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The wind screamed through the trees as if it, too, had something to lose.
Henry rode hard beneath a sky the color of iron, heart drumming war against his ribs. Each hoofbeat echoed his fury and his fear.
He has him, he has him, he has him.
A chant. A curse. A prayer.
His hands were bloodless on the reins, fingers clenched until the leather cut deep but he did not feel it. He felt only the fire seething in his chest, clawing up his throat. A howl he hadn’t yet loosed.
Hans.
Sweet-tongued man, all silk and smirk.
Too clever. Too beautiful. Too his.
And now…. taken.
Henry’s thoughts spiraled, thorns of memory piercing flesh.
The last smile Hans gave him.
The warmth of him in the dark. The way his laughter folded the world into something gentle.
A thousand heartbeats, now narrowed to one truth:
Hans was in the wolf’s mouth. And the hound wasn’t there.
Ahead, Erik’s keep loomed like a wound on the land. Black stone, cruel edges, shadows watching. Not a fortress. A tomb waiting to shut its mouth.
Henry’s fury surged like a tide, crashing against ribs and reason. He would bring it all down: stone, bone and vengeance.
For Hans. Or die where the hare had fallen.
The hall was quiet as death. Too quiet.
The kind of silence that wrapped around your throat and pulled.
Henry stepped into the gloom like a blade into flesh, breath ragged, blood thunderous in his ears. His boots rang on stone, each step a declaration. He had come to bring Hans home.
And then he saw him.
Alive.
And Henry’s heart stuttered in his chest.
For a moment, just one, he knew joy.
Hans’ face, pale and drawn.
But his.
Eyes wide, breath shallow, caught between hope and horror. But joy curdled quickly into dread because pressed tight to his back was a figure Henry knew too well.
A shadow wrapped in a man’s shape.
Erik.
His sword kissed the curve of Hans throat, cruel and intimate.
Blood already beading where the edge had teased skin. Beautiful red.
Erik leaned forward, his gaze slithering past Hans to meet Henry’s.
And he smiled.
“I warned you,” he murmured, the words like rusted nails driven through silence.
“Back then when our blades crossed.”
Henry’s fists clenched. He could barely breathe.
“You should’ve finished me then. Should’ve buried me with Ištván.”
His name was a wound. The moment it passed Erik’s lips the air felt colder.
“Let him go,” Henry growled, voice thick with fury and fear. “He has nothing to do with this. This is between you and me.”
“Nothing to do with it?” Erik laughed, low and cruel. “He has everything to do with it. Don’t insult us both and him by pretending otherwise.”
He pressed the blade a touch deeper and Hans flinched, a small, sharp motion that made Henry’s heart break apart.
“Take me,” Henry begged, stepping forward. “Do what you want. Kill me. Just… let him go.”
Erik tilted his head. “But that would be too kind. Death is a mercy, you bastard.
And mercy is for men who haven’t carved their revenge into the bones of others.”
Henry faltered, like the floor itself had buckled beneath him.
“You took my heart and buried it beneath your justice. So now…” Erik leaned in closer, his voice a whisper beside Hans’ ear
“…you’ll watch yours bleed for it.”
Hans trembled. His eyes met Henry’s across the space.
A look that begged, not for rescue but for forgiveness.
And Henry could do nothing.
Only burn. Only boil. Only break.
The hound had come.
But the snare had already snapped shut.
Erik moved like a shadow cut loose from the world. A flick of his wrist and the blade whispered across Hans throat with a sound that should never be forgotten, though Henry would spend the rest of his life trying.
A gurgle escaped Hans lips. A gasp. A tremble.
And the devil let him go.
The moment lasted a lifetime. Hans staggered forward like a puppet with its strings slashed, adrenaline propelling him three steps towards Henry. His hands flew to his neck, fingers slipping, trying desperately to hold in the life pouring out of him. He was trying to seal it, trying to stop the inevitable.
But blood always finds a way.
His eyes found Henry’s.
The blood spilled through his fingers in thick, urgent waves.
It spilled on the cold stone beneath him.
Hans eyes widened, frantic.
His mouth opened but no sound left his lips. Just wet gasps, the broken engine of a body that did not want to die.
And Henry screamed.
The sound ripped through the stone walls and split the world in two. It was not a cry of anger, not of vengeance.
