Blindness. Deafness. Finally, she couldn't tell up from down.

  For those precious few seconds, she felt as if she didn't exist anymore, blown away with the wind and scattered to all corners of the world like the Flowering Season's pollen.

  Reality stopped shaking. She came back to the taste of earth and grass, the incessant ringing of steel on steel, the screams of dying men. Steel shafts pin cushioned a ground full of fresh craters and rising embers around her, though she remained untouched.

  The corpses only registered a beat later. Their armor had been of little use, chestplates and helmets left concave and at places red hot, filling the air with a repulsive stink of cooking meat and smoke. She didn't know where to go or how to get away, prone shapes littering every direction her eyes could grasp.

  "A-Agare!" She remembered.

  He had not half as much luck. Though thankfully none of the lights had hit him full on, glances had torn the wreck of his armor further, leaving gaping, charred wounds on his skin. At least his tendrils were enjoying themselves, licking one such projectile from bottom to slim, sharpened tip.

  "I-is that an arrow?" she murmured, horror-stricken. It looked smaller than the ones the Citrine used felt, yet how did they cause this much destruction? Could they-

  Too late, she noticed a noise breaking from the general cacophony. By the time she realized the steps were approaching her, she was already eating a kick. It didn't carry a tenth of the strength Menoux's did, but she still felt a sting. Seeing the attacker readying a follow up, she slapped them away with a backhand, forgetting her arm was broken.

  It hurt like little else, but whoever the attacker was, they flew. She watched as they hit the ground rolling, weapon throw out of their grip. They managed to stop themselves on their shoulder, scrambling to their knees-

  Only to be sliced open at the back of the neck. The thick blade was yanked out without care, blood spurting freely as they fell back on their face, twitching, The killer not stopping to see their final moments or considering her for more than a second before moving on to another fight.

  The shock didn't last long, however, as she noticed they were all around her. The Citrine and their flaring armor, yes, but another group of soldiers, shelled in leaner metals, bearing a chest and skirt of scales like that of a lizard. Among them, some carried light itself in their hands, and these slashed through armor and flesh as if equals.

  With as much dread as she felt hope she realized that, taken from behind, the cultists were being quickly overwhelmed. As if on that cue, a resounding crunch announced the return of the giant.

  The upper half of a body struck a scaled soldier hard enough to send them flipping, neck bobbing at awkward angles. Two of the light blades rushed together, screaming orders that reached her ears like pure noise as soldiers retreated, covering each others back at their foe's renewed assault. And the duo was fast! Faster than any of the Citrine, and much stronger judging by how they could force enormous lads bent with the strength of one armed blows.

  Together, both lasted a deep breath. They ducked as the blade Igvaz swooped over their heads at an obscene speed, but neither had ever seen how Menoux fought, how his body twisted with the swing into a stomp, and the first went down in a crater. As their partner burst, the second froze, tried to rush in low, and was caught by the dreadful blade's return. The crack pierced the night, but she didn't wait to see where they would fall, already grabbing Agare with her good arm and running towards the woods.

  Citrine tried to physically block her path, barking in a tongue familiar yet ever so incomprehensible as she sidestepped them. Scaled soldiers, lost in the chaos and the slaughter, took swings far too slow to catch her movements. Were they fast? Were they strong? She didn't know, couldn't really bring herself to care beyond the idle thought. If that was all she had to deal with, they would survive.

  But of course, chances were against her. Again, lights bloomed across the sky, and lilac stars fell. This time, eyes wide open, she watched as they streaked towards the earth in dragging lines, tearing the battlefield asunder with catastrophic impacts that almost shook her back down, taking the struck down like falling boulders.

  Menoux would not be so easily beaten. A grand shriek cut all the way to her, faltering her mid-step. If he wanted the attention of the Scaled, Igvaz had taken it for him, but for all she lost her footing she would not look back.

  And then a whistle, just as she reached the tree line.

  Two shadows soon were galloping besides her, each to a side, each obviously dogging her steps. Where the Scaled ones ran into them, they were taken down by the throat with strangled cries. Suddenly, confusion and alarm swelled among the soldiers still arriving from the forest who, even in the dark, turned to her with shields and arms raised.

