hidden in plain sight

The spot where the Breach once stood had become overgrown in the intervening months since the Collective's loss of their home: hearty grass and scrubby bushes blurred the edges of the old compound, and clusters of wild purple heather and yellow gorse had filled in the bare ground with new life. Small trees had begun to sprout, branches poking hopefully towards the sky as a corn bunting swooped low, in search of its midday meal. Life had pressed on in the Hinterlands, seemingly without note or pause.

Quai stood at the forest's edge, quietly observing the new life that had grown in the Collective's absence. The Breach had never been beautiful, in the traditional sense; it was all stone and steel and the particular grey of a place built for defense rather than comfort. But it had been their home.

Now there was only the ghost of a foundation beneath the heather, an oddly-shaped swath of slightly denser green, where the new growth had come in thicker. She could just about make out the shapes if she looked closely enough.

A skylark landed in the upper branches of a bush nearby and did not know enough to be disturbed by her presence. It regarded her for a moment, its head tilting this way and that before it deemed her uninteresting and took off into the bright, clear sky.

The rain had stopped a few minutes before. The Breach sat quiet in the gloom of dusk, its stone walls damp and dark, windows still ticking softly as runoff slipped from the eaves. Below, the forest stretched in dark, jagged layers towards the far end of the valley. Quai stood alone on the balcony outside of her office, hands resting against cold parapet stone. The wind carried the scent of wet pine and petrichor as it pushed the pewter clouds across the night sky. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, but for once found no comfort in her usual meditations. 

Normally, beneath the scent of nature she would feel it: the steady undercurrent of the crossing; the spirit realm humming softly at the edge of her perception as it moved quietly (and ever-so-reliably) just out of sync with the living world. With focus turned elsewhere, even Quai could easily forget its presence as it rubbed along comfortably with the rest of reality. 

That night was different: it was still there, but now it stuttered as she turned her focus onto it. She opened her eyes and shifted her gaze northward, far beyond the trees and mountains, beyond the Ghostlands and the spires of Silvermoon City where the Sunwell pulsed: unseen from this distance, but not unfelt. It had always been a steady, radiant pressure on the world; order imposed upon chaos. But now something pressed back. 

The whispers in her mind had been restless all day. Not louder; she would have preferred if they were just louder. This was different. They overlapped in uneven cadence, rising and falling as though something vast had brushed against the spirit realm and caused a ripple through every passing soul. 

Her shadow at her feet did not lie flat against the stone as she drew her focus further inward: it feathered at the edges. Split. Rejoined. For the space of a second it seemed deeper than it should have been; like a  hole, rather than the absence of light. She inhaled slowly as the sensation crawled uncomfortably up the back of her neck. She didn’t need a messenger from Quel’Thalas, or reports of cultists or seers or a shattered sky over the Ghostlands to know what was happening. 

Another tremor, sharper that time: the sensation hit like a skipped heartbeat, causing her breath to catch momentarily in her throat. She held still, fingers gripping the parapet as something probed uncomfortably at the edges of her mind, poking experimentally at the walls she’d spent years building and reinforcing. 

A flicker of violet brushed the far edge of her perception: not a vision or an image, but an awareness of immense attention turning its head ever so slightly in her direction. 

Quai opened her eyes and stepped quickly back from the parapet. Her shadow peeled upward with her movement, inky tendrils briefly trailing behind her boots before collapsing inward again. An uncomfortable feeling prickled across her chest, spreading across her sternum with an unfamiliar pressure. Far north, something surged. She could not see the Sunwell, but she felt its pulse spike against the Void’s encroachment; Light pushing back against something far older and much more horrifying. 

Rain battered the Breach in a relentless rhythm, fat drops striking the leaded glass of Quai’s office as she stepped into the cool darkness. The rest of the fortress thrummed with distant urgency somewhere beyond her office, muted further as she closed the door behind herself. 

She stayed that way for long moments: still and unmoving, her gaze focused somewhere in the middle distance as the water traced the panes in crooked paths on the glass. Her hand slipped into her pocket automatically and withdrew a small, velvet bag. It looked harmless; delicate, even, as she loosed the strings and slid an obsidian stone into her palm. 

The stone was cool to the touch, and carved with lines so fine they were almost invisible: grooves that seemed to drink in the mottled moonlight that just barely filtered through the storm clouds. It felt heavier than a stone that small had any right to be. 

Quai leaned over and withdrew a slim throwing blade from her boot, and pressed the tip of the sharpened blade to her palm until a small bit of blood bloomed around the tip of the blade: it welled dark and slow and traced into the lines of her hand before she dropped the blade and closed her fist around the stone. Her eyelids closed as she leaned back against the door, waiting for the familiar tug; the weightlessness without falling that would bring her where she needed to be. In the space between breaths, the office dissolved around her and the spirit realm welcomed her back. 

She took one step before opening her eyes: old wood replaced smooth stone beneath her feet. 

Marshlands stretched as far as she could see in every direction, muted greys and greens coming into focus as the realm asserted itself around her. Still water and flat, criss-crossing bridges lay beneath a heavy, grey sky that held no sun and no stars. The boards were slick and smelled of rot. 

She didn’t have to search long for him: Damon wandered alone across the planks, turning in slow circles, a look of bewilderment on his face. He looked whole: no bite marks, no blood, both hands at the ends of his wrists. His limbs were intact. His gaze was unfocused. 

“Where am I?” he muttered to no one. “What is this?”

Quai approached without sound. There, she did not need to be unseen: the realm itself kept her from notice until she chose otherwise. 

He inhaled a sharp breath when he saw her appear before him on the other end of a bridge. 

“Quai?” Confusion furrowed his brow. “What… what is this? Some kind of trick?”

“You’re dead,” she replied flatly.

He laughed once, sharp and unbelieving. “Don’t be ridiculous. I was just…” 

He trailed off; his expression faltered. The memory didn’t come: there was a blank space where agony should have lived. The mind protects itself, even in the space between life and death.

“I don’t remember,” he said finally, quieter.

“No,” Quai agreed. “You don’t.”

He looked around again as unease crept in. “What is this place?”

“A crossing.”

His gaze sharpened on her. “To where?”

Quai looked around, expecting to see something appear at Damon’s question, but the realm remained still and quiet. No farmhouse, no random door in a field, no archway of light. No threshold shaped by longing or need or regret. The marsh stretched unbroken in every direction; the bridges led nowhere but into more of themselves. 

Confusion flickered across his face. Quai stepped closer. 

“Nowhere, apparently,” she replied. 

“What do you mean, ‘nowhere’? Is this the Shadowlands?” 

“No.” 

Damon stared at her for a beat. 

“...Are you going to tell me where we are?” 

“It has a lot of names— Spirit Realm, In-Between, the Lost Place, the Crossing. Take your pick.” 

“So I’m… not dead?” 

