Chapter 22: Should I Die… - Part 3: Before I Burn…(Valeria's Perspective)

Fire

The world outside is fire.

It spreads in great gouts, sheets of liquid promethium turning the underhive's corpse-choked avenues into a road of burning ruin. The flames rage unchecked, swallowing bodies whole, reducing them to charred husks in seconds. Smoke boils up in blackened plumes, blotting out what little light remains in this hellish place. The horde is burning—heretics, mutants, twisted things that were once men and women—now writhing torches, screaming as they stumble forward before collapsing, smoldering, onto the pyre.

I can see it all through the reinforced viewport of the Chimera. The thermal wash warps the edges of my vision, turning the flickering inferno into a shifting, nightmarish dance of shadows and fire. The treads beneath us crunch through brittle bones, slick with boiling fat and liquefied flesh, sending up sickly plumes of steam. The air stinks of burning meat and promethium exhaust, the rebreather in my helm doing little to block out the taste of charred marrow that clings to the back of my throat.

The vox crackles.

"Keep us steady, driver." Faust's voice, clipped, calm. Controlled.

The response is immediate, but hoarse. "Aye, lord. Full speed ahead."

The Chimera lurches as we clear another mound of the dead, the machine spirit snarling through the cabin's auspex like a wounded beast. The driver growls something incoherent, something low and gritted with strain. I don't recognize the voice, but I can hear the effort in it, the weight of exertion.

Another explosion impacts ahead of us—whumpf—sending a wave of fire cascading toward the sky. The shockwave rattles the hull, throwing me against the restraints. The viewport blazes with the flash of ignited accelerant, and for a moment, all I see is a wall of flame before the Chimera punches through the blast zone.

The driver makes a sound—a wet, hacking cough. The vox crackles again, but he says nothing.

I frown, glancing toward Faust. He notices it too.

"Driver, report."

Silence. Then, a ragged inhale. "Still… still here, lord. It's hot. Throne, it's hot."

He doesn't sound right. There's a strain to his voice now, a warbling tremor. I feel something coil in my gut.

The Chimera's armor plating should protect him from the worst of the heat, but the viewport, even reinforced, is still just a reinforced layer of plasteel. We're driving through an inferno—air heated to hundreds of degrees, flame licking at the hull, burning bodies crushed beneath our treads, igniting as we churn through them.

The vox clicks live again. "…Starting to stick… controls are stiff. Like…" He coughs. "…Like they're melting."

Frak.

I glance toward Faust, but he says nothing, his jaw clenched, gaze locked on the forward display. We're closing on the corpse ramp, the massive, heaped pile of bodies that stretches up to the Basilica's wall like a bridge built of the dead. The fire has consumed most of the lowest layers, but the sheer press of bodies—stacked thick, compressed by the weight of thousands—means that it won't burn through completely.

The promethium bombards it in rhythmic pulses, ensuring that any heretic attempting to climb is reduced to slag, but the pile itself has become something worse—a smoldering, shifting thing, part fire, part flesh, rolling like a wave as the heat eats at its core. The only way up is through it.

The driver grunts. "Hitting… hitting the ramp now. Emperor protect."

The Chimera jerks violently as we mount the first layer of bodies, treads grinding into burning corpses, sending up clouds of blistering steam. The air is thick with the sound of snapping bone, popping fat, the grotesque hiss of superheated blood turning to vapor.

Then the screaming starts.

Not from outside.

From the driver.

It starts as a low, broken groan—then builds into a choked, gurgling howl.

He's burning.

Even through the armor, even with the protection of the Chimera's plating, the heat is too much. The viewport, small, angled as it is, must be glowing white-hot, the air inside the compartment turning to a searing, flesh-stripping furnace.

He screams again—a raw, animal noise. I can hear the bubbling in his throat, the flesh in his mouth blistering. He keeps driving.

Emperor's blood, he keeps driving.

I can't see him, but I can smell it. The stench of roasting meat, of scorched flesh, pouring in through the vents. I try to block it out, try to focus on the way the Chimera climbs, on the shifting pile of bodies, on the flames outside that churn like a living thing.

He's still moving. Still pushing us forward.

His breath is ragged, but I hear his teeth grit over the vox. "Almost… almost there."

The Chimera lurches again, clearing another rise. The engine growls in protest, the treads slipping on the slick, burning slope—but we don't stop.

Faust is silent, his knuckles white against the overhead railing. He's letting it happen. Letting the man die if it means getting us over the top.

