[Evelyn’s POV]

Cassandra lunges and I don’t draw a blade.

I pivot, channeling moonlight into a barrier that deflects her strike — not blocks it, not meets it with force, just redirects the killing edge past my shoulder by inches. She recovers faster than I expected, spinning into a second attack that forces me back.

“Evelyn — you must fight back. She will not stop until one of you is dead.”

“I know she won’t stop, but I won’t kill her either, Aspis. I refuse to be what Father wanted me to become.”

“She is trying to kill you. Your refusal to respond in kind is not nobility — it is suicide.”

“And responding in kind would be murder. I am trying to break the cycle, which means not becoming what she expects me to become.”

“Then how do you expect this to end?”

“With her alive, both of us alive, actually. There has to be a way.”

Cassandra’s blade comes for my throat. I duck under it, catch her wrist, try to lock the joint and force her to drop the weapon. She twists free and her elbow catches my jaw hard enough to send sparks across my vision.

I stumble back, and she presses the advantage.

The fight becomes brutal. Cassandra attacks with everything she has — no hesitation, no restraint, fighting with the desperation of someone whose identity depends on this moment.

I fight to neutralize. Every technique designed to disarm, to pin without piercing. I channel moonlight into barriers, throw blinding flashes, use locks and deflections that Sera taught me — controlling without destroying.

It’s not enough.

Her blade finds my arm — a cut that opens the flesh from elbow to wrist, blood running hot down my fingers. I hiss through my teeth and keep moving.

“You are bleeding badly. Your reserves are depleted, and you cannot maintain this defense much longer.”

“I just need her to listen. One moment where she hears me instead of Father’s voice in her head.”

“She has had years of that voice telling her who to be. You have had thirty seconds to offer her something different.”

“Then I’ll use every one of those seconds. Help me, Aspis, help me reach her.”

“I do not know how to reach someone who has decided to be unreachable.”

Another exchange. Another cut — this one across my thigh, shallow but painful, my leg threatening to buckle.

I give ground, retreating toward the cliff edge where the rocky shore drops away to the sea below.

“Fight me properly!” Cassandra screams, her face twisted with fury and something that looks almost like anguish.

“You always were a coward, hiding behind your excuses, refusing to be what you were meant to be. Stand and face me like the sister I was promised!”

My voice breaks on her name: “I am standing right here, refusing to raise a blade against you, and that is the hardest thing I have ever done.”

“You call this hard? Try living your entire life knowing you were made to kill someone, try being forged into a weapon before you were old enough to understand what weapons do.”

“I know how Father shaped you, but you don’t have to be the thing he made. You can choose something different.”

“There is only this — only us — only the prophecy that Father carved into my bones before I could walk. Make it easier for both of us and die!”

She drives forward — a combination that forces me to the very edge of the cliff, the stone crumbling beneath my heels, the sound of waves far below.

I channel moonlight into one more barrier, deflecting her killing stroke, and the effort costs me something vital. The power gutters in my chest like a candle in a storm.

“I don’t want to kill you.” The words tear out of me, raw and desperate. “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I never wanted any of this. Not the prophecy, not the hatred, not years of being told one of us had to die so the other could live.”

“One of us does have to die! That’s what the prophecy demands.”

“Evelyn, she is positioning for a killing strike. Her weight is shifting forward.”

“You must defend yourself. If she completes this attack—”

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