After Darkness intervened, a fragile peace followed. But it was a peace filled with ash and тревога. Ignis’s army fell apart, and Zariil locked himself inside his icy citadel, unwilling to speak to anyone.

  I stayed with the humans, trying to help them rebuild, but тревога kept growing in my heart. I knew the calm would not last.

  One night, when the sky was choked with smoke, a scream rang out. It was not a human scream of terror. It was the scream of shattered ice. I ran to Zariil’s chambers. He lay on the icy floor, writhing in pain. His body—usually cold and still—shuddered, and from his mouth came not steam, but thick black smoke.

  “Brother! What happened?!” I grabbed his shoulders, and his skin burned me with cold like fire.

  He opened his eyes. They were full of suffering and unbearable knowledge.

  “Ignis…” he rasped. “He… he is dead. I can feel it.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “That can’t be!” I breathed. “Who?! Who could kill the Archangel of Fire?!”

  “Them,” he whispered, and in his взгляд there was a mix of hatred and admiration. “Those… mortals. They didn’t fight him openly. They learned from Mortis. They used cunning and poison. They killed him like an insect.”

  A final convulsion ran through Zariil’s body.

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  “Time… our time, Lucida… it has ended. Our power… it has become a curse. A new era is coming. The era of those who live little, but burn brightly.”

  By morning the pain had faded. Zariil sat calm and pale as snow. There was no trace left in his eyes of rage or any desire to protect. Only deep fatigue.

  “I need to go,” he said.

  “No!” I sprang up. “You can’t! There are only two of us left! We have to find Darkness!”

  “We are no longer needed, sister,” his voice sounded like an echo. “I can’t watch them die anymore, and I can’t watch them become stronger than me. I’m tired.”

  He embraced me one last time. The cold of his skin was a farewell gift.

  “Don’t look for me. No one should follow me.”

  He rose, and his figure began to melt. He didn’t fly away. He simply dissolved into his own cold, becoming part of the mist that covered the northern valley.

  I was left alone. I waited for him. A day, a week, a year. I never saw him again. Not Zariil. Not Ignis. Not Mortis. Not Krav. And even Father fell silent, as if drawing a curtain over the world.

  The Archangels became legends.

  Troubled times began. Humans, stripped of a constant threat but still carrying their ingenuity and cruelty, began to thrive. Their nomadic tribes settled. They built the first large stone settlements that became cities. Elves and dwarves watched this with wary eyes. They remembered the horrors humans had brought.

  An age of enmity began. Dwarves did not want to share their underground resources. Elves, protecting their forests, began killing humans who cut trees to build cities. They stopped seeing one another as allies.

  As for me, I simply traveled the world. I was a ghost, a wanderer with two ugly scars on my back. I searched for even a trace of my brothers. I walked through Krav’s dead lands, where Mortis’s spiders now crawled. I passed through cities built on the bones of those who had perished in Ignis’s blue fire.

  I understood that humans did not need gods. They themselves became their own strength, their own weakness, and their own curse. I was the last splinter of Heaven in a world that had chosen to live by its own rules.