could join him. "We should have killed her. She's a bad guy." He scowled at Myson's remains. "At least now maybe my father can rest in peace."

"I agree," Lysithea said. "Who knows how many she'll go on to torture or kill?"

"Far fewer than will be slain if Cornelia's plan is carried out. And it would ignoble of us to break our word, not to mention discouraging future cooperation. I am proud of you, Edelgard."

Snow must have fallen in the Valley of Torment for Ferdinand to say that. "It's too late for regret. All that matters is stopping those Beasts." Even if she could rally her forces, they couldn't break through the walls and enter the vaults in time. "We'll have to teleport."

The Ordelia mages looked at each other. "I'm afraid we only specialized in purely offensive magic. None of us know how to teleport, especially to a place we've never been."

"I can bring in a strike force. One or two people." Lysithea's voice cracked a bit. "Edelgard, you'll have to describe the vaults very precisely so I can aim the spell."

She looked almost as pale as the Agarthans as she spoke. Of course they were all exhausted from the long hours of battle, but this was more than that. Fear. Lysithea was afraid of the dark. And they had none of Claude's lanterns. Going to the vaults would be the same for her as unleashing a horde of rats on Edelgard.

She longed to lie down and sleep for a day or more, but she couldn't while the army was in danger. "Thales taught me the spell so I could fulfill my role as Flame Emperor. It'll be much easier to cast it since I've been there."

"But Edelgard—"

"Go to the battlefield. They have a greater need for your magic than we do."

"Don't take such a patronizing tone." Lysithea huffed but then her face softened as she squeezed Edelgard's shoulder. "I forbid you to die down there. Good luck."

Ferdinand and Caspar each took one of Edelgard's hands, she muttered words she hadn't spoken since the Holy Tomb, and the world lurched sideways.

Edelgard landed on her hands and knees on a rough stone floor. She retched and likely would have vomited if there had been anything left her stomach. The room spun. She forced herself to breathe. Teleportation sickness always passed, no matter how it felt in the moment.

Ferdinand hauled Edelgard to her feet. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness enough for her to see brick caked in grime. The air was stale. The boy who had trapped them here—Sylvain—had told her and Dimitri that the ghosts of every Blaiddyd roamed these passages, and looking around at the bones made it easy to see why the vaults would foster ghost stories. Well, if the spirits of the royal line did linger here, she couldn't offend them more than she already had. She took the rightmost passage, which sloped gently downward toward the heart of the vaults and hopefully their prize. As she did, different ghosts haunted her.

"Do you think that there really are ghosts down here?" Dimitri shivered in the darkness.

"Half my teachers say that the Goddess takes everyone to her side after they die and half of them say that we just stop existing. Either way, no ghosts." It was dark and there were probably all kinds of scary things down here, but she was away from her uncle and guards who never let her have a moment's peace. "We're a prince and a princess and we're not scared of any ghosts."

"A princess?"

Edelgard cringed. Her uncle had told her that she must never tell anyone who she truly was or write to her father or siblings. Evil men would find them if she did. But Edelgard was tired of being caged. "My father is Ionius IX of Adrestia."

Edelgard clapped a hand over her mouth. Her uncle—her real uncle—hadn't been playing politics when he'd abducted her to Faerghus. He'd been trying ro save her from Aegir and the Agarthans. Had her brief, innocent rebellion set in motion Arundel's death and all that came after? Only one person knew and he would lie to twist the knife out of spite.

She stumbled down, into the depths, to the resting places of the Blaiddyds who'd been loyal dukes and counts of a united Empire. Not all of them, to be sure—the tombs of the original Ten Elites were lost to history—but enough that she could feel the weight of those who had lived in a world at once so near and diametrically opposed to the one she had sought to create. She wondered what they would have thought of her.

They came to the circular chamber. The stone here was old, intricately carved in a style that hadn't been popular in either the Empire or the Kingdom for over a thousand years. Weapons and armor that were crude by current standards but looked as if they had been forged yesterday stood sentinel. Magic thrummed through the dead air and made her hair stand on end. Blood red stones, more than Edelgard had seen in one place outside the Holy Tomb. They seemed to call to her, to the blood that had been forced on her. Whispering of power and secrets. Only take us, they seemed to say, and you will have the power to make your dreams come true.