“No, you are. I wasn’t lying. Most of your body is probably in Maud’s stomach by now, hungry little thing.” Damon looked appropriately revulsed at the thought. 

“That’s fucked up, Quai.” 

A shrug. 

“Everyone’s got their something. Who are we to judge?” 

“I feel an awful lot like I’m being judged right now,” Damon grumbled to himself. 

“You are. And you’ve been found wanting.” 

“Why, for seeing an opportunity and taking it? How often have you done that?” he demanded. The water beneath the bridges rippled very slightly. Quai shrugged again. 

“More times than I can count. The only difference is that I never got caught.” 

“Speaking of getting caught, how did you manage to track me down in the first place?” 

“Well, I saw a flash of red rock in the portal you stepped through, you see. The banding on the rock is called gneissic banding, which means it has alternating light and dark bands formed by intense pressure and heat over time. The fact that it was exposed like that meant that it was likely in a dried-up riverbed, or most likely a canyon in a desert. The only light coming through the portal was torchlight, which supported my canyon theory— no moonlight, see. So,” she continued, “it would be a narrow canyon, and there would have to be a settlement very close by for you to get your stolen loot to. There were three that I could think of. I knew you had a large crew you regularly worked with, so the settlement would have to be large enough to contain them, but still be abandoned, which narrowed it down to two. One of those settlements was razed to the ground by Deathwing, which left the one where you were indeed hiding. I paid a Goblin I know from Ratchet to do a fly-by to make sure I was right before we came to visit.” 

Damon stared at her, agog. 

“...Y-you got all of that… from looking at some rocks?” he asked slowly. Quai rolled her eyes. 

“No, I tracked the bracelet you stole from Andrew, one of the stones is a comm stone and they can be tracked,” she replied flatly. “Gods, you’re stupider than he is.” 

“Hey!” Damon said sharply. He took a few steps closer to her. The marsh stirred again, a larger ripple disturbing the perfect reflection of the leaden sky.

Quai did not move. 

“Well, a stupid question deserved a stupid answer. You had to know you wouldn’t make it far, regardless.” 

“Why am I here, Quai?” he pressed. The ripples widened, intersecting in restless patterns beneath the planks.

“I wanted to catch you before you moved on.” 

“And say what?” 

Quai shook her head. “You misunderstand. I wanted to catch you, Damon. Not just at your little compound, but here, too.” 

“Why? Because I saw an opportunity and took it?” 

“Because you bit the hand that fed you. Did you think simple death would stop me from coming after you?” Something churned below the surface now. Nothing visible, but the water was no longer still.

Damon glanced down. “What is that?”

“You tell me.”

He swallowed. “C’mon, Quai, quit fucking with me. You made your point, I’m properly freaked out, just… just kill me for real or let me go or whatever, I don’t want to play whatever stupid twisted shit games you’re into.” 

Quai regarded him for long moments as the water convulsed below. At long last she spoke:

“No.”

A bulge broke the smooth plane beneath the bridge, then another. The surface quivered with tension as if something immense rolled just under it. Damon stumbled back, panic finally cutting through any composure he had left.

“Quai!” he yelled. 

She looked at him with an expression emptied of everything but clarity. A faint smile passed across her lips as the water erupted. 

Half a dozen grey, rotting arms burst through the surface at once: flesh sloughing from bone, bony fingers grasping with desperate purpose. They seized his ankles before he could run. He screamed, shrill and desperate: the sound tore across the marsh, thin and raw as it tore holes in the pewter-coloured sky. He clawed at the boards, splinters digging into his palms as the arms dragged him backward. More hands surfaced, clutching at his calves, his waist, his wrists.

“Quai! Help me!”

She remained still, watching his struggle with interest. Damon let out a frustrated yell. 

“I forgot, okay?!” he shouted. “I forgot which blade I’d put poison on, and I— and I took a chance and stabbed him! I didn’t know! Please, Quai, I— I didn’t know!” 

She stepped forward and crouched just beyond the reach of the rotting hands as Damon lost his grip on the dock. The violent splashing and horrible sound of hands slipping against skin seemed to fade into the background as she smiled and shook her head.

“I don’t care.”

His eyes widened: not just in fear, but in understanding. The arms yanked.

He vanished beneath the surface in a massive splash. The water roiled, churning as if something enormous fed below. His screams warped, muffled, then fractured into bubbles that burst and disappeared. A second later, a stone launched out of the water and came to rest at Quai’s feet. The churning water slowed, and the surface smoothed once more as the marsh returned to its placid stillness, reflecting the empty sky as though nothing had disturbed it at all. 

Quai stood for a long time, staring at the place where he had gone under. Eventually she leaned over and picked up the stone that had landed at her feet, and slipped it into her pocket as she stood. 

Her form thinned at the edges, unraveling into the same grey mist that hung low over the water. The bridges and the still water faded as Quai slipped back into the living world. 

In her office, rain still hammered the glass; only seconds had passed. 

She opened her eyes to mottled moonlight through the glass and the metallic scent of her own blood. The obsidian stone lay slick in her palm. The cut had already begun to close.

She slid the obsidian stone back into its velvet bag, cinched it tightly, and tucked it back into her pocket. Her fingers brushed against the second stone, the one she’d picked up a few minutes before: for the briefest moment she swore she could hear Damon's last cries, muffled and distant. 

The surgical suite was all glass and white stone and cold light; Quai stood alone in the shaded gallery on the other side of the glass, hands braced on the railing. In front of her, Andrew lay open to the world.

He looked smaller than she remembered: too thin, ribs faintly visible beneath skin inked heavily with tattoos that climbed his torso, wrapped his arms, crawled up his neck. Symbols, names, old jokes, half-forgotten oaths. The art distorted as the medic worked, skin pulled taut by clamps and careful hands. His black hair, with the pink tips he’d dyed just weeks ago, was matted dark with blood where it stuck to the side of his face.

Loxi moved with quiet precision. Not a priest, not some battlefield hack doing meatball surgery in a tent: this was someone who knew how to put people back together when magic alone wasn’t enough. Holy sigils hovered faintly over Andrew’s chest, holding vessels closed, slowing what wanted desperately to spill out. At the same time, steel sang softly; a scalpel guided by a hand that did not shake. Magic sealed what skill couldn't reach, and skill corrected what magic alone would ruin.

Andrew didn’t stir. His chest rose and fell shallowly, guided as much by spellwork as by breath.

Quai's mind refused to stay in the room. It kept dragging her backward, replaying Damon’s face, his voice, the way he stood: every conversation, every glance, every moment she’d dismissed because there had been nothing there to see. There had been no hesitation, no tells, no flicker of guilt or fear.

Nothing.

That was the worst part. Not the betrayal itself, but how clean it had been. Damon hadn’t slipped; he hadn’t cracked. He had walked away like a man who expected to be believed, because he always had been. In and out cleanly, like a well-tended blade.

