Page 12 of Fourth

“Tell me what this is!”

He was unraveling.

His knees buckled. He caught himself with a snarl. And then she saw it, his skin glowing under his ribs, mouth open in a silent scream, eyeswild.

An instant later, it wasn’t silent.

The sound that ripped out of him was not human. Wasn’t meant tobe.

It shook the room. Rattled her bones. Aguttural, fractured roar that clawed through the air like something being torn apart from the inside.

She stared, wide-eyed, frozen.

A flicker followed.

Not in him, but on her. Just above her heart, low on the inside of her left collarbone. Ashimmer. Faint, like heat lightning beneath her skin. Not pain, not quite heat, but something else entirely. Aflash of light, silvery-blue, and then it wasgone.

A low, fractured sound came from him, not pain, not rage. Something else entirely. His eyes locked onto the shimmer, andfor a heartbeat, something ancient stirred in them, recognition, buried and ancient. Like a memory he didn’t know he still carried had clawed its way to the surface.

Then his expression twisted, too quickly to read, and he wrenched away, as if the sight itself unmoored him further. He made no sound. But he had seen it. And he had knownit.

Whatever it was, it had passed between them, acknowledged, mirrored. The shimmer might have appeared on her skin, but it had struck something in him. It belonged to both of them now, even if neither of them understood what it meant.

Her breath caught and her pulse faltered. Had she imaginedit?

No, she was intensely aware of it. The shimmer, the charge in the air, the way his gaze had latched onto hers as though he saw something that shouldn’t exist. Her skin still tingled where the light had flickered.

She closed her eyes briefly. Not to shut him out, but to steady herself.

Something was shifting inside her. Agravity pulling at her chest, realigning a part of herself she hadn’t known was loose until now. Not with heat. Not with rage. But with recognition. Adeep, trembling awareness that a visceral element in him had touched the same in her, sparked something elemental. She couldn’t name it. Didn’t want to. But it was there, blooming in the silence betweenthem.

And it wasn’t fear. Not exactly.

It was connection.

Maya swallowed hard, heart still hammering as his breathing turned ragged, staggered, no longer even remotelyunder his command. She didn’t know what she’d just witnessed. Didn’t know if it was transformation, meltdown, or both. But he was crashing. Visibly. Physically. And whatever this was, it wasn’t graceful. It was violent. Primal.

And it was killinghim.

“You’re burning up,” she said, throat dry. “That can’t be normal.”

He didn’t respond. His body trembled, the glow pulsing now, erratic, uninhibited. Sweat broke along his temples. His chest hitched with every breath.

Maya twisted against the restraints, anger and panic crashing into each other. “Damn it, say something. What is this? What’s happening to you?”

At last, his head turned, barely. “Final Flight.” The words scraped outraw.

“Final Flight? What does itmean?”She narrowed her eyes. “It sounds... bad.”

“It is. Final Flight is the end,” he said. “A warrior’s final cycle. It begins when we reach four hundred years of service. Our bodies are designed to burn out, fast, brutal, final. Systems collapse in sequence. Power unravels. Thought and flesh tear away from each other until there is nothing left to hold them together.”

Maya stared at him, stricken. “That’s... that’s what’s happening to you now?”

“The symptoms started weeks ago. Temperature fluctuations. Loss of color. My hair, my eyes turning black… are warnings. Ithought I had more time.”

She swallowed, voice barely a whisper. “But you don’t?”

“Uncertain.” His gaze lifted to hers, steady and unflinching. “I believed there would be enough time to complete my final directive before the collapse began.”

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