"You feel it too, do you not?" Ferdinand whispered. "There is power enough in this place to destroy all of Fódlan."

"What are you guys talking about?" Caspar asked, a little too loudly. "Or is this one of those moments that I should be glad that I don't have a Crest?"

Edelgard stared at the light, entranced. This power made monsters of men, both literally and figuratively. Thales had used them to turn the condemned of Adrestia into fodder for her war, and the nobles bred humans like livestock to use them to their full potential. Dark power, but power all the same. She had been ready to wield it, not through Aymr but through her very body. Fatigue invaded every inch of her, but even one of those stones would allow her to have strength enough to take on all the forces Agartha could muster and more. Soldiers wouldn't be butchered as they had today. She could protect them, protect Byleth.

If she didn't became another shrieking beast.

Ferdinand tore his gaze away. "Well, we seem to have beaten our enemy here, at any rate. But I confess that I am a loss as to what to do with these."

"Destroy them." That was what she had meant to do at the Holy Tomb, before Byleth had taken back most of the stones and Metodey had scurried off with the rest. The church and the Agarthans had fought over them for centuries and they had only been tools of oppression against humanity. Break them and ordinary mortals would find strength.

Strength to turn the fields red with blood.

The sound of footsteps filled the corridor behind them. Caspar and Ferdinand looked at each other and then at her, their faces almost skeletal with exhaustion but resolute all the same. "Edelgard, destroy the stones," Ferdinand said. "We'll hold them off and buy you time."

"What?" Edelgard's own exhaustion must have been playing tricks with her mind. "You'll be killed."

"Probably." Caspar shrugged. "But if we don't destroy those stones, then a lot more people are going to die. Including Byleth."

He was right. The burn in her chest told her that much. There was a time she would have sent them to their deaths without so much as an eyeblink. But now... Dorothea's, Bernadetta's, Hubert's voices, all those who had died for her dream, swirled around her, yet more ghosts. She could not bear to add to their number. "I'll be the last of the Black Eagles. You can't."

"I fear we must," Ferdinand said with a half-smile. "I know you do not care for such things, but I believe that I was wrong about you. You are a noble and not a tyrant after all. It has been an honor. "

Edelgard's vision blurred with tears and she moved hastily to wipe them away. It would not do for them to see her cry, not now. "An honor to fight alongside both of you for what was truly right. Your sacrifices won't be in vain."

"Then come, Caspar!" Ferdinand said with a little of the old brightness. "Let's show these ruffians what a true noble is made of."

"Heh." Caspar's voice shook. "Do you think my father would be proud of me now?"

"I don't know. I am."

He smiled through his own tears. "You're all right, Edelgard. Tell Ashe to look after the cat, okay?"

They ran down the corridor, their shouts mingled with the clang of steel on steel. Edelgard turned on shaking legs back to the Crest Stones. Those thrice-cursed Crest Stones. Her classmates, her...friends were out there dying because of Thales and Cornelia's insanity. And she was permitting it because she wasn't strong enough. Just like Dorothea and Petra. She was tired of people dying because of her weakness.

The Crest Stones glinted. She had been ready to transform herself for ambition, once. If she could keep this from ever happening again... The sounds of battle grew fainter and then died away entirely. Her ears strained in the silence, waiting for Ferdinand and Caspar's victory shouts and for the miracles that had happened so many times.

But the silence stretched on. Edelgard grabbed the smallest stone and shoved it in her pocket. Then, with a last scream she sent a fireball at the rest and vanished as the flames consumed the last of those blighted rocks that had existed too far beyond their time. The remaining stone seemed to burn as well, searing hot even through fur and wool. But it was nothing compared to what she had already endured.

She teleported, not to Lysithea, but to the deserted camp. Her rucksack lay beside her bedroll as it always did. Byleth would hate that she had lied, but if the day ever came that the Hegemon was necessay, Edelgard would endure that hatred and call it a bargain, She was reformed but one thing had not changed: she would sacrifice anything for Fòdlan's new dawn.