He looked up at Kyle’s ruined face with the calm, thoughtful expression of a man deciding where to carve the next slice.

"I have been thinking about your friends."

His voice was conversational, almost friendly.

"Specifically, I have been trying to decide which of them I am going to be the kindest to. You know me, Kyle. I’m a generous person, fundamentally. Even when provoked. I like to think I give people a fair chance to earn a little mercy from me before I decide the rest of the conversation for them. Anderson earned none. Zack earned none. Aiden earned none. Brett, we haven’t started on, but I can already tell he’s going to earn none. You —"

He let the tip of the dagger rest lightly against Kyle’s chest, between the two long diagonal cuts, and the flesh around the contact point began to blacken and smoke "— are earning less than none tonight. You’ve earned a deficit."

He pressed. Not hard. The tip of the blade slid into Kyle’s chest by perhaps half an inch, the Void-Ice cold flooding the bone like liquid damnation.

Kyle’s scream was a whistle by now — his throat had no volume left, just a thin, airless shriek that bubbled out through the ruin of his face like steam from a cracked kettle.

"But there’s one of you," Phei continued, withdrawing the blade with the same unhurried patience, "who has, in my professional assessment, earned a sliver. Not a lot. Not enough to save him, ultimately. But a sliver of whatever grace I’m carrying around tonight. One of you, of all of you, has not yet given me a reason to go to him personally... yet. I’ve been deciding, over the last several days, if that qualifies as mercy... or if I’m just being lazy about my grudge list."

He paused. Appeared to think about it.

"Derek."

Kyle’s ruined eye blinked. Once. Twice.

The keening stopped.

For a long moment the only sounds in the room were Kyle’s wet, uneven breathing, the slow thick pat-pat-pat of his blood dripping to the parquet beneath him, and the faint, hungry crackle of Void-Ice continuing to consume the edges of every cut Phei had made.

Then — impossibly — Kyle laughed.

It was a wet, broken, choking sound. Interrupted every second syllable by a hitching sob that tore fresh agony through his frozen ribs and punctured lungs.

But it was unmistakably a laugh. It came out of him in short, wet bursts — hhh — hhh — hhh — and the damaged corner of his mouth lifted with it, exposing more of the pulped ruin beneath.

Phei stopped moving.

Cassiopeia, on the couch, lowered her tumbler.

"Something funny, Kyle?"

"D-Derek —"

"Mm."

"You — don’t — know — what you’re — hhh — hhh — what you’re talking about —"

Phei’s head tilted.

"Enlighten me."

"I’ll — I’ll take it — hhh — I’ll take it as read — that you know about — us, then —" Kyle’s breath was coming in shredded, gurgling gasps, but the words were finding each other across the damage one at a time, each syllable costing him fresh rivers of blood and pain.

"About — what we are — what’s been happening — since — since the beginning — of these last two decades before we were even born —"

Phei’s expression did not change.

But something behind his eyes went perfectly, dangerously still.

Kyle saw it.

Laughed again — harder — a thin, bubbling, triumphant laugh that sent a fresh string of pink foam and blood down his chin and made every frozen wound on his body scream in protest.

"Progenitors — right? — that’s what — hhh — that’s what you — you found out —"

Phei found his head nodding.

He did not remember telling it to nod.

It had simply decided, without consulting him, that the correct response to what Kyle had just said was a slow, small acknowledgment that yes — he did know — he had known for a time now —

Kyle laughed harder, the sound wet and ragged and full of dying-man glee, every laugh ripping new agony through his crucified body.

"Yes — yes you — you know — hhh — good — good —"

"Kyle."

"All of us — all of us have been — waking up slowly — getting our memories — back — not all at once — hhh — bits at a time — a night here — a dream there — a feeling when we — when we look at each other — in — in a room —"

Phei’s jaw tightened.

Kyle’s one working eye was bright now. Bright with pain. Bright with blood loss. And bright — impossibly — with a kind of hysterical, private satisfaction, the joy of a man dying with a secret in his mouth he had been waiting months to spit directly into the dragon’s face.

"And we — we all know one — one thing — for sure — Phei —"

"Kyle."

"One thing —"

Phei’s free hand closed around Kyle’s throat.

Not to strangle. To hold. To make sure the dying bastard did not pass out before finishing the sentence.

"Say it."

Kyle smiled.

It was the ugliest smile Phei had ever seen on a human face — half of it missing, the other half drenched in blood and frozen black at the edges, the teeth that remained gleaming red. But it was a real smile. It was a dying man’s final gift to himself — the joy of being the first to drive the knife home.

"Derek —" Kyle whispered, voice a wet, bubbling rasp, "— you think — you think he’s — what — naive? — sweet? — the harmless one? — hhh — the one — the one who — isn’t — isn’t quite — committed just because all he did was mostly speak and record you? —"

Phei did not answer.

"He’s the one — you should — you should fear — the most — Phei —"

"Kyle."

"Of all — of all of us — Derek — Derek is the — most — dangerous —"

"Kyle — finish it —"

"— one —"

Kyle’s head lolled slightly, the last of his strength bleeding out with the words.

Eira was already moving — a flicker of crystalline wings, a small hand pressed to Kyle’s chest, just enough blue-white light to drag him back from the edge of death, because Phei had not released the throat and had not indicated that Kyle was permitted to leave yet.

The cold light burned through the worst of the damage, forcing his ruined heart to keep beating, forcing his lungs to keep sucking air through the agony, keeping him conscious and suffering exactly where Phei needed him.

Kyle’s eye rolled back down.

Focused, shakily, on Phei’s face.

The smile returned, weaker now, but still triumphant.

"You — hhh — you have — no idea — Phei — no idea — what — what is waking — up — inside — inside — Derek —"

Kyle’s laugh bubbled up one more time, quieter now, almost confessional, the sound of a man who had just handed his executioner the match that would burn the whole world down.

"We — hhh — we do not — know — exactly — what he is — Phei — none of us — do — but — but we all — independently — remember — being — afraid — of him —"

Phei’s Void-Ice dagger hung loose and forgotten at his side.

Across the room, Cassiopeia’s tumbler — which had been halfway to her mouth — paused in the air.

Kyle wheezed one last triumphant; gurgling laugh out through the wreck of his face.

And for the first time since the portal had opened onto parquet flooring, Phei went completely, perfectly, utterly still — the calm, frozen centre of a new and far greater hell that had only just begun to open.