The sword did not glow anymore.
Nick had noticed it on the second morning, though he told no one.
On the first night after the crater, the blade had still carried a faint pulse along its edge, a slow white-gold thrum that felt almost like a heartbeat if he held it long enough. By the next dawn, the light had thinned to a dull sheen. By the following evening, it was nothing more than polished steel reflecting campfire flames.
Nick sat a short distance from the main encampment, where the ground sloped down toward a dry wash that once fed the valley’s river. The crater lay miles behind them, but sometimes, when the wind shifted, he swore he could still taste ash.
He dragged an oiled cloth slowly along the blade’s length.
There was nothing on it to clean.
He did it anyway.
Voices carried faintly from the tents behind him. No one laughed anymore. Orders were given without bark or flourish. Even Torvald had gone quiet, which unsettled the others more than his anger ever had.
Footsteps approached without hurry.
Nick did not look up.
Aurelia stopped a few paces away, as though uncertain whether she should disturb him.
“You’re going to wear a groove in it,” she said at last.
Her voice was steady. Almost normal.
Nick ran the cloth along the edge again. “So be it.”
She came closer and lowered herself to sit across from him. The motion was slower than it used to be. He noticed that without meaning to.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
The sky overhead was a pale, bleached blue.
“I tried this morning,” Aurelia said quietly.
Nick glanced at her.
“Tried what?”
She opened her palm.
A small flare of golden light bloomed there, warm and controlled, shaped into a gentle sphere no larger than a plum. It hovered for a moment before she let it fade.
“It works,” she said.
He waited.
“It works exactly the way it always has.”
Nick set the cloth aside and rested the sword across his knees. “That’s good.”
She shook her head.
“It isn’t.”
There was no tremor in her voice.
“I don’t feel her anymore,” Aurelia said. “There used to be… something beneath it when I cast. A current I stepped into. Like standing in a river and letting it carry you forward.”
She flexed her fingers, studying them as though they belonged to someone else.
“Now it’s just me.”
The words settled between them.
Nick looked at the sword.
“Maybe it always was,” he said.
Aurelia’s gaze lifted sharply. “No.”
He didn’t argue. He had never felt what she described, and he knew better than to reduce it to something mechanical.
She exhaled slowly and stared out toward the horizon.
“When the three of them descended,” she continued, “I felt it across the entire field. Elyra’s presence. It wasn’t distant or abstract. She was… there. As clearly as you are sitting in front of me now.”
Nick listened.
“I thought we were saved,” she said. “For a moment, I thought perhaps that damned Wheel had forced their hand, that they had finally chosen to intervene fully.”
Her mouth curved faintly, not quite a smile.
“Guess I was wrong.”
Nick tightened his grip on the hilt without realizing.
“I felt her die.”
The wind shifted.
He forced himself to meet her eyes.
“There wasn’t a scream,” she said. “There wasn’t even pain. It was like—” She paused, searching. “Like a door that had always been open simply… closed.”
She pressed her palm against her sternum.
“There was something here for as long as I can remember. A warmth. A presence that never left, even when I doubted. It anchored me.”
Her hand lowered.
“And then it wasn’t there.”
Nick had no words for that.
He knew what it was like to lose a person.
He did not know what it was like to lose a god.
Aurelia’s gaze drifted past him, unfocused.
“When Alice raised her blade in the Wheel, I felt something I didn’t understand at the time,” she said. “It’s only now, without Elyra’s presence, that I can name it.”
She shuddered.
“She wasn’t reaching for anything. There was no petition. No invocation. No surrender to something greater.”
Her voice tightened.
“She believed in herself.”
Nick’s mouth twitched faintly. “That tends to be effective.”
She didn’t return the expression.
“It was enough,” she said. “Enough to stand against the Hero. Enough to shape divine force into whatever she required. She didn’t draw from a river.”
Aurelia looked down at her own hands again.
“She was the river.”
Nick stared at the blade resting across his knees. The metal reflected the sky in a thin, wavering line.
“And you think that’s why Elyra fell,” he concluded.
“I don’t know,” Aurelia replied. “But I know this: when I cast now, I do not feel guided. I do not feel upheld.”
She met his gaze again.
“I feel like I’m carrying my responsibilities alone.”
Nick leaned back slightly, resting his weight on one hand.
“You always were,” he said.
