The airship cut through the clouds in silence.

The engines roared steadily, the deck vibrating faintly beneath their boots as the vessel pushed toward the summit at full speed. Cold wind tore across the open deck, carrying with it the smell of snow and iron.

No one spoke.

Fritz lay secured near the center of the deck, wrapped in blankets and restraints, his breathing shallow but steady. Jay remained close, sitting with his back against a crate, eyes fixed on Fritz's rising chest as if willing it to keep moving.

Amelia leaned against the hull, arms crossed. Taylor stood at the bow, posture rigid, hands braced against the railing as she watched the clouds ahead thin.

Ryn broke the silence.

"…It's already started," he said.

No one asked how he knew.

Taylor nodded once. "If Kharvos was right about anything," she said, "it's that pressure doesn't disappear just because you step back."

Jay swallowed. "We gave them an out," he said quietly. "A way to stop it if things went bad."

Ryn didn't answer.

Because he knew now that it hadn't been an out.

It had been an excuse.

Amelia exhaled slowly. "Then whatever's waiting for us," she said, eyes narrowing, "was always going to happen."

The airship began to descend.

The clouds parted.

And the summit came into view.

For a heartbeat, no one understood what they were seeing.

Amelia stiffened first.

Her arms loosened from where they were crossed, fingers twitching as her eyes traced the shape of the summit below. The color drained from her face.

"…No," she breathed.

Taylor leaned forward against the railing, squinting into the thinning mist.

Then she froze.

Her jaw clenched hard enough that the muscles in her neck stood out. One hand tightened on the metal rail, knuckles whitening as her gaze swept across the ground below, counting without meaning to.

Jay stepped forward beside Ryn.

The smell hit him first.

Blood, rot, iron—carried up by the wind in a sickening wave. His breath caught sharply in his throat.

"Oh gods—"

He turned away abruptly, staggering to the side of the deck. He barely made it before throwing up, hands gripping the rail as bile spilled onto the frost-coated metal.

Fritz stirred faintly at the sound.

Amelia didn't move to help Jay. She couldn't take her eyes off the summit.

The cathedral stood open to the sky. Its pillar long shattered and its wide floor long buried under snow.

Red snow.

It clung to the steps. To broken stone. To bodies strewn across the ground like discarded remnants of a ritual gone wrong.

Beastfolk lay everywhere.

Some were twisted where they'd fallen, weapons still locked in frozen hands. Others lay face-down, unarmed, limbs askew as if they'd been cut down while running.

Taylor swallowed. "…This wasn't a fight," she said quietly.

Jay wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, face pale, eyes glassy. "This is—" He stopped, shaking his head.

"This is slaughter."

Only then did Ryn step forward.

He rested his hands on the railing, staring down at the summit as the airship slowed, the full weight of the scene finally settling into place.

Whatever happened here…it already ended.

The airship dipped lower.

Engines throttled back as the vessel hovered just above the shattered cathedral, wind whipping snow and ash into spiraling currents. The ground below was close enough now that individual shapes resolved into faces.

The four of them jumped off barring Fritz.

Cold hit them first. Frozen stone soaked in blood, so much that walking became hard as stone had become slippery.

They walked up the steps of the Cathedral.

Up close, it was worse.

There were no signs of retreat. No wounded crawling away. No bodies stacked hastily or dragged aside.

Everyone here was dead.

Taylor gasped, covering her mouth with a hand.

Jay knelt beside one of the fallen, fingers hovering uselessly over a neck he already knew would be cold. He swallowed hard and moved on.

Amelia stopped near the center of the cathedral.

Ryn saw it in the way her shoulders stiffened.

She didn't speak.

She just stared.

Ryn followed her line of sight.

There…lay a woman, a rabbit beastfolk.

At the base of a fractured pillar, half-buried beneath red-stained snow. Her cloak was torn, one arm twisted at an unnatural angle where she'd fallen.

Her eyes were open, yet unseeing.

For a moment, no one moved.

Jay made a sound—small, broken—and turned away, pressing a hand over his mouth again.

Taylor stood frozen, jaw clenched so tight it trembled.

Ryn stepped closer.

He knelt beside Mira, fingers brushing snow away from her shoulder, from her face. Cold. Already set in.

Glancing to the side, he noticed something. A cracked glass vial, with its contents empty.

For a moment, he just stared at it, at how small it was. How ordinary. How easily it could've been mistaken for anything else.

Jay noticed where his gaze had gone.

His breath hitched.

"How…" he whispered. "I should've, It should've—!"

Ryn shook his head, only exclaiming one thing.

"It didn't matter."

The words were empty, hollow…devoid of his usual leadership.

He reached out and gently closed Mira's eyes. His hand lingered there for a second longer than necessary.

Around them, the open-air cathedral stood silent, its altar shattered, its purpose long forgotten.

Footsteps echoed from below.

Ryn looked up as Taylor emerged from the fractured stairwell beneath the cathedral's rear alcove, one hand braced against the wall as she climbed.

"Ryn," she said.

Something in her voice made him straighten immediately.

"There's a lower level," Taylor continued.

She swallowed once.

"They're not all dead."

Jay's head snapped up. "What?"

Taylor nodded. "Survivors. Injured. Some hiding. Some who never fought."

A pause.

"Children. Elderly. Whole families."

Amelia exhaled slowly, like she'd been holding her breath since landing.

"…Which tribe?" she asked.

Taylor shook her head.

"All of them."

Ryn felt something loosen in his chest—just barely.

"They barricaded themselves," Taylor went on. "Stayed underground when the fighting started. Some were pulled down there by others. Some ran on their own."

Her gaze dropped briefly to the bloodstained floor around them.

"They heard it all," she said quietly. "They just… waited for it to stop."

The next moments blurred together.

Taylor's voice cut through the air, sharp and controlled, issuing orders Ryn barely registered. Crew moved past him at a run, boots scraping stone, hands lifting, carrying, guiding.

Lantern light flared, then vanished.

Bodies were covered.

The wounded were moved.

The living were counted.

Ryn stood in the middle of it all.

Like a spectator or a ghost.

Just…there.

The noise washed over him without shape or meaning—words dissolving before he could understand them, grief bleeding into grief until it all sounded the same.

A child screamed somewhere nearby.

Someone else fell to their knees.

Ryn's hands clenched at his sides, nails biting into his palms hard enough to sting.

He didn't move, the only sentence he could mutter was:

"…I'm sorry."

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