It was the sound of a soul breaking open, of love being carved from a man’s chest by fate’s cruelest hand.
He lunged, caught Hans before he crumpled completely.
Held him like something sacred.
Held him like he could still be saved.
The hall vanished.
There were no walls now, no Erik, no vengeance.
Only Skalitz.
Flames licking the rooftops.
The sky thick with ash.
His mother, her hands cold.
His father, broken on the ground.
Everyone dead. Everyone gone.
And Henry…. helpless. Small.
His heart screaming but unheard.
He was there again.
The hound, returned to the place of his first failure.
But now he had lost him too.
The man he loved.
Hans.
The clever tongue. The handsome grin. The teasing laughter beneath flickering torchlight. The soft kisses hidden in the shadows.
Hans
who made the world less cruel.
Hans,
his dear Hans.
Henry’s hands were everywhere at once, pressing into Hans chest, his side, his throat…. trying to stop the bleeding, trying to cradle him whole as if he could will the body to stay, as if he could keep the soul tethered with touch alone.
If he could he would have torn open his own ribcage.
Scooped out his heart.
Pushed it into Hans hands and said:
Take it. Take mine. Breathe with it. Live with it. Let me die in your place.
But there was no magic here.
Only blood.
So much blood. More than one man should hold.
More than the world should lose.
Erik stood behind them, watching.
His sword stained, his mouth a cold smirk.
He walked slow, silent circles around them like a starving wolf admiring his kill.
He didn’t need to devour the body.
He was devouring the moment. The pain. The despair.
Feeding on it.
And Henry broke.
He started whispering. Pleading. Not to Erik. Not anymore.
To the sky. To god and his angels. To anyone listening.
“Please. Please, not him. Take me. I’ll give you anything. I’ll give you everything. Just let him stay. Don’t take him. Don’t take him, please…”
But no one listened.
Hans was blinking. His eyes glassy, searching.
His mouth moved as if he was trying to speak, to say something.
Blood frothed at his lips.
He coughed, trembled.
And then, somehow, somehow, he smiled.
Through the pain, through the tears, through the horror.
A smile. Small. Shaking. Bittersweet.
Like he knew.
Like he had always known this would be his end.
The hare, offering himself to the hound.
Not as prey but as gift. As love.
As something to remember.
One last kindness. One final cruelty.
A kiss.
Henry lowered his head, hands shaking, breath broken, and pressed his lips on Hans‘.
It was salt and iron. Blood and love. Desperation wrapped in goodbye.
And when he pulled away
The light was gone.
Hans lay still.
No more trembling. No more pain. No more Hans.
Only silence.
Only red.
Only the hound, left holding the body of the only man who had ever made him feel like he was something more than just a blade in someone else’s war.
And Erik walked away.
The sword still hung loose in his hand, gleaming wet.
He didn’t look back. Not at Hans, not at Henry.
But Henry watched him.
Watched the way his boots kissed the earth with rot, how the grass browned beneath each step like it had known love once and forgotten it. Flowers curled in on themselves at the sight of him. The very air recoiled , like it didn’t dare fill the lungs of death himself.
Erik moved like a man who had buried every feeling and left the grave open.
There was no triumph in his stride, no mercy in the shoulders.
And then
He was gone.
Swallowed by the shadows. Leaving behind only the scent of steel and blood and something worse.
Silence rushed in.
It filled the ruins too quickly, too cruelly
The kind of silence that turns the world unreal.
Henry blinked.
The sound of Hans choking was still caught in his ears like a splinter, even though the body in his arms had stilled.
No twitch. No breath.
Just blood, seeping into the cracks between the stones like the earth wanted to drink him.
“Hans,” Henry whispered.
But Hans didn’t stir.
The name slipped out again, but this time like a plea.
“Hans…..”
No movement. No protest. No soft insult. No smirk.
His mouth had fallen slightly open.
The last thing the hare had tasted was its own blood.
His lashes were clumped together, wet with tears he hadn’t had time to wipe away.
Henry’s hands shook violently.
He tried to cover the wound once again, press his palm over the gaping throat but there was just nothing to stop anymore.
The blood was slowing.
Not because it had run out.
But because the body had.
“No,” he breathed as if the word alone could unmake it.
As if denying it could undo the blade.
He shook Hans, gently at first.
Then harder.
“Wake up.”