He escaped, she thought bitterly. While Andrew bled out on the stone. Her fingers tightened on the railing until the metal creaked.

Below, the medic stepped back for a moment, murmured something to an assistant, and adjusted the glowing lattice of magical runes over Andrew’s chest. Quai followed the movement automatically, cataloguing injuries, damage, survival odds. Pilot instincts; tactical thinking-- anything to keep herself from imagining the worst.

That was when she saw it.

Andrew’s left arm lay outstretched on the table, pale and inked, fingers lax, caked in dried blood. Bare.

The absence of the comm stone bracelet that usually adorned his wrist hit her harder than the initial shock of finding him on the floor. She straightened slowly.

Her gaze snapped to the surgical tray, then to the floor beneath the table, then to the assistant’s hands. Nothing: no bracelet set aside for sterilization, no cracked housing discarded with torn clothing. It was gone.

Damon hadn’t taken Andrew’s weapon. He hadn’t bothered with his rings or his jacket or the diamond stud in his right ear. But the comm stone was missing, cleanly removed from his left arm. A trophy..? she wondered.

No... a mistake.

Her breath steadied for the first time since she’d arrived.

Comms could be tracked. Not easily, not by amateurs, but she knew the system. Frequencies, relays, bleed-through Arcane signatures. Andrew’s stone would still be active unless Damon had gone out of his way to wipe it, and Damon had never struck her as thorough; just confident. He wouldn’t even know it could be done.

Her reflection stared back at her from the glass. Eyes shadowed, jaw set as something cold and precise settled into place behind her ribs.

Below, the medic resumed work. Andrew’s bleeding slowed, and his chest rose and fell a fraction deeper than before.

“Live,” Quai murmured under her breath. Not a prayer; an order.

Yesterday...

The in-between was quiet in the way a snow-covered field was quiet: thick, muffled, ancient. Quai walked its shifting expanse with her hands in her pockets, boots treading paths that only appeared when she stepped. She never knew exactly where the realm would lead her; it never did the same thing twice.

That night, though, it felt… familiar.

A soft current tugged at her side, a gentle insistence. She let it guide her. The whispers in the back of her mind shifted: recognition, faint and far-off. And then she saw him.

A lone figure stood in a clearing of silver-gray grasses, back turned, head tilted upward as though he were trying to read the sky. He looked almost exactly as he had the day he'd died. Same posture, same too-big flight jacket. A little different around the eyes, but still unmistakably him. Quai stopped several paces away, breath caught momentarily in her throat.

“Harrow,” she said softly. He turned. Confusion flickered, then clarity settled in, slow and dawning.

“Ma’am?” His voice was gentle, surprised. Not scared. Not anymore. “It’s really you, Lieutenant.” He paused and squinted at the insignia upon her uniform. "...Wing Commander," he corrected.

She walked toward him, each step slow, deliberate. Ten years in the waking world was little more than a drift of time here, but even so, something in her chest tightened.

“We're well past formalities, Harrow. You’ve been here a while,” she murmured.

He looked down at his hands, as though noticing that fact for the first time. “I think… yes. I don’t know how long exactly. It’s easy to lose track. I don't even know if I'm always... here.”

Quai nodded. “This place does that.”

He studied her face a moment, brow furrowing. “You look… different.”

“I got older,” she said. “You didn’t.”

His smile was small, bittersweet. “That’s not fair.”

“No,” she agreed. “It isn’t.”

They stood together in the clearing, the silence soft and heavy. Harrow turned slowly in place, taking in the empty gray expanse around them.

“I’ve been wandering,” he admitted. “Trying to find something. I don’t know what. A path, maybe? A sunrise? The way home.” His gaze flicked to her. “I figured… maybe I missed it. Maybe I'm stuck here.”

“You didn’t miss anything,” Quai said quietly. “The realm was waiting.”

“For what?”

She hesitated. “For me, I think.”

Harrow absorbed that with the quiet acceptance of the dead. “I thought about you sometimes. Wondered if you made it through the war.”

“I did.”

“That’s good.” He paused. “Did anyone… remember me?”

She felt that one like a blow to the chest.

“Yes,” she said. “More than you know.”

His eyes softened. He let out a breath, long and slow, releasing something he’d held for a decade.

The realm shifted then, subtly and gently, silver grasses parting to reveal a door a few yards behind him. Quai hadn’t seen it appear. It simply was, waiting. Painted a soft, weathered blue. A golden light glowed from beneath the seams. Different than every other door, yet somehow exactly the same. Harrow turned to look at it, expression unreadable.

“That’s mine?” he asked.

“It’s been yours all along,” she said. He stepped closer, then glanced over his shoulder.

“Will you come with me?”

Quai felt the whispering stir in her mind: sorrow, inevitability, truth.

“You know I can’t,” she said.

He nodded, as though he’d expected that answer before he even asked the question, and for a moment he just stood there, hands at his sides, the glow outlining him in soft gold. Then he turned back to her.

“I’m not scared this time,” he said.

“I know,” she replied. “You don’t have to be.”

He hesitated, then, softly: “Thank you. For coming back for me.”

She swallowed. “You deserved the escort ten years ago. You deserve it just the same now.”

A small, genuine smile tugged at his mouth. Then he reached for the handle, breath steady, shoulders no longer trembling. He opened the door.

Warm light spilled out, golden and soft, carrying with it the faint sound of distant laughter: a memory made whole. Harrow stepped across the threshold without looking back.

The door closed silently behind him.

Quai stood alone in the silver clearing, the cold creeping back around her bones. Ten years gone, and still it hurt the same. The realm shifted as she exhaled, the path ahead darkening, and she knew she would never return to that exact spot.

“Safe travels, Harrow,” she whispered to the quiet.

Ten years ago...

The high-pitched whine of the Type-9s rattled the metal ribs of Hangar C. Quai stood at the base of her bomber’s ladder, helmet tucked under one arm, watching Private Harrow fail for the fifth time to stop his hands from shaking. The kid’s fingers jittered and knocked against the buckles of his flight harness as he fumbled to get it secured.

“Are you going to hyperventilate,” Quai said, “or are you planning to get in the air today?” Pilots and mechanics bustled around them, everyone abuzz with a level of electricity that only came before a live run.

Harrow snapped to attention, jaw tight. “Ma’am. Sorry, ma’am. I just... this is my first live run, and the brief said anti-air batteries in the northern ridge of Gorgrond are—”

“Mean sons of bitches,” she finished. “Yeah. They are.”

He swallowed. “Lieutenant, I’m not sure I’m—”

Quai stepped closer. Just being near her made the air colder, stiller, as though the world were holding its breath.

“Harrow,” she said, quiet but sharp enough to cut steel, “every pilot is terrified on their first run. And every pilot who pretends they’re not terrified is a liar or dead. Fear is fine. Fear keeps you alive. Panic is what gets you killed.”