Another pulse of fire blossoms around us, a fresh rain of promethium turning the final stretch into a seething hellscape. The driver chokes out a wordless cry, his voice cracking, breaking—but he holds the line.

We crest the ramp.

For a single, impossible moment, the Chimera is airborne, treads lifting as we clear the final rise. Then we slam down onto the walltop, landing hard enough that my teeth clack together inside my skull.

The driver exhales. It's a rattling, wheezing thing.

Then he goes silent.

The Chimera sputters.

Loses power.

Stops.

The machine spirit wails through the auspex, the engine coughing, choking, then dying altogether. The vox crackles one last time.

"…Made it."

Then, nothing.

A slow, awful stillness spreads through the compartment.

Then Faust moves.

"Out! Now!" he snarls, punching the emergency override.

The rear hatch detonates with a percussive crack, explosive bolts firing, blowing the armored door clean off.

Smoke pours in, rolling in thick, cloying waves.

The chainsword, Scarmaker, finds its way to my hand unbidden, its white, red, and gold gilding glowing in the light of the fire. It growls and it needs not my finger on the trigger to give it voice. It senses its brethren, the other honor guard. It wants to run, I let it.

Fire

It's the first thing I see as I spill out of the Chimera, the blast of the rear hatch punching open like a hammer-strike to the skull. The smoke is thick and acrid, roiling in dense, choking coils, mixing with the stench of charred flesh and promethium's chemical tang. My boots hit the deck of the wall, ceramite ringing against the scorched metal plating. The weight of my armor settles as I orient myself.

And then my helmet's auspex floods my vision.

Emperor's mercy!

The Basilica is on the edge of collapse.

The walls are broken in places, the once-imposing defenses now crumbling, choked with the dead, the dying, and those too crazed to understand they should be both. The horde—the uncountable masses of heretics, mutants, and cult-scum—is still pouring over the edges of the walls, flinging themselves into the courtyard below in waves of writhing, howling bodies.

I register everything in an instant.

The first barricade is already gone. Two Chimeras burn at its edges, their hulls belching thick columns of oily smoke into the hive's cavernous heights. The defenders—what's left of them—are falling back in ragged groups, dragging wounded, firing wildly, anything to slow the tide.

The second barricade is barely holding. A meat-grinder of close-quarters combat, the front ranks locked in a desperate melee. I can see Sisters, Arbites, and militia standing shoulder-to-shoulder, their armor black with gore, their faces set in grim, unflinching resolve as they hack, stab, and shoot into the press of bodies slamming against them. Las-bolts strobe through the dark like the flickering eyes of a dying god.

The third and fourth barricades, smaller, higher on the chapel steps, are nothing more than two ridges of debris reinforced with sandbags and stolen gilded pews. But the gunners there—mostly arbites, some white robed forms, mostly children—are still firing, picking off heretics from range with a slow, methodical discipline that is more terrifying than the howls of the cultists themselves.

And the courtyard…

I can barely comprehend the scale of it.

A sea of bodies, so many packed together that they are tripping over each other, surging toward the chapel's gates in an undulating mass of madness. The sheer weight of them is unbearable to look at, a churning carpet of flesh and ragged banners of skin that seem to ripple like the tide.

A breath hitches in my throat.

And then I feel her.

Aurora.

It hits me like a spear to the chest, a presence, curling around my armor like unseen fingers, sinking into my joints, my marrow, my soul. My breath stutters. My knees almost give out.

It's not pain.

It's need.

The desperate, clawing hunger for air only experienced by something drowning, something reaching, something pulling; pulling me forward as if I were a lifeline between the surface and the abyss.

It's overwhelming.

I gasp.

I stagger.

My gauntlet clenches around the grip of Scarmaker as my legs move without thought, pulling me forward, a marionette on strings. My limbs feel lighter, my movements sharper, stronger. The fear in my gut is gone, wiped clean like a prayer on the lips of the dying.

I need to move.

I need to reach her.

I whip my head toward Faust. "We have to reach the chapel!" I barely recognize my own voice, hoarse and raw, shaking with something more than fear or fervor.

Faust glances at me, then at the ocean of enemies between us and the Basilica. His expression doesn't change.

Then he laughs. A low, dry chuckle, full of something that might almost be amusement. "You're welcome to pray for a miracle, Novitiate."

He reaches into his coat.

"I," he continues, retrieving a small, coffin-like object, "will make one."

The movement is so quick I almost don't register it.

He cracks the device in half.

And then the screaming starts.

It's not ours.

It's theirs.

