Cassian couldn’t move. He stood staring at the back of the man who had just saved him, and for one single second the fire, the screaming, the buildings folding in on themselves all of it fell away. There was only his father.
Moros Veyr. The man who had just pulled him back from the edge of everything.
He had always seemed so ordinary in Cassian’s eyes. Even comforting him after a bad dream. Even keeping him at arm’s length from Azhur for reasons he’d refused to explain. He had always looked, to Cassian, like an average man doing an average man’s job.
And now?
He stood there, wrapped in armor of glowing violet light, a sword of the same light held loose and easy in one hand, having just cut down three grown men without breaking stride. He looked like something out of the stories the elders told to frighten children into staying near the fire at night. But in Cassian’s eyes he was the exact opposite of frightening. He was a hero. The man who kept him safe. The man who’d taught him to throw his first punch. His father.
Cassian’s eyes traced the strange armor it covered most of Moros’s body, glowing faintly through the cloth beneath it, and something about the way it moved felt almost alive, like it was breathing along with him. Even the sword looked wrong in a way Cassian couldn’t name. Particles didn’t hold together like that, not naturally. Somehow his father had forced them into a blade of pure, condensed purple light.
Cassian had never seen anything close to it. Most people he knew used their particles to transform or reinforce their own bodies but his father hadn’t simply used his ability to forge a weapon. He’d made something where the blade and the will behind it could no longer be pulled apart.
For a long moment Cassian only stared. The man standing in front of him didn’t look like the person he’d known his whole life. And yet terrifying as Moros looked in that armor, Cassian wasn’t afraid. Quite the opposite. For the first time since the fires had started, he felt safe. His father was here. And the three men who’d cornered him were already dead.
Cassian took a step forward. Then another. No matter how badly his legs shook, no matter how tired he was, he was going to reach his father and hold on.
He’d spent the whole day believing he had lost everything his friends, his home, his entire world. But now his father was standing right in front of him. For the first time that night, he felt like he could actually breathe.
Moros turned around. Their eyes met. In an instant Cassian was running toward him, arms locking tight around his father’s chest, face pressed hard against him.
For a moment Moros didn’t move at all. Then, slowly, he lowered his arms and folded his son into the embrace. Cassian held on as tightly as his arms would allow, as if letting go for even a second might make his father disappear all over again.
"I thought you were dead," Cassian whispered, his voice breaking apart on the last word.
Moros closed his eyes. "I’m here now."
Cassian said nothing back. He just held on, finally letting loose the fear he’d been carrying since the moment the first explosion tore through the square. Tears soaked into the strange, glowing armor. He didn’t care in the slightest.
There was too much he wanted to ask. What was happening. Who the attackers were. Why the village was burning at all. Most of all who were they?
He looked up at his father one more time before finally letting go. "D-Dad, I’m scared."
"I know."
Moros’s gaze drifted past him, out over the ruins of the village. The flames had already consumed most of the houses by now. Smoke swallowed the whole sky, and the roar of destruction had grown so total that there would be nothing left worth rebuilding. Embers drifted down around them like red snow.
Cassian followed his father’s gaze. "Is everyone-" He couldn’t make himself finish it.
Moros was quiet a moment too long. "I don’t know."
Cassian lowered his head. "My friends. Zayd and Aurelia I don’t know where they are. Azhur took them."
"We’ll find them."
Cassian looked up sharply. "You think they’re still alive?"
Moros held his eyes without flinching. "I don’t know." A pause. "We’ll look together. I promise you that much."
Cassian stared at him. Those few words were enough. His father was here. Still alive. And if there was even the smallest chance his friends still drew breath somewhere out there, the two of them would find it.
Maybe everything wasn’t lost after all. Maybe they could still survive this.
Cassian leaned in closer. For one brief moment Moros let his guard drop entirely, looking down at his son with nothing left in his face but plain, unguarded affection. Neither of them spoke. The village kept burning around them, but Cassian had almost stopped registering it. All he could see was his father solid, real, standing right in front of him.
And then
A sharp, violent sound sliced clean through the smoke.
Cassian froze. A hole of blood burst open across his father’s chest. The impact came so suddenly it barely made a sound at first just a wet, final noise that Cassian would hear again every night for the rest of his life.
His father’s eyes went wide with shock. The sword slipped from his grip, the violet light around it shattering into the black smoke like scattered dust. The glowing armor flickered once and began to fade.
Moros collapsed.
"Well, well. Did you really think you could keep running forever, Shadow Sovereign?"
Cassian couldn’t process any of it. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. The only thing left inside him was raw, paralyzing fear, filling every inch of him at once.
Out of nowhere, his father had been struck down, and he’d been completely powerless to stop even a second of it.
Through the thick smoke, all Cassian could see were two spiral eyes. They didn’t belong to his father. They glowed a sickly, cruel green, and they were locked directly onto him.
He couldn’t look away. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream. He wanted, more than anything, to wake up and find that none of this had ever been real. His body betrayed him completely, refusing every order he gave it.
His eyes slid back down to his father, half-collapsed on the ground. The violet glow of the armor was fading fast now. The sword lay several feet away, already dissolving into nothing. Blood spread wide across the dirt beneath him.
"Dad" The word had barely left his lips when his father forced himself upright again, one hand pressed hard against the wound.
"What you’re doing," Moros said, voice ragged but carrying, "it’s pure evil. I know what you’re planning. All of it."
"I wouldn’t have said a single word to anyone," the green-eyed figure did not reply, "but you had to go and drag up the past, didn’t you."
Moros’s voice stayed weak, ragged, and utterly unbroken. He stood between his son and the green-eyed figure, swaying badly, refusing outright to fall.
The figure only watched him, unmoved by any of it. The spiral eyes glowed brighter still.
"CASSIAN, RUN! THE WEST GATE SHOULD STILL BE CLEAR I’LL HOLD HIM OFF!"
The moment the words left him, his whole face softened a small, sad smile breaking through the pain.
"I love you, my sweet boy."
Cassian refused to leave him. He’d already lost his friends. He’d already run once tonight, when Vogel told him to.
Not this time. He would not leave his father here to die alone.
Then, with the very last of his strength, Moros raised one hand. The shadows around them lashed out violently in answer. Dark particles gathered around Cassian’s body and pooled into a pitch-black shadow beneath his feet. The darkness climbed his legs like something alive, like water finding its way uphill.
"DADDD, NOOOO!"
Cassian reached for him wildly, trying with everything left in him to stop the shadow from closing over him completely. His fingers scraped uselessly against the fading violet light. It didn’t care. It had one command left, and only one.
Get Cassian to safety.
No matter how hard he thrashed, how loudly he screamed his father’s name into the smoke, the shadow dragged him away regardless, deeper into the dark. The burning village slowly disappeared behind him into the night, swallowed whole.
The green eyes watched him go until the very last moment.
And with him, so did his father.