He blinked at her. “What if I panic in the air?”

“Then you swallow it,” she said. “You swallow it whole. You let it sit in your gut like lead until the run is done. You only let it out once you’re back on the ground and someone hands you a drink. Understand?”

Harrow exhaled, a shaky thing, but some backbone slid into his posture. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” She hooked a thumb toward his waiting plane. “Get up there. And Harrow?”

He paused halfway up the ladder.

“Don’t chase the target,” Quai said. “Line the nose up before you commit to your dive. Chase it, and you’ll overcorrect. Overcorrect, and you’ll lose your lift and auger in. Discipline, not instinct. Instinct doesn't serve you until you actually have some experience to rely on.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded hard and climbed in.

'He’ll be fine,' Quai told herself. 'He just needs a clean first run.' But the whispering that lived at the edges of her mind bristled uneasily.

Minutes later, the squadron tore into the open sky, engines roaring like furious beasts as they left the narrow airstrip at the edge of Tanaan Jungle behind. Clouds streaked past as they formed up. The target ridge rose ahead: jagged stone, smoke plumes, and the sharp, angry flash of anti-air fire.

“Harrow,” Quai said over the comms, voice steady, controlled. “You’re on my right. Keep formation.”

“Yes ma’am,” came the tinny reply.

The first bursts of flak blew open the sky. Harrow jerked his stick, weaving too sharply.

“Hold the line!” Quai barked. “Easy! Easy, don’t fight the air!”

“Sorry— I— I’ve got it—”

They reached the dive point. Quai punched her bomber over, feeling the familiar weightlessness as the ground surged up to meet her. Her gaze narrowed.

Bombs away.

She pulled up, engine howling, shrapnel pinging the belly of her plane. One more pass and—

“Harrow, your turn,” she said. “Remember what I—”

But Harrow was already diving: too steep, too fast, nose chasing the moving AA battery that swiveled towards him.

“Harrow, abort the dive!” Quai snapped. “Pull up! You’re chasing it, pull up—!”

His panicked breathing crackled over the comms. “I can get it! I can get it—!”

The AA battery spat fire. Harrow jerked right. Too hard. The right wing stalled, the nose twisted, and his plane snapped into a death spiral.

Quai’s vision tunneled as she watched him tumble through open air, the bomber shedding pieces as it cartwheeled towards the side of a mountain.

“HARROW! EJECT! E—!”

A flash of metal. A bloom of fire against the ridge. Then nothing but black smoke billowing upward.

The comms fell silent.

Quai leveled out, jaw locked so tight it hurt. The squadron regrouped on her tail.

“Lieutenant?” someone asked quietly. “Orders?”

Quai stared at the smoke in the distance, the last place a terrified kid had been alive a heartbeat ago. An avoidable mistake. One she’d warned him about. One he wouldn’t get a second chance to learn from.

Her voice, when she answered, was calm.

“Finish the run,” she said. “We’ll bring him home after.”

And she throttled forward, leading the remaining pilots back into the fire.

The job was presented as simple: a solo extraction, one courier, one bag, and a silent exit through the lower passageways of Dornogal’s bustling trade district. Quai had done hundreds of runs like this before: tight corridors, low light, and too many blind corners to count. It was routine; ordinary. 

The passages she slipped through were thin veins tunneled into old stone, slick with condensation from the magma vents below. Her boots whispered against the damp ground; somewhere far above, gears turned and pipes hissed, but down where she walked everything was muffled: as though she were making her way through a dream that had already begun to fade. 

The bag was heavier than it should’ve been. Her contact had said ‘mana conduits’, salvaged from Ka’resh technology. But as she slung it over her shoulder, something in it pulsed. Not a heartbeat; something much deeper that plucked discordantly reality itself.   

She kept moving.

By the time she reached the exit passage that would bring her back up into the city proper, the ambush had already formed.

Three figures stepped from the shadows ahead: mercs in drab plating, faces hidden behind cloth masks, guns at their hips. No insignia: the kind that killed first and checked contracts later. Quai dropped the bag gently, straightened, and said nothing. 

The tallest man spoke first. “You’ve got something that doesn’t belong to you.”

“Depends who you ask.” Her tone stayed calm. One hand rested casually at her hip, though she had no weapon visible. “You can walk away, or you can find out how deep this city really goes.”

He laughed once, sharp. “There’s three of us, miss. And only one of you.”

“There’ll be none of you in a minute,” she replied lightly.

His eyes flicked to the corner, just long enough for her to move.

Shadow folded around her, blanketing her form in nothingness. The air cracked, a pulse of black pressure slamming outward as she disappeared from sight, the sound of her motion lost in the echoes. She was behind him before the others even drew breath. Her switchblade kissed the base of his skull, and he dropped heavily to the ground.

The other two immediately began to fire wildly, bullets shattering off the stone, ricocheting in the tight space. One struck close enough that she felt an uncomfortable heat graze her shoulder. The world blurred. Her magic coiled tighter, but it didn’t feel right; it felt crowded. 

She willed the Shadows to cloak her again, to remove her from sight, but the Shadow resisted her: it warped, edges fraying violet, bleeding with a faint static hum. The whispers in her head surged: too loud, too many, overlapping.

…you left me…

…broken glass, broken sky…

…it burns still…

Oddly, Reldanna’s face flashed across her vision in that moment: just once, before her mind was flooded with the memory of the weeks she’d spent beyond the veil, searching in vain for her soul, only to reappear on the infirmary bed mere seconds after she’d left. She hadn’t fully realised how much of it had followed her back; how much it had stuck with her. 

“Not now,” she hissed through her teeth.

The mercs advanced, both of them reloading as they kept their darkened gazes fixed on her.

She ducked behind cover, heart hammering, trying to rein the whispers in. Her hands shook. The air thickened with a charge that wasn’t just Shadow anymore: it shimmered, purple-black, too deep to focus on.

When they cornered her, everything broke.

The moment the first merc rounded the corner, Quai’s instincts flared. She reached: not for the Veil, not for death’s quiet current, but for anything. Something screamed: her, maybe, or one of the mercs. 

A bloom of colourless dark burst from her chest, rippling the ground like water. The mercs were lifted, their forms twisting, unraveling into streams of black light that shredded midair and disappeared to nothing. The walls buckled. Every sound collapsed into silence so pure it almost ached.

And then, for an instant, she saw it again.

The in-between. Fractured light. Shattered stars.

Ka’resh, in ruins and forever falling at the edge of nothing.

When she came back to herself, the heavy stone door leading out of the underground passage was gone, leaving behind a hollow sphere of melted stone and ash. The crate lay split open, its shards of void crystal humming faintly, feeding on the leftover resonance of her magical outburst.

She stumbled forward, breathing shallowly. The air stank of ozone and death.