  A second shriek reached her ears, and pandemonium descended once more.

  Light bloomed in the distance, incandescent, tall, horribly frightening. In that brief distraction, both shadows pounced her at once. As her failed dodge brought her to the ground, the Scaled soldiers stared in confusion, and that's when the hidden Citrine, rising from the dirt in rags like corpses, crawling down the trees like spiders, struck.

  Teeth ran her through, breaking skin dangerously close to her neck. Dexterous paws pushed at her chest, a second set stomping with two legs to hold her down by the broken arm. A scream, many of them as one, of throats and of metallic friction, here and everywhere. Priga was all, and in trying to sift through the mess of presences, through the choir of pains, all joined into churned mud.

  From her scream, a sibilating howl, something not even she would dare describe as human. The elongated, rugged beast holding her down hesitated. She caught its lower jaw in her own, and bit down under she felt the bone splinter. There was no yelping as it jumped back, just hissing and more hissing, alerting its partner of the danger too late.

  A thousand Will arms swarmed the thing. Even forced to their malformed completion her fingers were far too delicate for destruction on the level she needed, but still they dug, finding gaps through the currents of its being, clawing at membranes, peeling it open little by little. The creature buckled, pained and afraid, only to be spun away by a kick to the head.

  She scrambled up. One of the beasts fled, while the other dragged itself to the bushes. She was already completely lost, again surrounded by corpses and slowly dividing pockets of combat. The walls of flame only raised taller, wider, suffocating the woods with smoke and soot.

  Menoux arrived with the grace of a jungle cat, diving in between a group of five Scaled soldiers and Citrine, their initial advantage already overturned. Frozen at the sight of their interloper, they had no time to react before Igvaz plunged towards—and through—them.

  Seeing with her own eyes, she still couldn't believe it. It swum through their armors and shields like water. The five fell with gurgled screams, and if she didn't spot one's gauntlet detaching as their chest armor went the opposite way of their legs, she would have thought it all a trick of the mind.

  Menoux's bulging eyes turned her way. She fled.

  She didn't know where she was heading, didn't need to know, so long as it was away. But everything was chaos, death, blockage. She couldn't run for ten paces straight without having to bash her way through another battle, another thoughtless swing that split her skin, slowly yet surely slowing down.

  And he was right there behind her, as surely as the moon, heard in breaking branches, in dead meat smashed apart, in the starved panting of a hungry blade, waiting for the moment she would falter to catch up.

  It came. She had underestimate the forest, for as unassuming as it was in comparison to the Hollows or the Floodlands, every woodland held its treachery. When she bounded over a swell, attention split between a dozen surrounding dangers, she tripped over a root and fell into one of the Sacred Forest's many earthen gullets.

  It wasn't supposed to mean much. For her body, vaulting over the next lip and back at her escape was as easy as stepping over an anthill. But in that split of a second as she reeled from the unexpected, the fortress crossed the periphery of her Will.

  There would be no tight corners to crawl through this time. Menoux was here.

  She reached the first wall of flame and slowed down, knowing she could continue this stupid race until her legs gave up, but that wouldn't matter. Six paces away, heated air licking at her tendriled hairs, her legs halted, and Menoux stopped right behind.

  "After everything we have been through," he said, "you can't convince me this little bonfire is enough to stop you."

  She found a nice spot near a patch of moss encrusted rocks, laying Agare gently away from the fire while standing protectively in front of him.

  "So be it. Makes no difference! All I care about, speaking in complete frankness, is seeing that fascinating side of you that has been coming out lately! Will you let me one last look, or should I take it for the lost cause you are and finish this once and for all?"

  Bones broken, skin split, blood spewing. Uncertain, panicked, terrified. No, she was in no condition to fight him, if she had ever been. One look over and he sighed, a deeply hollow hiss from inside his mask.

  "Breathe. I haven't come this far to beat up some cowering child. Even a Dashi would be ashamed of behaving as you."

  "T-there you go again." she said. "After everything you put us through, you're still going to act like it's for my sake?"

  "Oh, I'm not saying anything! I just don't like wasting my time."

