“Go,” Vethis said. “The contract is fulfilled. No forfeit. No Prize. Just you, and your ghosts, and tomorrow.”
Each memory carved him open again.
He thought of the rebels who had trusted him. Make it mean something.
And then he understood.
Vethis tilted his head, genuinely curious. “Then what do you claim?”
He thought of the lover who had left. You don’t let anyone in.
“I don’t want to bring anyone back,” Venn said, rising. His voice cracked, but it held. “The Prize is not resurrection. It’s a choice of which loss defines me.” DV-s The Skaafin Prize
“The DV-s contract is binding,” Venn said. “Complete your Trials. Claim your Prize. I’ve done three already.”
He stood at the edge of the Obsidian Galleries, a cavern of polished volcanic glass that reflected his own scarred face back at him a thousand times. Somewhere in these echoing halls waited the Prize—and the one creature who could grant it.
Vethis crouched beside him. For a moment, the Proctor’s brass eyes held something almost like pity. “No one ever can. That is why the Skaafin Prize has been claimed only three times in a thousand years. Most choose to stop. They leave with nothing but the weight of remembering.” “Go,” Vethis said
He stepped aside. Behind him, a door of white light opened onto Venn’s own world—the salt flats, the dawn, the air clean and free.
The galleries fell silent. The brass light in Vethis’s eyes flickered, dimmed, then flared bright gold.
“I can’t,” he said, but his voice was small. No Prize
“The right to carry all of them. Not one. Every loss. Every scar. I don’t want to undo the past. I want to stop running from it.”
On the salt flats, Venn knelt and pressed his palm to the ground. For the first time in years, he said their names aloud: the sister, the rebels, the lover. All of them. None of them.