Her own skin was crawling with spidery gray lines that moved erratically under her flesh, fading slowly as her pulse steadied. 

She pressed a trembling hand against the slick wall and whispered to herself:

“What the fuck was that?”

From the shadows, the whisper that answered wasn’t hers:

The light in Quai’s office at the Breach was always dim, by choice. A single shaded lamp sat on the corner of her desk, casting its pale amber pool over the scattered mission reviews, unfiled requisitions, and an after action report she still hadn’t brought herself to close. The familiar and grounding smell of ink and paper and oil usually kept her steady. 

She'd been filling in details of the last mission when her hand froze mid-motion over the paper. The pen trembled, and a small blob of ink splashed to the page: instead of wiping it away, she stared at the asymmetrical blob, her gaze distant. And for just a moment, no longer than a blink, the office was gone. 

The air in her lungs turned thin and sharp as glass as she slipped away into the spirit realm. Around her stretched a pale expanse, endless and rippling like a slow-moving fog over still water, strange yet familiar in all of its grey sameness. Whispers pressed against her skull in countless tongues, voices of the lost and waiting. 

She had gone despite his warning that trying would be for naught. Searching. Calling. Weeks, or maybe months, she wasn’t sure. She’d called her name until her throat tore, until just breathing became a chore and the words that tumbled from her lips lost all meaning. 

No answer had come. No soul. No trace. Just an absence so complete it almost had shape.

Then:

“Quai.” Sathrenak’s voice had been steady; his eyes dim with something he couldn’t quite mask. “She didn’t make it.”

The memory hit like a sharpened blade between ribs, clean and merciless. 

Quai exhaled hard and blinked, the vision dissolving back into paper and lamp light. She found herself gripping the edge of the desk, knuckles white: the pen had fallen from her hand, leaving behind uneven splatters of ink as it rolled across the desk. Whispers still lingered faintly at the edge of hearing, like a tide refusing to retreat.

She picked up the pen and tried to keep writing, even as the words slowly began to blur.

She’d seen death countless times– why was this time any different? She had ferried souls herself: guided them, comforted them, carried them, and watched them pass through their doors. But Reldanna’s door had never even existed.

Destroyed. That was the word Sathrenak had used, when Quai had asked about her soul. She’d searched for something that no longer was in a desperate, ill-advised, last-ditch attempt to– what, find meaning? Hear her last words? she thought bitterly. Selfish. 

Her breath hitched. She sat back, staring at the lamp until its glow became a smear of gold through her tears. The silence in the room deepened, pressing close, heavy with all the things she couldn’t fix. 

And then the tears came. Quiet, helpless, and unbidden.

They rolled down her face as she hunched over the desk, one hand braced against her temple, the other clutching the now useless bit of ruined paperwork. No wailing; no sound. Just the steady, broken rhythm of someone who’d carried death too long– and for the first time, found herself unable to bear its weight.

The flies were too loud.

Their wings scraped like razors across her eardrums, thick and buzzing and wet. The heat was suffocating. She opened her eyes and saw green.

Not light. Not sky.

Plague.

It crawled through the air like it was breathing; like it had will. The smoke shimmered sickly, viscous and alive, coating the ruins of Undercity in a fog that stank of acid and bile and old blood. Her eyes burned. She reached up to try and cough, but her breath caught in her throat as though she’d tried to inhale hot soup. 

The air was too thick to scream. 

Her boots dragged as she stood. The flagstones were soft beneath her. Spongy; slippery. When she looked down, they weren’t stones at all.

They were people.

Melted into the ground. Glued together with decay. Mouths open in silent howls. Hands reaching from the stone. Some twitched.

A shadow moved ahead of her, running.

Kyara.

Her voice cracked through the smog like a whip. “Quai! Quai, get over here, we have to move!”

Quai sprinted toward her, but her legs felt wrong. Too light, too slow. The air stuck to her like syrup. Kyara turned in place, eyes wide behind her cracked goggles.

And then she stopped moving. Her whole body froze.

Not fear. Something else.

She looked down.

Steam hissed from the seams of her armour. The buckles warped. The leather bubbled.

“Quai,” she said, very quietly. “Something’s—”

Then her chest collapsed.

Flesh ruptured outward in thick cords. A sound like overripe fruit splitting under pressure filled Quai’s ears. Blood poured from the cracks in her armour. The skin sloughed off her arms in long sheets and fell to the ground like wet cloth. Her face, when it turned back toward Quai, was half bone, the other half still trying to move. To talk. 

She fell.

Quai reached for her and grabbed only cloth: charred, sticky, empty.

She staggered backwards, into someone.

June.

Soot-streaked, coughing, one arm burned down to the tendon.

“Don’t look at her,” June rasped. “We can’t stop. We can’t— you can’t stop, Quai.”

She dragged her forward, limping hard. Her boot left a trail of something black behind her. Not blood. Something else.

Then the world wailed.

The sky opened.

And another plague bomb dropped.

It fell like judgment; an iron lung screaming through the fog. They were too close when it hit.

Quai shoved June behind a broken statue, but the impact sucked the air out of the world. The fog inhaled. The ground bent. Bones snapped in her ears. She looked up and saw Selene.

Standing at the edge of the blast zone, arms out like she was welcoming it. Selene, who laughed at danger and carried too many knives. Selene, whose mask was shattered, whose lips were blistered black. She was watching the bomb fall like it was holy.

“Do you see it?” she whispered, too softly. Then the cloud hit her.

And her skin came off. 

First her scalp, flaying backward like a sheet. Then her cheeks, her jaw unzipped. The rest followed in strips, peeling from her torso, curling off her arms and thighs. Her body unspooled itself as if she’d never been whole. Her skeleton stood a moment longer, steaming, before the bones cracked and melted inward. 

Quai screamed, or thought she did.

No sound came. 

She was running again, through piles of the dead. Some turned toward her, eyeless. One of them wore Kyara’s dog tags around a neck that had no skin left. June’s voice floated from somewhere above, calling her name over and over, distorted like a warped record.

“Quai.”

“Quai.”

“Quai.”

The bodies beneath her feet were reaching now. Some mouthed her name. Others wept. Some laughed. Her friends. Her comrades. Not-dead. Not-alive. Wrong.

“You left us,” they whispered.

“You lived.”

“You always live.” 

The ground caved in; swallowed her whole. 

She hit darkness.

The silence was full. Full of breath she didn’t take. Full of whispers that weren’t her own. She could feel Selene’s fingers on her face. The bones were sharp now, scraping against her cheek. The skin was gone.

“You live too long,” Selene whispered through the melting hole where her mouth once was.

“You don’t get to leave.”

“You’re one of us.”

Quai sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in cold sweat.

It took her several long, panicked moments to realize where she was. That her boots weren’t melting. That her skin was whole, and her lungs worked. That she was at home.

But the whispering remained, faint and persistent.

You lived.