  For a moment, she allowed herself to rest, to take in the situation. A trio of Citrine were killed by twice their numbers to her left, the bodies of another were left to rot in muck to her right, but Menoux's golden eyes burned a hole through her skull alone.

  "The Di Aila were nothing but hopeless layabouts, but even I would not deny they were strong, to a certain measure of strength," he said. "Yet, you survived them. Can you remember how?"

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  She flinched. Of course she did. "W-what are you trying to say? W-why are you even still speaking to me?"

  "Do not play the fool and speak. Can you remember?"

  "... And if I do? What difference does it make?"

  He didn't answer. As if losing interest, he turned to the nearest massacre, finished but moments ago. The Scaled soldiers shivered under his gaze, but they did not run, they held defiant, ready for anything. She wanted to scream. Didn't they see this was certain death?! And then it would be hers, afterwards.

  It hadn't been long since she dove into herself, examining for Menoux's parasitic interference. Likewise, she would never forget the day she tore herself apart trying and failing to save her comrades and herself from her father. Both times, the consequences could have been catastrophic, if not for...

  For the unwilling sacrifice of her family. Again, again, again.

  There would be no such salvation this time. But if she had to chose between dying and dying, what difference did it make?

  Her Will coiled around her like a snakeball. It didn't take long for her to find the opening she ripped under the Mountain Guts, still patching itself close while fighting the impurities that poured in, both from the ugly landmark and the dead god lying above.

  Into her innards she searched, shutting her jaws against the pain.

  She blinked, and impossible vista stretching before her eyes.

  She was floating above and enormous expanse of roiling barren plains and sky scraping spires, both in dizzying arrays of white and grey and blue. Above, smudged stars and a moonless sky were pulled down like the ceiling of a building by colossal ribbons and oozing web-like membranes, each decorated by gems of all colors and sizes, some smaller than her palm while others as large as towns.

  So many things, so many connections leading to each other into this vast painting where nothing was itself and everything was everything. Was she even seeing one thing at any given time? Or extensions of extensions of extensions of-

  "Don't get lost in the weeds," a familiar voice called. "We don't have the time."

  Hazel descended like a bird from the sky, emerging from the impossible cosmos above as if created from thin air. This time, instead of the dresses she remembered her sister owned, they were in tattered rags, barely perceptible over the layers of caking mud that covered her from head to toe. Only her face remained oddly untouched, dark face marred by nothing but a couple drops of filth.

  "W-why are you- n-no, rather, where am I?" she said.

  "An interim," the Thing said, than slowly scanned the horizon, as if seeing it for the first time. "An interpretation, too."

  "I-I don't-"

  "Is this how it's always going to be?" The Thing began to stalk forwards, as if on solid ground. "Whenever you find yourself trapped, you'll come crawling back to the same mistakes you always make? Didn't you already know this is a bad way to go about things?"

  With some fiddling and willing, she managed to "land". She could neither see nor feel any solid ground, but she was standing on something for sure.

  "I'm just doing what I can." she said. "I don't like it, but right now what other options do I have?"

  "Give up the Faceless. Learn from the Citrine old man. Live healthy and whole," they said, voice neutral, face placid. There was something strange about it this time, but she couldn't quite tell what.

  "That's stupid. Not even Holly Seneschal would have done that," she said. "Look at the person you're imitating and think for a second!"

  "I thought we were changing," they said.

  "I am! I don't even know who you are, what you are, but I sure know you don't have anything to do with it!"

  To that, there was no answer. After a moment of silence, they both began to gently descend towards the skin of this world—the World of Wills? Sure didn't look how she imagined it—while watching one another.

  "It's my desire." They said.

  "I'm going to do my best, but I'm not going to take your opinions on how to handle this," she said.

  "I didn't ask to be born, but I do wish to survive, so I'm going to keep offering them regardless."

  "It's myself to do what I want."

  "And it's my home, the only place I can live, so I want to protect it," they said. "You know this is pointless. We have molted through all states of maturation you previously stunted, there is no space to evolve like you did against Glashii."

  "I wasn't planning to!" she shook her head. "But there's so much here I never knew about, surely there has to be something here that can help us?"