The air rips, as if the very fabric of reality had been hooked and torn open by unseen hands. There is no wind, but the sound is deafening—a suctioning roaring gale that seems to pull at the edges of existence itself.

The heretics nearest Faust explode.

Not from bullets. Not from flame.

They just bloom into fountains of viscera.

One moment they are rushing forward, blades raised, mouths twisted in shrieking war cries—

The next, they are gone, shredded outward as if caught in an invisible blast wave, limbs flung back, torsos crushed inward, eyes bursting in their skulls as the force of it ruptures everything.

And the effect doesn't stop.

It keeps moving, rolling outward from Faust like an expanding sphere of unseen force.

Bodies crumple, implode, detonate outward in sprays of red mist and pulped meat, scattering in every direction. Limbs twist at unnatural angles. Heretics collapse mid-scream, reduced to little more than shattered sacks of flesh. It doesn't just kill them. It un-makes them.

My stomach lurches, but I keep moving.

I have to keep moving.

Faust's voice cuts through the chaos, sharp as a knife. "Stay close, Novitiate. And whatever you do, keep your helmet on. The runes should keep you alive. If not, well… let's hope your faith is tangible today."

He starts running.

And suddenly, he is fast.

Too fast!

A blur of dark cloth and flashing augmetic glints, he moves, his black coat whipping behind him like a shroud. He isn't even looking back, just sprinting forward, into the gatehouse, down the staircase.

The effect follows him, the killing field moving with him, a sphere of annihilation that keeps expanding, rupturing anything caught within it.

I run to keep up.

Even with my power armor. Even with the Saint's light pulsing through my limbs. I struggle.

But I keep going.

The enemy can't stop us. They can't even approach.

The staircase quakes beneath my boots as I descend, a storm of blood and bone shrapnel exploding outward around me.

The Chapel is ahead.

Aurora is ahead.

Aurora, I am coming!

Hurry!

We hit the bottom of the stairs running.

The wall of bodies in front of us is a shifting mass of shrieking, flailing limbs. The moment my boots hit the courtyard, the sheer scale of it threatens to break my mind. Every square meter of ground is alive with movement—clawed hands raking at the air, broken-limbed mutants dragging themselves forward with fanatical fervor, flayed men weeping and screaming in devotion, their mouths too ruined to form words.

We don't slow down.

Faust runs like a predator, moving with that unnatural, augmetic-enhanced speed, his coat billowing behind him like a death shroud. I follow, bolter strapped to my side, both hands gripping Scarmaker—the weapon snarls in my palms, eager, vibrating in some ancient, terrifying excitement. The screaming radius of destruction continues to follow Faust, bodies erupting into nothing as we carve a gory path through the courtyard.

Faust snaps onto the open vox.

"Defenders of Saint Jessamine, hold your fire on the left flank! I repeat, hold your Emperor-damned fire! I have no interest in being las-burned to ash or reduced to a crater by a bolter volley. Two friendlies inbound to the chapel steps. You'll know us when you see us."

A burst of static. Then a response.

"Who the frak is this?" a voice snarls, vox-distorted, Arbites could be Tully by the grit in his tone.

Faust laughs as he vaults over a pile of corpses, lands lightly, and keeps running. "Inquisition, of course. Open your frakking eyes, Sergeant. We're the ones walking through a sea of corpses without getting our skulls split open."

There's another pause, a few unintelligible words that could probably get someone burned at the stake on a good day, then— "Copy that... Inquisition."

I have no idea whether they believe him, or if they just don't have the manpower to waste rounds on anyone willing to charge toward the horde instead of away from it.

The defenders are still five hundred meters away.

And at this pace, we might actually make it.

Then, like a candle winking out in the dark—

The screaming stops.

One second, heretics are exploding all around us, turning to meat and vapor, bodies flung away from Faust as if the Emperor Himself had exhaled His holy wrath upon them. The next—

Nothing.

The unseen wave of annihilation collapses into silence.

The air turns thin. The bodies don't burst apart. The heretics don't crumple mid-charge.

We are no longer untouchable.

The effect is immediate.

The enemy lunges.

The first heretic comes straight at Faust, a hulking, muscle-clad brute, a scrap-axe raised in both hands. Faust doesn't hesitate—he sidesteps the swing, moving with such ease it's almost unfair, then pulls twin inferno pistols from his coat and fires point-blank.

The heretic disintegrates into a boiling pillar of molten bone and vaporized blood.

The ones behind him don't stop.