She had taught herself over the years how to step sideways without dying, how to tilt herself just enough to slip between the seams of the world. 

It wasn't like casting a spell. It was quieter; older. More like listening for something most people spend their lives trying not to hear. She would still herself completely: no breath, no blink, no thought, and reach inward, toward that cool hollow woven through her soul. The place where her consciousness thinned and her heartbeat faded. 

Then, with a twist of will and memory, she would fall: not down, but in.

The world stuttered. Colours bled to grey. Sound stretched endlessly, like smoke on water. Her own body felt distant; heavy, but no longer fixed. And suddenly she’d be there, in the in-between. An airless hush; a pale sky— if it was a sky— and the feeling of standing nowhere at all. 

The spirit realm had no horizon. No wind. Only a wide, liminal quiet where the living did not belong. It was not hostile, but it noticed her. It always noticed her.

She had walked that place a dozen times by then, searching for meaning in the silence of the vague, grey space. But this time was different.

That time, she saw the door.

It didn’t make sense, even as she approached it. A farmhouse shouldn’t be there. Not in a space where time unravelled and memory was fog. But there it stood, nestled amid golden grass and blanched trees: a fevered scrap of another life pasted into the wrong page of a book.

Chipped white clapboard. A roof in desperate need of repair. Overgrown bushes. Rundown, but warm.

Her feet slowed. Her breath caught in her throat. The house was wrong, in the way a dream can feel too right. The curtains were drawn, and the windows glowed with a soft, golden light. From inside came the gentle sound of laughter: muffled, indistinct, but full of love and joy. She knew the voices and the sounds without needing to understand them. Her father. Her grandfather’s off-key hum. The warm clatter of plates. A beloved cousin. A lost sister. A piano. A barking dog. 

The last place they had all been happy.

She stepped onto the porch.

Her fingers trembled as they reached for the door. Not out of fear, but need. Hope. Wonder. 

The moment she touched the knob, the air shifted. The warmth from within thickened; turned syrupy. The voices inside pitched higher, still laughing, but warped, as though someone had taken the joy and stretched it too thin. Her skin began to prickle as her shadow twitched unnaturally at her feet.

The door did not open; instead, something pushed back.

The blow had no shape, just force, sudden and intimate: a hand around her ribs pulling backward. Her stomach lurched and her vision snapped white. She screamed against the current, but it was no use. She was rejected, flung backward through what felt like a solid brick wall.

She slammed into her body on the other side with a jolt that made her spine arch and her teeth clench painfully hard. The voices in her mind roared to a deafening peak, then quickly dulled back to their usual murmur. 

She lay there, breathing hard, staring at nothing.

They met just at dusk beneath Stormwind, far below the limestone spires and gilded halls, down where the old city had long since forgotten itself. The tunnel entrance was hidden behind a false wall on the far edge of the harbour: a crumbling door with no handle, half-swallowed by ivy and time. The tunnels were once used to ferry SI:7 agents in and out of the city unseen; now they stood abandoned, left to rot in the shadow of the gleaming white battlements above. Few knew the tunnels existed; fewer still had ever returned once they fell into disuse. Sathrenak stood nearby, his gaze sharp as he watched Quai work open the door and disappear inside.

Her footsteps echoed oddly in the old tunnels, echoes misshapen by bowed walls and leaking water; the reek of mouldering wood supports and stale puddles stung at her nostrils as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The only light came in pale, distorted pools every few dozen feet: weak shafts from a rapidly fading sun that just managed to penetrate through the sewer grates and down the twenty-odd feet to the tunnels below.

Cassel was already waiting when Quai arrived, leaning against a crumbling archway, pretending the dark didn’t make his skin crawl.

“Took you long enough,” he said: an attempt at levity that rang false in the dank space between them.

Quai said nothing; just stepped forward with an unhurried grace, the dim light from a grate above casting her face mostly in shadow.

“Didn't think you'd come,” he added. “Not alone, anyway. Guess some things have changed.”

Quai stopped a few paces from him. “You always did talk too much before doing something stupid," she remarked, a chill to her tone.

He chuckled— nervously, that time. “And you always acted like you had it all figured out. Tell me, Quai, were you really planning to keep your little promotion without saying a word about me? Or were you hoping I’d stay dead just long enough for you to forget?”

She tilted her head, studying him like a strange insect pinned to cork.

“The biggest piece of you we found was a finger," she said slowly. "I thought you were dead. I made sure of it.”

He smirked, though the edge in it was cracked. “Yeah? Well, not good enough, apparently.”

She stepped forward, quiet as smoke. “Why come back, Cassel? Why now?”

“You know why.”

“I really don’t.”

He shifted his weight, arms crossed. “Because I’m the only one who knows the truth. About Draenor. About what you did. And what you lied about.”

“You mean what you did.” Her voice was calm. Measured. “The betrayal. The murders. You shot Myla in the back while she was dragging Corvin to safety, and you took him out, too. You dropped a bomb on Tibbs and Bakewell.”

“They were in the way.”

“And then you aimed for me. And for Leslie.”

“Because you two were next!” he snapped, his voice echoing around them. The shadows in the corners seemed to ripple. “But somehow you lived. And you—”

“I buried you.”

He stepped forward now, finger raised like a knife. “You buried the truth! You handed my family a folded flag and a faked report, and then you climbed. Now you’re about to be Wing Commander, and I’m supposed to watch you get saluted by the same people you lied to?”

Quai’s eyes didn’t flicker. “I did what I had to do. For them, not for you. Don't pretend you're innocent in all of this—”

“Don’t pretend you did it out of mercy," he shot back. "You did it so your conscience wouldn’t get in the way of your career.”

“My conscience regarding you died the day you started killing your own men! There's a difference between taking on a few wartime jobs for SI:7 and turning against the Alliance entirely.”

Cassel laughed, but it sounded hollow. “You never change, Mason. Still cold. Still calculating. Still so damned righteous.” His hand twitched toward his belt, but slowly; hesitant.

Quai didn’t reach for her blades. She didn’t need to.

“You came down here to threaten me,” she said. “But you’re not here to win. You’re here because you want me to kill you. You’ve already lost everything else.”

His smile faltered.

"I'm right, aren't I." The statement-posed-as-a-question was followed by a faint smile from Quai.

"No," Cassel replied, though he sounded more defensive than certain.

"They cast you out, didn't they?" she asked softly. There was a brief pause, then:

“I lost everything,” he muttered. “And you got a goddamn medal.”

"And your wife remarried, and your son forgot your face as he grew... you have nothing to come back to. The Horde certainly doesn't want you— not now, anyway."

There was a helplessness to his gaze as he looked at her. She might have even felt sorry for him under different circumstances.

"Quai, I—"

"That feeling you have?" she interrupted. "That heaviness, like a ball of iron in your gut? That's guilt, David. And you've been living with it for a long time."

