I reach Cassandra before anyone else.
She lies against the stone where the shockwave threw her, her body broken in ways I can see without touching.
The angle of her spine, the dark spread of blood pooling from the back of her head where skull met rock. Her blade has fallen from her hand, Mintian steel glinting uselessly three feet away.
Her eyes are open.
She's staring at the sky, and the fury is gone from her face. In its place is something I never thought I'd see — confusion. Pure bewilderment, as if the world has rearranged itself into a pattern she never learned to recognize.
I drop to my knees beside her. My hands are shaking, covered in moonlight that won't stop flowing. The power that did this to her still pulses through my veins, mocking me with its presence.
I did this. I killed my sister.
The damage is catastrophic, and I can see it in the stillness of her legs, the way her chest barely rises. Nothing can undo what the shockwave did to her body.
But I reach for her anyway, touch her face with fingers that glow silver, stroke the hair from her forehead: hair the same silver-blonde as our father's, the same shade that marked us both as daughters of the blue blood.
"I'm sorry," the words pour out of me, broken and desperate. "I'm sorry, Cassandra. I didn't mean to do this. The power just happened, and I couldn't control it, couldn't stop it from hurting you."
Cassandra's eyes move. They find my face with effort, and something in her expression shifts. The confusion doesn't leave, but it reshapes itself around recognition.
"Evelyn…" Her voice is a whisper, broken but clear. "You're crying."
Tears are running down my face, cutting tracks through the blood and ash. I hadn't even noticed.
"I just killed you. I killed my sister, and I didn't want to, I was trying to—"
"You were trying to save me." Cassandra's lips curve into something that might be a smile if it weren't so full of pain. "That's almost funny… Father would be furious if he knew."
"I don't care about Father, I care about you. I've always cared about you, even when you were trying to destroy me. You're my sister, Cassandra. You were supposed to live through this."
A wet cough escapes her. Blood flecks her lips, dark against pale skin.
"The prophecy..." Her voice is fading, each word softer than the last. "The witch said… the stronger one would break the cycle. It was supposed to be me. Father promised it would be me."
"Father twisted the prophecy to serve his hatred. He used you, Cassandra. He made you into a weapon because he couldn't face that his own cruelty created the very thing he feared."
"I know that now," her eyes drift, then focus again with visible effort. "I think I always knew, but believing him was easier than believing I was built on a lie. He told me every day of my life that I was the weapon and you were the target. I believed him, Evelyn. I wanted to believe him."
"That's why I wanted to save you. You were a victim too."
Her hand moves. It takes everything she has — I can see the effort in her face, the way her jaw tightens against pain — but she reaches for mine. A reflex, maybe, or something deeper. Something our father never managed to burn out completely.
I take her hand, hold it between both of mine, moonlight and blood mingling on our skin.
"I'm here, I'm not leaving you. You don't have to die alone."
"I've been alone my whole life," her fingers twitch against mine, trying to grip and failing. "No friends or connections, only the mission. Only you, always you, the sister I was supposed to destroy. Do you know how much time I spent thinking about you? Planning your death, imagining your face when I finally won?"
"And now? What do you feel now?"
"Now I think maybe I'm glad it was you," a breath rattles in her chest. "The stronger sister turned out to be someone who tried to save me instead of someone who wanted me dead."
"Don't talk like it's over. Maybe I can heal you—"
I reach for the moonlight, try to shape it into something gentle, something that mends instead of destroys. The power slips through my fingers like water… I don't know how to heal; I only know how to break.
"Evelyn," Cassandra's voice is barely audible now. "It's done, and the prophecy is fulfilled. You broke the cycle the way it was always meant to be broken: not through murder but through mercy."
"This isn't mercy but failure."
"You did save me," her eyes found mine one last time, and in them I saw something I never expected: peace.
"From Father's voice in my head, from more years of being his weapon, from becoming something worse than I already was. You saved me from myself."
"Cassandra—"
"Tell Father the prophecy came true, just not the way he wanted."
Her eyes close. Her grip loosens around my fingers, going slack in a way that tells me everything I need to know.
I wait. I pray to gods I've never believed in, beg for one more breath, one more word. The battlefield roars around us — steel and fire and screaming — but here, in this small space between the rocks, there is only silence.
Cassandra doesn't open her eyes again.
"She is gone, Evelyn, I am sorry." Aspis finally talks to me again.
The scream that tears out of me doesn't sound human. Grief and guilt and a wound so deep it doesn't have a name — the howl of a woman who killed her sister with a power she couldn't control, who tried to save her and failed.
I don't know how long I kneel there, holding her hand, before I feel it.
Terror floods through the bond: raw, primal fear from Aspis, a creature that has never known fear. The sensation is so foreign, so wrong, that it forces me to raise my head.
The sky is full of eyes — vast and patient, burning with light like dying stars. They fill the horizon from edge to edge, looking down at the battlefield, looking down at the dead, looking down at me kneeling beside my sister with blood and moonlight on my hands.
“The Watcher. It has manifested at last.”
Every dragon on the field goes rigid. I feel Aspis lock in place behind me, frozen, her mind suddenly small and quiet in a way that terrifies me.
Through the bond — not just my bond with Aspis, but every dragon bond on the field, Khaira and the minor house dragons, all of them — a single word reverberates.
Not spoken or heard, but FELT, in the deepest part of my soul.
"ENOUGH."
The word is older than houses and prophecies. It carries the weight of centuries, the judgment of something that has watched empires rise and fall.
The battlefield falls silent, and the eyes in the sky turn toward me.