His voice cracked. “Hans, wake up. You always- You always wake up for me.”
There was a quiet sob, like it didn’t want to be heard but it shook his shoulders.
He crumpled, curling over the body, clutching it tight against him as if he could keep the soul inside by sheer will.
“We need to see a healer,” he whispered, voice hitching. “You need to get up”
His lips found Hans brow but the skin was getting cold.
Not cold like snow….
cold like absence.
Like Hans was no longer inside the shape of himself.
Henry choked. This couldn’t be.
The tears came hot and sudden, slipping into the corner of his mouth, tasting salt and blood and memory.
He couldn’t breathe.
Not really.
Not with this weight in his chest.
He looked up again, as if Erik might still be there, as if this were something he could undo with a sword.
But the space Erik had walked through had darkened.
And the doorway gaped like a mouth, swallowing the world behind it.
The devil had vanished.
And henry was left with nothing but grief.
He pressed his face to Hans chest.
Listened.
Waited.
“Please,” he whispered into the silence. “If there’s anyone left listening-”
But god and his angels, too, had gone.
He sat there a long time.
Maybe minutes.
Maybe days.
The stone below him had grown sticky with death.
His armor was painted red.
And Hans was so heavy now.
So quiet. It was so unlike him.
Henry’s mind drifted.
Fell out of the hall.
Out of his body.
A sound.
The echo of a bootstep against stone.
Henry’s head jerked up, heart lurching.
He turned toward the darkened door, the one Erik had vanished through.
The shadow stepped through again.
Tall, quiet.
Blade in hand.
The same deliberate steps.
The same familiar gait.
The same sharp eyes.
Erik had returned.
Henry’s hand twitched toward his sword, rage returning like breath to drowning lungs.
But then….
The light shifted.
And it wasn’t Erik.
It was him.
Henry.
Or something shaped like him, made of the same limbs, the same armor.
But different. Bloodstained . Hollow eyed.
He moved like a beast not a man.
Not the kind of hound that guards, no
The slick-mouthed and low growling kind.
He paced slowly around Henry.
Hans cold body still cradled in his lap.
Henry froze.
“No,” he said.
The Other Henry tilted his head, mock sympathy dripping from his tongue.
“Oh, you thought it was him,” he murmured, voice velvet and ash. “The devil with the blade. The man who walked away.”
He crouched low to meet Henry’s eyes and when he grinned it was all teeth.
“But you should know better than anyone. He didn’t kill him.”
Henry shook his head. “No. No, don’t…..”
The Other leaned close.
“You did.”
Henry flinched.
“You brought him here. You lit the trail with blood. You begged for revenge and god heard you. Oh, he heard you.”
“I didn’t want this!”
“You wanted it all. Vengeance. Justice. A reason to hurt like you’ve been hurt. You sank your teeth into Ištván’s throat but the hunger didn’t fade.”
He stood, prowling in a slow arc again. Every step echoed.
“The Hunger never fades. Not for us. Not for hounds like you.”
“I’m not-” Henry’s voice cracked.
“Not what?” The Other’s voice hardened. “Not a killer? Not a predator? Tell me, Henry. How does Hans taste now that he’s dead in your arms?”
Henry’s body shook.
“He was your beloved and you dragged war to his door like a gift. Did you really think the devil wouldn’t collect his due?”
“I begged him,” Henry whispered. “I begged him to take me.”
The Other Henry crouched beside him again, expression flat.
“But he already did. Long ago.”
Silence.
Then, softly
“In the end, you’re what you’ve always been.”
His voice was quiet now, like Ištván’s had been in that tower moments before Henry drove steel through his gut.
“A boy with a sword and no god. A wicked creature who lets everything he loves die screaming.”
Henry’s mouth trembled.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
The Other leaned closer, close enough for Henry to see the blood in his eyes.
“You are the one who killed him.”
And Henry screamed.
But not like a man wounded.
He screamed like a thing coming apart.
Like grief had clawed its way up through his throat and split him open from the inside.
His body bent over Hans corpse, his arms clutched him tighter
as if he could squeeze time into reversing.
as if holding him hard enough could mend the throat, reverse the cut, undo the death.
But nothing changed.
The blood stayed. The warmth long gone.
And behind him
the Other was no longer there.
But the words remained. Curling around Henry’s ears. Clawing into the seams of his mind.
You are the one who killed him.