"It's— I just want—"

"I know," Quai interrupted.

The scant bit of light around them dimmed, and the shadows in the corners of the tunnel began to move.

Cassel took a step back. “What are— what is this?” he asked, looking suddenly panicked.

“Mercy.”

Darkness rose like fog from the floor: silent, creeping. It coiled around his boots, slow and deliberate, like a predator savouring the moment before the strike.

Cassel’s breath hitched. “Your magic's come a long way, huh? You've always had a flair for the dramatic.”

“And you've always confused survival with significance.”

Shadow magic flowed freely about her hands now: the dull grey of unmaking caught in her pale fingertips like threads pulled from the edge of the world.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but the magic hit first.

A spike of darkness lanced through his chest, not with force, but with absence. His voice died in his throat. The shadows surged upward, into his mouth, his eyes, rushing into the hollows of his soul like a silent tide. His knees hit the ground. Fingers spasmed at his sides against nothing.

She approached him as he collapsed, her boots silent on the slick stone.

“This is mercy, not revenge,” she whispered, crouching beside his twitching form. “You were already dead; I'm just... signing the paperwork. It's better this way, don't you think?”

He couldn’t answer.

She pressed her hands to his chest as the light faded from his eyes. A soft hum followed, low and final as his body began to unravel into dust, shadows peeling away like dead skin.

In seconds, there was nothing left but a faint smear of dark on the mucky floor and a heaviness in the air.

No questions would ever be raised. David Cassel had been dead for years, after all: officially buried with honours, his name etched on a memorial wall in Stormwind Keep long ago, along with the rest of the valiant dead. There would be no search; no inquiry. Just a quiet continuation of the lie.

No one saw her slip from the old tunnels into the cool hush of dusk, her and Sathrenak blending effortlessly into the early evening crowds near the docks. Their expressions betrayed nothing as they made their way back up the gleaming stone steps and into the city proper. Just a couple of shadows passing through.

Later that evening in full dress uniform, she delivered her promotion address in the Keep: clear, sharp, poised.

When they pinned the Wing Commander insignia to her lapel, she smiled politely and offered the room a crisp salute.

No one noticed how the shadows in the corners of the chamber lingered just a little longer as she passed by.

The letter seemed innocuous at first: a slim envelope sealed with a blob of red wax, shoved in with the others from the stack Major Danes had given her. She reached down to the desk and picked it up, but her quizzical expression soon turned to disbelief as she freed the flap from the wax and removed the single piece of paper within. She was still staring at the paper with an expression of shock on her face as Leslie entered the tent. 

“Hey, I don’t know if you’re interested, but there’s a—” She stopped short as Quai looked up from the note. “Shit, you alright? You look paler than usual.” 

Without a word, Quai held the paper out to her: Leslie took it, and her expression immediately darkened upon reading the handful of words scrawled across the middle of the page. 

“Quai, he’s—”

“Yeah.” 

“How did he—” 

“I don’t know. But it’s not a coincidence he’s come back now— I mean, right when I’m up for the biggest promotion of my military career?” 

Leslie looked up from the note, her face hot with anger. “He’s supposed to be dead. This makes it seem like he’s been watching you. Watching us.” 

“He was dead,” Quai replied as she stepped closer. Her voice lowered then: “We found his tags, there was no body. Just blood and rubble.” 

“I know. You didn’t lie in the after action report. But you also didn’t tell the whole truth, either.” 

“How could I?” Quai hissed. “His family didn’t deserve to suffer and miss out on his death benefits just because he was a fucking snake.” 

“I know, Quai— you don’t have to explain this shit to me. I’m on your side here, and I’m just as culpable as you are in this.” She pressed the note into Quai’s hands again. 

“I know, I just… I thought it was all over. That was ten years ago, Les.” 

“Why would he come back now?” 

“He either wants something from me, or he wants to torpedo my entire career. Or both.” 

“How are you going to find out? What if he just wants to talk to—”

“You don’t send a note like this if you just want a chat. You don’t come back from the grave just to pop in and say a friendly hello— he knew when he called in that air strike we were onto him, and he knew we were in the area.” Quai shook her head. “He wants something. He wants something, but he’s already made a mistake.” 

“It really seems like he has the upper hand here. What mistake did he make, exactly?” 

Quai slipped the note into the pocket of her fatigues. Her expression shifted as she made eye contact with Leslie again. 

“At ease, Captain.” 

Quai dropped her hand to her side. 

“Major Danes,” she said by way of greeting. “Soon to be Lieutenant-Colonel, if my sources are right?” The Major smiled faintly and gestured to the chair across from his. 

“I figured you’d be by soon enough about that. As the senior ranking officer in your squadron, you’ll be moved up as well,” he explained. “However, given the events of your last tour, there are certain things to consider.” 

“Sir?” Quai asked, perplexed. “I thought they’d made the decision not to demote—” Major Danes held up a hand. 

“You aren’t being demoted, Captain. Quite the opposite, in fact— your promotion to Major is well earned. It’s your meritorious promotion to Wing Commander that I was hoping to speak about with you today.” 

“...Sir?” she repeated, confused. 

“When there was talk of court-martialing you back in September, after what happened with Sergeant York, we began to receive letters,” the Major explained. He opened a drawer and withdrew a stack of about twenty letters and set them on the desk between them. Quai’s brow furrowed. 

“From the spouses and significant others of people who have flown with you in the past— and who fly with you even today.” He began to shuffle through the envelopes. “There is a missus Jannie Francis, a mister David Lorre, a missus Ellie Benson… Kate Broward… Mary-Ann York… the mother of the Perkins brothers…” He trailed off as Quai sucked in a sharp breath. 

“York?” she asked weakly. Major Danes nodded and passed her the opened envelope: Quai withdrew the single sheet of paper and began to read. 

Major Danes, 

It was suggested to me by Captain Francis that you may want my input on a certain situation regarding one of your Captains. I don’t know how much good writing this letter will be, and I hope you’ll excuse my language, but punishing Captain Mason for what happened to my Bill is probably the stupidest thing you could ever do. 

I met Quai when she was flying as a civilian contractor during the war in Northrend. I was a nurse’s aide at the time— a nobody. Both outsiders, we became fast friends, and when she found out I liked one of the enlisted men, she made sure we were introduced. And when Billy asked me to marry him a year later, I made sure she stood in our little wedding. Because of her looking out for him, I got seventeen years with the love of my life.

So I hope you take me seriously when I say that I know she did what she had to do down in that basement, and I don’t hold any of it against her in the slightest. She came to me after she returned and told me everything she was able to. And while I know she left some of the grislier parts out for my benefit, I also know the lengths she’d go to in order to save not just a subordinate, but a friend. I also know she has been living heavily with the grief of what happened, and to punish her further than she has already punished herself is bordering on cruel and unusual. Please reconsider. 