Aurelia frowned. “What?”
“You held that line for three days,” he continued. “You burned yourself hollow and kept going. That wasn’t Elyra moving your arms.”
Her jaw tightened.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “Faith is not a crutch. Its alignment. It’s knowing that you are part of something larger, that your will is braided into a greater pattern.”
“And if the pattern is gone?” Nicka sked.
She didn’t answer.
He gestured vaguely toward the tents behind them.
“We’re still here,” he said. “Torvald’s still standing. Seren’s still trying to pretend she doesn’t need sleep. The soldiers are still waiting for someone to tell them what comes next.”
His gaze returned to her.
“You don’t get to disappear just because the sky went quiet.”
For a moment, something flared in her eyes—anger, perhaps—but it faded quickly.
“I’m not trying to disappear,” she said.
“Good,” Nick replied. “Because I’m not interested in doing this alone.”
Aurelia studied him.
“You don’t believe in the gods,” she said softly.
Nick huffed a faint breath that might have been a laugh.
“I believe in outcomes,” he said.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
He hesitated.
He did not like being examined.
“I believed in Shinhwa,” he said at last.
That was as close to reverence as he ever came.
Aurelia’s throat tightened.
“He believed in all of us,” she said.
“Yeah,” Nick replied. “And look where that got him.”
The bitterness was automatic. Reflexive.
He regretted it a second later.
Aurelia did not recoil.
Instead, she said quietly, “You’re angry at him.”
Nick’s hand tightened around the sword’s hilt.
“I’m angry at the situation,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow.
He sighed.
“I’m angry that he smiled,” Nick admitted. “I’m angry that he decided without asking us. I’m angry that he made it look easy.”
His voice dropped.
“And I’m angry that he was right.”
Aurelia watched him carefully.
“You would have done the same,” she said.
Nick didn’t respond.
Because they both knew it was true.
After a long pause, Aurelia said, “If faith in a god is not what carries me forward anymore… then I must decide what does.”
Nick looked at her.
She straightened her shoulders, not with divine radiance, but with deliberate will.
“I will not let Alice be the only model,” she said. “If she draws strength from herself alone, then I will draw strength from what remains. From those who stand beside me. From those who cannot.”
Her gaze flicked briefly to the sword.
“I will believe in the living.”
Nick felt something shift in his chest.
“That’s a start,” he said.
Her lips curved faintly.
“You’re insufferable,” she said.
“Frequently.”
She studied him a moment longer.
“And you?” she asked. “What carries you forward now?”
Nick looked down at the blade.
It did not pulse.
It did not whisper.
It was just regular steel.
He rose slowly to his feet and extended it toward her.
“Hold it,” he said.
Aurelia hesitated, then wrapped her fingers around the hilt.
She inhaled sharply.
“There’s still something in it,” she murmured.
“Memory,” Nick said. “It doesn’t feel like divinity.”
He let go.
She held the sword for a moment longer before passing it back.
Nick slid it into the scabbard at his side.
“What carries me forward?” he echoed.
He glanced toward the camp, where exhausted soldiers moved through routines that felt increasingly hollow.
“You do,” he said simply.
Aurelia stiffened.
“So does Torvald. So does Seren and Kaia. So does every idiot back there who thinks we can still win.”
His jaw tightened.
“I don’t believe in gods. I don’t believe in prophecies. I don’t believe in systems that chew people up and call it destiny.”
He met her eyes.
“But I believe in you.”
There was no flourish in it.
No sermon.
Aurelia’s composure wavered then.
“Nick—”
He shook his head.
“No speeches,” he said. “No vows. We bury who we can. We train who’s left. And when the Ascendents come again, we make them regret it.”
His expression hardened.
“I’ll complain the entire way there,” he added dryly. “But I’m not leaving.”
Aurelia let out a breath that almost became a laugh.
Almost.
She rose to stand beside him.
The sky above them remained empty.
Just blue stretching without end.
“It’s quiet,” she said.
“Yeah.”
For a moment, they both listened.
There was nothing.
Aurelia straightened.
“Then we’ll make our own noise,” she said.
Nick adjusted the weight of the sword at his hip.
“Good.”
And together, they turned back toward the camp, toward the wounded and the frightened and the uncertain—toward the people who were still alive.
The gods were gone.
But they were not.
And for now, that would have to be enough.
Project Knightfall 