  "Help you." For the briefest instant, they frowned. "Menoux doesn't want to kill you, otherwise you would be dead."

  "W-we can't know that. And besides, even if he doesn't kill us, he's going to hurt us bad then kill Agare! You know we can't let that happen, don't you?"

  "Why not?"

  She was stunned quiet. They reached the surface of the bizarre expanse, the ground tearing under their feet. Everything looked rougher then before, like dry skin stretched to breaking, maggots quivering in panic underneath, mountains of wrinkles gouged into open hills and toothless throats by growing, unspeakable monuments hiding in their gloom.

  The Thing continued. "It's logical, isn't it? Holly Seneschal joined Marquise because she was afraid of being alone, because she wanted to survive and protect what was left of her old life. Now, not only you don't care as deeply about that sour tag along, but your 'comrades' have proven themselves incapable of defending us whenever the situation turns violent. Didn't Marquise say you would never have to do this alone? When push comes to shove, you always are."

  "I-I-"

  "And now, you don't even have a self to properly rely on." They were so close now she should be able to smell them. "You were always a false thing, but now you are nothing more than muddy water. Why not let the opportunity take you, and see where the endpoint of what you were already becoming is? Because you don't want to disappoint a creature who was always clear on seeing you as a benefit, rather than a person?"

  And there it was again, that frown. This time, however, it did not dissipate.

  "Why not treat them the same? Why not let him to the beasts for trying to harm you, for doing awful things to you without asking? Why not forget all this idiotic stuff about a mission of revenge or justice or whatever she said when you barely know who you're fighting against, what you're fighting for? Why not be the dangerous monster everyone expects us to be anyway?!"

  "I-I'm not-"

  The Thing's face twisted into a furious scowl like none her sister had ever made, shock leaving her helpless when they pushed her to ground, letting her sink to her elbows.

  "Why do you still think you ever had anyone anyone deceived?!" They screamed. "Hero! Knight! Obedient Girl! All these things you tried to squeeze yourself through and nobody fell for it! Even your beloved Elder held you in a cage then told you to go bite! How many times are you going to keep deluding yourself with this game of make belief you started?! Look around!"

  In the distance, enormous serpents emerged from out of view, coiling around the ribbons and the spires. Slug soft, made of impossible colors and lights, made of countless wriggling shapes which licked every surface touched with wild abandon in a starved chase for something.

  Where they ate, something transpired. Not a change, not a shift except of perspective: the spires grew barbed and fractured into frailty, the stars melted one after the other into nothingness, and the beautiful jewels, shimmering lights of her being, revealed themselves into clotted wounds, crystallized pus, pulsating blisters.

  "Look at this! Do you know how scary it is?! How weak you are?!" They leaned over her in their shouts. "All of this could have been avoided, if only you didn't keep playing along! If you had demanded more, if you had-"

  "Started eating the people of the Lesser?" she asked.

  "Why not?" The Thing's expression was cold. "They broke you with smile. Imagine if you had never molted, what else would they have taken? And that is a would, you know they never liked you, they would have eaten you alive and crunched down the bones, so why not reciprocate? It's only what they deserved!"

  Then, she leaned back, and the rage was gone, replaced by the same blank mask as always, as if it had always been there.

  "And that was my second attempt at expressing myself with feeling," They said. "I would like to believe it was a marked improvement from the first, but what are your-"

  She sighed. "Do you think it's that easy after everything you said?"

  A flicker of a grimace. "Again, why not? It's the kind of being I am. I can exist only when I'm needed, so why can I not feel just what I feel like expressing? If it's fake, that's just because I was born out of a fake thing, that's all."

  She looked out towards the serpents again. Were they the sign things were coming to an end this time? With their encroach, edges grew into razors, points grew into spears heads, and the grotesque, organic nature of that wonderful horizon only made itself less palatable.

  "That was never going to happen," she said, a sense of calm washing over her. "Eating people is just not what the story knights did. Maybe if the Elder wanted me to..."

  "I know."

  "Still, even now... I've done things I don't think I'll ever proud of. Some minutes ago I, I-I- "

  "I know."

