“what is your name?” he asked, patient and unscathing. “my own is Ronin”

she flittered in the wind, neither here nor there, her eyes washed clean of colour. but she remembered this one… “you are-” she began, then fell silent as the memory slipped beyond her careless grasp.

“that i am.” he responded, bidding his own memories back into the ether.

she flittered once more then settled on his shoulder, wings back and face to the sky. she remembered this one, her eyes becoming the pale of a dying petal. her soul ruffled with a memory she couldn’t quite reclaim. she clutched a string of his hair in her hand and felt it familiar against her skin. colour came seeping back into her, oozing out from the abyss where she had seen and done terrible things.

“why should it be so?” her body pondered on the world.

“it is as it has been.” and she felt his shudder as her own. her eyes became a myriad of the fire rains, the colours of the Sun. and the Sun itself. she pondered on this, too, this light from behind the mountains.

“the dreadlight dawn approaches, Ronin.”

he stood. “are you yourself?”

her wings curled about her in deadly form, her skin alight with the rage of the fallen and her eyes-the many colours of the burning hells. “i am as i have been.” talons baying for more blood.

pitiless, he sheathed his sword, a prayer for the dead to follow. “then, Shivae,” a pause for a lost friend. “we go forward, and do our work.”

yes. she remembered this one, in the depths of what had been. she remembered him as someone she had loved.

they slipped into the world, unseen, to do what needed done.