Faust is already moving, sweeping the twin pistols in arcs, reducing square meters of the enemy into steaming ruin—but it's not enough.

The horde is too vast, and we're right in the middle of them.

I can feel Scarmaker screaming in my hands.

I stop fighting it.

I let it take me.

The first enemy comes at me—a thing with its face flensed down to muscle and gristle, teeth exposed in a permanent rictus. Scarmaker moves. I barely register my arm following its hungry arc—a brutal, upward rip that splits the cultist from hip to skull in a fountain of gore.

Then another—Scarmaker howls.

My feet move without thought. I pivot, the sword twisting me into motion like a dance-step of death, opening a man from collarbone to gut. His entrails weep from his gut onto the charred ground.

Then a third, a fourth—

Scarmaker drags me forward, a force more ancient than I can comprehend, guiding my limbs like a puppeteer pulling strings, no, more intimately than that, like a dance partner, leading me in a waltz of gore.

I am moving. I am killing. I am surviving.

And then—a presence.

My mind screams.

I drop.

"FAUST, DOWN!"

I hit the stone hard, instincts overriding sense. There is no sound, only the feeling of the air being ripped away.

Then—

A streak of lightning.

A blur of silver and blue and gold.

A shockwave that rips past, carving through everything.

I see it.

A thunder hammer, spinning through the air, crackling with raw, unbridled power, tracing a corridor of destruction through the courtyard. The sheer force of its passage turns the horde into meat-chaff, pulverizing cultists into showers of flesh and bone.

Then, as if bound by gravity itself—

It whips back to the hands of its owner.

I snap my head up—

And they are there.

Aurora's Honor Guard.

Saint Jessamine's Honor Guard.

Ten women.

Ancient power armor—silver and scarred, pitted and scratched with age but untouched by ruin, lit from within by a golden radiance.

They scream as they charge.

Not words. Not human words.

Their throats give inhuman, keening wails, battle-cries that do not belong to mortal voices.

The horde cannot withstand them.

They slam into the enemy with the force of battle-tanks, throwing bodies into the air like toys, shields locked, blades flashing.

Their weapons are alive.

I know it the same way I feel Scarmaker singing in my grip.

These are not people.

Not anymore.

These are weapons wearing human forms.

I see it.

The way they move, too precise, too flawless—like wraiths piloting flesh, like spirits animating armor and steel, bound by something ancient and unknowable.

And I feel it in me.

Scarmaker is screaming, thrumming with fury, longing, joy.

It wants to join them.

It wants to slaughter, to dance the slaughter-dance, to sing with its lost kin.

I clench my grip.

No.

I will not be a puppet.

I swallow, shaking with the effort of returning Scarmaker to my hip, then turn to Faust, who is staring at them with cold, calculating eyes.

I catch my breath and I smirk the words pouring out past my mental filters with inertia born of pure relief.

"See, Interrogator?" I say, voice tight with adrenaline, blood-slicked armor glowing. "Faith does work miracles."

His head tilts, regarding me with a look I can't decipher. Then—

He smirks back.

The horde around us is breaking, if only for a moment.

The Chapel is finally within reach.

We run.

The Honor Guard moves with us, their ranks sealing around Faust and me like the jaws of a great steel beast. I don't tell them to. I don't ask them to. They simply do. Their movements are inhumanly precise, a perfect phalanx of overlapping shields, their leader—a towering sister with a thunder hammer crackling in both hands—leading the charge.

The hammer-wielder moves like a force of nature. Where she goes, bodies fly apart, their flesh reduced to ragged ruin by the power field roaring at the hammer's edges. Golden light explodes with every swing. Her armor shines with holy radiance, her silvered helm expressionless, impassive, almost sculpted in its detached divinity.

I am not sure she is even alive.

We smash into the base of the stairs, boots hitting hard stone, vaulting over burning debris and torn bodies. The defenders above us fight like cornered beasts, struggling to hold the final barricades, their weapons flickering in the dimming light.

And then I see them.

The difference.

The Arbites fight with mad desperation, cursing, barking orders, gritting their teeth as they die in the press. They know they will lose, they know this is the end, but they fight anyway.

The gangers fight with mad terror, their eyes wide, their bodies shaking, their movements sharp and untrained, like animals backed into a cage—fighting only because to stop is certain death.

But the Sisters?

The militia?

The ones wearing robes of white, the ones whose eyes glow with a golden light that should not be?

They do not fight like people.

They are silent.

Not a word. Not a cry. Not even a breath of exertion.