  "When I'm scared, I do things I regret. When I'm angry, I hurt others, I know. But it's all whims, I-I think. I don't think I want to ever be the kind of person who holds grudges like that, and kill others willy-nilly. Maybe before, way before I met Agare and Marquise and the others, now... It's just been washed out of me."

  Another frown, subtle but this time it lingered. "If I'm here, then that's obviously not true."

  "M-maybe not entirely, but just because I have to let Holly go doesn't mean I want to become my worse self! What would be the point? You know I would be hurt if it all fell on Elder Seneschal's lap again, o-or Marquise's now. And Agare... he saved me. Is it wrong if I like him a little bit for that?"

  "Then what? You think you can let only the good in, become perfect? That you won't neglect yourself ever again, that you won't resort to self-mutilation ever again? You think I would believe that?"

  She stopped, mulled their words over. "H-heheh, I guess I'm not to good that filtering myself that much, am I? But I can try. A lot of me was Holly Seneschal, but it can't be all of me, right? Maybe there was some good I can take from her too."

  The Thing looked on to the serpents, lost and distant. "I'm scared. Ever since I came to be as I am, everything was crumbling apart, and you never cared. I only know what you can know, so I don't understand myself at all. And you think you can just sift through the silt like that?"

  "I can try." She shrugged. "Maybe I'll fail. Maybe I'll become that Demon thingy Menoux was talking about. Did you get any of that?"

  "What do you think?"

  "G-guess not."

  They watched the serpents, and realized the serpents were watching them the same, expectant. As the landscape morphed into its most disturbing form, she wondered what was the extent of the damage? How much had she lost, and could she ever heal it all?

  "... I have a proposal. It won't be enough to defeat Menoux, might make you look worse, and could kill you if you mess up, but it might help all the same."

  "S-sounds rough," she said. "But I don't think I have much choice. What is it?"

  The Thing spread their arms wide in a mortifyingly familiar gesture. "The One Body."

  "W-what?"

  "Priga is All, All is Priga. You are you, but you are all of you, the fake and the real, whatever each may be. And in that case, you are both what you can see, and what you can Will."

  "T-that doesn't help much," she said, rising up from her gunk. "Isn't that how I already work? Not like I don't know how to use my Will, or consider it apart from me."

  "Except you do. The physical body is thoughtlessly yours, but your underneath you neglect and use as needed, so they are out of step. Think to the castle of Menoux."

  The exact term threw her off, but she managed to connect the dots. Menoux was Menoux, Will a nearly perfect copy of the outer, though it still differed from time to time. There was a problem with the idea however: "I-Isn't that just something he can do, rather than something anyone li- anyone with similar abilities can do? I don't think I could light the Hollows on fire like God did, or-"

  They frowned. "That's what I'm talking about, it's not some ability. It is you. All things come back to life, remember? All things you are you, no different than an eye or a leg, your Will likewise."

  "But what about all that Merurgy thing Aleh taught me, or Asha or-"

  "We can ask him for his insights later," they said, and extended a hand. "Right now, focus on how you feel. I can't do it for you, and I won't know until you do, but I think it will all be very natural. How about it?"

  She thought for a moment, looking down at the offered hand with some trepidation. This felt dire, like something fundamental was about to change inside of her.

  In the end, she would probably have taken it one way or another, but funnily enough, what ultimately convinced her to let the Thing take her by the fingers was not need or curiosity or an impulse. Rather, she just looked down and saw their other hand.

  Half hidden out of sight, they were idly fiddling with a chunk of dry mud.

  "I-I think I should thank you," she said. "And apologize too. I misunderstood you pretty badly."

  "Not while you might use my guidance to destroy us both, you shouldn't." They said. "And leave apologies for when we actually see eye to eye. I'm not any happier with you now than I have ever been."

  "I-if you say so."

  "Now come. We shouldn't take too long."

  Together, they flew up and away, towards the corrupted, ravaged horizon. As one, the Serpents lift their eyeless, mouthless heads, turning to face the both. When they lunged, she allowed them, without fear and without hesitation, following her strange partner's steps.

  Priga was all, and all was Priga. Together, flesh became Will became flesh.