He is running. He is running faster than a man, because he is not a man anymore. He is on all fours and he is coming towards you, blackened skin withering up his arms - the same muscles you stared at so long ago.

And now those muscles will rip you apart. Fight back. All seruses must die and yet this one looks so much like Viscryn-

“Cithrel!” Astra calls out from below, putting a barrier between us and him - it. It’s a massive dome spanning around her outstretched arms, but I know it cannot last forever. Astra is trying to stand still, trying to focus, but her breath is coming-out in shaky exhales that quicken when the serus begins to bang against the barrier.

“He - The magic-“ She looked back up to me briefly, but I jumped down the moment her magic began to shake. It was better to not distract her. “It took him.”

I signed something but of course, she wasn’t looking. She was staring at the white-crossed pupils of a monster, of a beast. It was staring at her, threatening, waiting so desperately for the moment that the only thing between them was its own teeth. Finally, I said, “Like Eldrin.”

Astra’s brow furrowed, flinching at the sound of its hand hit the barrier, the impact echoing deep. “Eldrin can - He controls it! This is different. Viscryn, he’s - He’s gone-“

“He’s not.”

“Cithrel,” she sighed my name like it was something she knew. Like she understood. “I know how you felt - feel - about him, but that magic is something we don’t know how to fix! It’s why Eldrin doesn’t have a cure yet.”

I couldn’t stand the ache in my chest of knowing that she was a mage, that she was right, so I drifted away again. Your breath ran cold as you fiddled with the arrow in your hand, still notched in place. The silver tip shone in the light of the gently rippling magic, but you did not want to imagine it embedded between the red hair of someone else, that hair muddied with blood of the same color. 

Would he forgive you?

Is this really for the good of the people?

You love the very blood of him, from the moment you saw it on the sparring mats, from punches splitting cheekbones on accident. He would wipe it off with a grin - sometimes losing a tooth - and he would look at you, find you in the crowd. No matter how big of a fight, he looked for you. 

In the light of the serus-covered moonlight, that blood would be black, and you are convinced that he will remember his name, that he must. 

“You can bring him back,” the words escaped your throat as you stared in such a tranquil state that it took Astra a second to realize that you had spoken at all.

She knew the truth - that she had forced Eldrin back into his own skin just once. “We don’t know how long it’ll work - if at all. I loved him, you must understand-“

The glare you shot her was an order. She fell silent. Just at that moment, blackened claws ripped its way through the barrier, the magic dissipating like sparks of electricity. Astra stumbled back and you pushed her behind you, firing a warning shot at his feet. He could smell the silver, and it gave Astra enough time for her magic to latch onto him. 

She trusted you to have a plan.

It was as though she were pulling from his very core, and by the sound of his shrieks, it hurt. But in a moment, Viscryn was there under bloodied stains and black blood on his pale lips, looking at you in utter terror.

“Cithrel,” he breathed your name like before, like when he was yours before the jealousy settled in and ruined everything, but it forced you to run to him - even while he was fumbling away and clawing at the earth. “Get the fuck away from me!”

“No,” I signed. I dared to touch him but he shivered, his skin rippling unnaturally. He would not last for long. 

He cursed at me, trying to make me leave despite the way his eyes watered, his fingers clenching as though he wanted to close the gap between our hands. I knew the spell that the man had said - he spoke loud enough for all of the goddamned forest to hear. “It’s only people you love. I can stay and stop you from attacking anyone-“

“I love you!” He snarled, the rocks under his fingers fracturing as black veins began to rush through him. “Now run.”

Astra was pulling me back. Her magic grabbed me and I was screaming and he was screaming and then he was gone. A monster. And you had to watch him become something not a bit tamed - something untranslatable. It was a fairy tale fucking Jasper made you read that he had dug up in the archives, of a duke and his friend that was definitely a closeted lesbian, but the authors were too stupid to write that.

“The last remnant of his humanity,” Jasper had read. He loved cheesy love stories despite being childless and having no one to recite them to. I used to wonder why he hadn’t just told Eldrin, but I assumed he didn’t like stories of monsters getting saved by words alone. At the end of the day, no matter what Jasper said, there was always the risk of getting mauled in your sleep by too-sharp teeth. “The only way she can save him is by saying she loves him.”

You don’t love him. You don’t love him. He won’t survive this night and you’ll have to kill him and you love him so much. Astra was speaking but you were not there to hear it. He would find you if you ran. Ageless magic was far too strong and it did not care to last for miles upon miles. It would end here, or else more people would suffer. 

I helped hoist Astra up into the trees as she complained, latching onto the branch in terror as I practically tossed her up. I did not answer her confused words that turned into panicked shouts when I turned back to face him. 

Ages ago I would have remembered the story of a man of shadow facing off against an archer, only for both of them to die. I only thought of his face as I fired the arrow into his hip, toppling him to the ground as his useless leg twitched painfully, healing and then ripping back apart over and over. 

Silver to the heart. Cut off the head. Both are ways to kill a serus once incapacitated. Kneeling down and wrapping your arms around them is not one. The monster jerked in confusion, stuck between leaning away and trying to rip into my throat. I could smell the sulfur on his skin as he growled low in his chest but I did not release him.

I don’t know if love is a feeling. Sometimes I think it is a matter of seeing. Seeing you.

There was silence before blood dripped onto my leg not from a bite wound, but from his body shifting back. His clammy forehead fell onto my shoulder, gasping breaths shaking in his chest. He had broken a rib, most likely. Neither of us needed to speak.

“I didn’t take you as the kid of person who believed in mercy,” Viscryn said, his voice scratchy and painful. “Or offered it.”

I gripped him tighter, sniffling into his collar. He was back. He was back and he was mine and I would kill the man who invented this magic, who dared to try to take Viscryn from me. 

“It is only for you,” I either signed or whispered. It did not matter how I said it, because he understood.