They move methodically, their strikes flawless, their formations unyielding, their bolters firing in perfect sync, not a single wasted round, not a single unnecessary motion.

And they do not react to us at all.

I could scream into their faces, and I do not think they would turn.

They see, but they do not see. They fight, but they are not here.

I grip Scarmaker tighter. Something is very, very wrong.

The Honor Guard peels away as we reach the top of the steps, forming a silent ring at the summit. They do not return to battle.

They simply stand.

I turn, pulse hammering in my throat. "Why aren't they—"

"Not our concern." Faust's voice isn't cold. It's sharp. Focused. He's noticed it too. He moves past me, stepping toward the ruined defenses, his inferno pistols still hot in his hands.

A figure limps toward us.

"Sergeant Tully!"

Bloodied.

His left arm strapped against his chest, the bandages filthy, dark with old blood. A fresh gash cuts down his cheek, but his eyes are clear.

And they are very, very tired.

Faust steps forward. "Sergeant—"

"I don't know you." Tully's voice is hoarse, raw, like he's been shouting for hours. He doesn't slow down. He walks right past Faust, dismissing him with the same weight as a corpse on the battlefield.

Faust's jaw twitches. "I—"

"I don't trust you," Tully grunts.

Faust stops.

Tully keeps moving. Straight for me.

"And unless you're the thrice-damned Emperor Himself, you'll be dead in a few minutes just like the rest of us."

Faust bristles. He opens his mouth—

Tully cuts him off.

"And if you'd like to shoot me with those fancy little pistols of yours for saying so, you're welcome to do so and give me an easy out."

Faust closes his mouth.

Tully smirks, it's a tired, worn expression more telling than any gallows humor.

"Good," he says, tone flat, final, "shut up and shoot something useful."

He finally stops. Turns to me.

"Valeria."

I straighten.

His face softens. Not weakness. Not pity. Just an understanding.

"We haven't always seen eye to eye," he mutters. "But… if you're going in there—"

He nods toward the great bronze doors of the chapel.

"And, Emperor help me, I know you are—"

His voice drops.

"There's something you need to see first."

He leads me off to the side of the doors.

And that's when I see her.

High Priestess Riley.

Or what's left of her.

She is sitting against the stone, knees tucked to her chest, her once-pristine robes a ruin of blood and filth. Her hands—

Emperor. Her hands!

Torn.

Ruined.

Fingernails ripped away. Skin peeled back.

Her fingers raw, swollen, trembling from where she has been pounding against the bronze door.

Her eyes!

Gone.

Sockets still bleeding, dark rivulets staining the fabric of her habit.

And she is crying.

Small, broken gasps that don't even sound human.

I barely recognize her.

I move forward, instinct overtaking me, my hospitaller training snapping into place.

"High Priestess," I breathe.

She doesn't react.

She just keeps crying.

I kneel, reaching out—"Riley."

Her body shudders at the touch of my radiant gauntlet.

Then, slowly, she lifts her ruined hands to her face.

And she speaks.

"Even the children."

I freeze.

Her voice is wreckage, words shaking, broken by sobs.

"Even the babes. Even the unborn souls."

I don't understand.

I glance at Tully. He's grim-faced, silent.

I turn back, pressing a hand to her shoulder. "High Priestess, I need you to stay still. I'm—"

"We were tricked."

The words hit like a bullet.

I pause.

"Tricked?" I ask, hesitantly, carefully.

Her breath hiccups, her mangled fingers clenching.

"I believed first."

Her voice cracks on the last word.

"I believed first, and they followed. They followed because I led them. And now—"

She sobs, a terrible, hollow sound.

I barely register my hand reaching for my medicae kit, fingers searching for the right stimulants, the right painkillers.

Her voice drops to a whisper.

"They followed me."

A sharp injector hiss—a mix of painkillers, stimulants.

Her trembling slows.

Then, for the first time, she turns her ruined face toward me.

And everything stops.

Her mouth slackens.

Her breath catches.

Her hands drop limply to her sides.

And in that moment—

She is perfectly still.

Then, suddenly, violently, she throws herself at my feet.

Her fingers claw weakly at my boots, her body wracked with sobs, her voice rising in a desperate, frantic plea.

"Save them! Save them! Please, my Saint! Please!"

I stiffen.

What?!

She grips me tighter.

Her sightless sockets turn up to me, and for the first time, I see no madness. No terror.

Only awful, raw certainty.

Her voice drops to a whisper.

"I see you."

She sobs again, clutching at me, gasping.

"I see you!"

I cannot breathe.

I feel Faust staring.

And I have no words.

She sees me.

The words claw into my brain like a hooked flenser blade.

I can't move.

Riley's grip is weak, but frantic, her ruined fingers clutching at my boots, her voice half-sob, half-prayer. She's collapsed against me, forehead pressed to the ceramite of my greaves, her whole body shaking with something more than pain.

I see you.

My mind recoils, but my body knows better. I drop to my knees, hands moving on autopilot, catching her before she slumps sideways onto the stone. She's burning up, her breath shallow, ragged, her pulse skipping like a failing vox signal.

"I—I need a stretcher," I start, already reaching for my kit—

"No need."

Tully's voice. Calm. Solid. Grounded.

Then his hands are there, pulling Riley gently from my grasp, guiding her back down onto the crude mat he's built from scavenged pew cushions. His touch is careful, reverent, like he's laying her out for burial.

Her head lolls to the side. Her fingers unclench.

She's out.

Tully exhales sharply through his nose, settles her in, then adjusts the strap on his ruined arm, wincing as the motion tugs something raw beneath the bandages. His other hand rests on the butt of his worn shotgun, the weapon resting across his lap.

Then, finally, he looks at me.

And his face is wrong.

Not because he's wounded. Not because he's exhausted. Not even because of the hell breaking apart around us.

It's the look of a man who has already decided where he's going to die.

I swallow against the sudden weight in my throat.

"Riley told me some things," he mutters, voice low, edged with something I can't quite place.

"What things?" I demand. My hands are still shaking. I clench them into fists to stop the tremors.

Tully lets out a slow, long breath.

"That your Saint isn't here to save us."

I stiffen.

"She never intended the defense to hold," he continues. "Was never gonna be a last stand, Valeria. Just a waiting game."

No.

That's wrong.

That's impossible.

The Basilica is her miracle. The people inside it are her faithful.

I shake my head. "That's not—"

"She's turned them into living dolls, Val."

The words land like a gunshot to the skull.

I don't realize I've taken a step back until I feel the stair behind me.

Living dolls.

My eyes flick to the sisters, the grandmothers, the children still fighting on the steps. The silent, golden-eyed ranks. The calm, unwavering faces.

And the Honor Guard.

The ten motionless warriors standing just behind us, their shields held at their sides, their armor lit from within by a radiance too bright, too unnatural.

They do not move.

They do not speak.

I remember the way Scarmaker sang in my grip. The way it recognized its kindred. The way it wanted to join them.

I force myself to look back at Tully. "She's protecting them," I insist. "She's saved them."

Tully meets my gaze, his expression grim, unreadable.

"Riley said she was going to consume them, us, everything."

I sway where I stand.

His voice is flat, even, resigned. "I don't know what it means. I don't want to know what it means. I understand fighting. I understand dying. Right now, we got plenty of both."

I swallow hard. My heart is hammering against my ribs.

Tully glances down at Riley's still form. He adjusts her blankets, tightens the makeshift bandage around her hands.

Then he leans back, sighing, his battered shotgun resting easy across his lap.

"I'm staying here," he says simply, fumbling the few rounds left on his bandolier into the breach.

I blink.

He shrugs. "If what she says is true… well. I got nowhere else to go."

Something cold twists in my gut.

Tully's always been a stubborn bastard. A hard, pragmatic man who's seen more than his fair share of horrors. But now, for the first time—

He looks tired.

He looks done.

I open my mouth—

He shakes his head. "No speeches, Novitiate." A smirk quirks his resigned features. "We both know I ain't the inspirational type."

I don't know what to say.

Tully exhales, then pushes himself up slightly, wincing as he shifts.

"I thought, once, that your obsession with finding your friend would get us all killed," he mutters, watching me carefully.

I stare at him.

His eyes narrow slightly, then he huffs a short, bitter laugh.

"Now?" He shakes his head.

His gaze locks onto mine.

"Now I hope it might actually save us."

Something lodges itself in my throat.

I can't breathe.

The sounds of the battle blur, the chaos muted beneath the weight of this moment.

I take a step forward—

Tully stops me with a raised hand.

"Go," he says. "Go see her. Go stop her…"

His voice drops, softer now.

"The doors will open for you, Riley says you're arrival is the only reason we're still trying to hold this damned place."

I stand there, frozen, feeling the weight of his words settle on my shoulders like a noose.

Then—

I swallow, hard.

I nod.

I set my jaw.

And turn toward the great bronze doors.