Cordially,  Mary-Ann York, M.D.

“It was Captain Francis who reached out to everyone’s spouses, encouraging them to write— she thought it would mean more than letters from the enlisted. Every single one of these,” the Major continued, “speaks glowingly to your character, your resolve, your skill in the air, and your determination to leave no man behind.” He leveled his gaze at Quai, who was still staring down at Mary-Ann’s letter. “You could have left him in the wreckage of his plane and saved yourself, Captain.” 

“There’s no reality in which I’d have done that, sir,” Quai replied as she shifted her gaze to meet his. Her eyes were bright, but her look was steely. “To even suggest that was an option is frankly insulting.” 

Major Danes chuckled quietly. “Scripps was right about you,” he said. Quai blinked a few times. 

“Colonel Scripps?” she asked, an air of surprise to her tone. The Major nodded and pulled a letter from the bottom of the stack. Quai reached for it, but he pulled it back. 

“Eyes only, Captain. But I can assure you, his assessment of you was both colourful and accurate. You may not be a front-page poster girl for the service, but you have quietly performed above and beyond your duties with every tour. And it will be a distinct opportunity for me to award you your long-deserved promotion when the time comes. You'll have about the same rank and privileges as I will," he added, "only you'll still be flying— hence the Wing Commander distinction.” He slid the pile of letters— minus the one from Scripps— across the desk to her. “Take these, I’ve already made copies for your file.” 

Quai— still agog— silently took the small stack of letters and slipped them into the thigh pocket of her fatigues. 

“Sir, I…” she trailed off. The Major smiled. 

“Go on back to that fiancé of yours and tell him the good news.” 

“...My—”

“Oh, come on. No one can keep a secret here, you know that— especially Captain Francis. Though I suppose this action she took makes up for her loose lips about your love life, hmm?” 

Quai’s face reddened as she stood up and picked a spot above the Major’s head. “Sir,” she said with a salute. Major Danes chuckled and gave a salute of his own, though he remained seated. 

“Captain,” he said with a nod as Quai turned on a heel and strode from his office. 

When she finally stepped back out into the early evening air, she let out a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding; soon after came the tears, as she removed Mary-Ann’s letter from her pocket and read it again. Her private comm stone gave a soft ping! in her ear: she tapped the stone on her earring. 

“Hey, you. I’m heading back to the inn soon, but I need to make a stop first and thank Les.” 

She smiled at Sathrenak’s reply.

An air of grim determination had set in about Quai as she angled the nose of her plane towards the Hallowfall gate after a steep, twisting ride down the Coreway. Despite the openness of the route and the sheer size of the lands below Khaz Algar, the air took on a faint, coppery scent that reminded her of blood. She pulled her rebreather mask up over her nose just as her comm went off. She lifted a hand and tapped the army-issue earpiece. 

“Go for Mason.” 

“Heyyyy, Ghost— welcome to the fuckin’ party.” She smiled as the voice of Captain Leslie Francis filled her ears. 

“Hey, Blindside,” Quai replied affectionately as she passed through the gate and into Hallowfall. “Haven’t heard from you since our last tour. How’s the wife?” 

“Pissed I’m out here again so soon. Heard you got engaged— he knows he’s never gonna see you if we keep having wars to fight, right?” she teased. Quai rolled her eyes. 

“He did the smart thing and enlisted as a civilian aide, so he’ll be nearby at least. Given his skillset, they may have him protecting convoys from the surface.” 

“You’re marrying another pilot?” Leslie asked, sounding surprised. 

“No, but he can fly. And shoot fire from his mouth.” 

“Ohh, you shacked up with a Dracthyr! Damn, girl. How’s the visage? Hot?” 

“Why does everyone ask me that?” 

“Because that’s literally all that matters. That and the size of his—” 

“You need to start asking to have Jannie on base," Quai interrupted, "because the porn clearly isn’t doing it for you.” 

“Oh hell no— I need this time, don’t go putting any ideas in her head.” 

“You sure? I think I still have her comm info—” 

“I’ll shoot you outta the sky my damn self,” Leslie responded, chuckling heartily. 

“Alright, alright. Hey— do they have us set up at the inn again, or are we stuck in tents? I heard they’re doing things a little differently, and I haven’t opened my full orders.” 

“Nope, two officers’ tents, each with four of us, and two bigger ones for the rank and file. We’re in with Brick and Torch.” 

“Great, looking forward to not sleeping the whole time we’re here. They give us the same people as last time?” 

“Not after what happened with you and York— shit. Ah shit, I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s… it’s fine. Keep pushing on, right?” Quai replied around the sudden lump in her throat. 

“Yeah. I am sorry, though. I know he was a longtime friend.” 

“S’okay. I’m planning to bury ‘em in iron to make myself feel better once we’re in the air tomorrow.” 

“Atta girl. You on the G-23s with us again?” 

“Wouldn’t fly anything else. Army won’t let me.” 

A little chuckle drifted across the comm at her remark. Mereldar was slowly filling up her window, the busy town bathed in the light of Beledar. Quai could just about make out the cluster of olive-green tents bunched up around one side of the town; on the other side was a smooth cliff where she knew an arresting wire would soon make her wish she hadn’t eaten breakfast. 

“They still haven’t built us a proper runway, in case you were wondering,” Leslie remarked. 

“I figured. They don’t really want us sticking around after this, huh?” 

“Let ‘em have their big weird cave, what do we care? Anyway, I’ll meet you at the cliff— Lorre’s here already. We’ve got time for drinks in town, and we both want to catch a glimpse of that man of yours— civvy enlisted are being put up at the inn.” 

“You two are the actual worst, you know.” 

“We know. See you soon, Ghost.” 

“Over and out, Blindside.” 

The comm stone let off a faint ‘ping!’: Quai reached up and tapped the small black gem fixed into her earring. 

“You finally sobered up enough to check in, colour me surprised,” she remarked without pausing in her paperwork. 

“Just wanted to offer my congratulations,” Andrew replied amidst a fair amount of background noise. 

“For what? Where are you?” 

“Well, I suppose you’re supposed to say ‘best wishes’ to the bride— congratulations is reserved for the groom.” 

“There’s something vaguely misogynistic in the roots of that, I’m sure.” 

“What, me?” “No, the ‘best wishes’ versus ‘congratulations’ thing. It’s like telling the groom ‘yay, you married up!’ and the bride ‘hey, good luck with that’.” 

Andrew snorted. “Hey, you said it, not me.” 

“You know what I meant. Where are you?” she asked again. 

“Do you even want my congratulations?” 

“No.” 

“...Oh.” 

“I want your best wishes.” 

“...Bitch.” 

“Takes one to know one. Are you going to tell me where you are?” 

“Undermine.” “Of course you are. Hip-deep in goblins and pills, I’m guessing.” 

“Getting my ass ate as we speak.” 

“You’re disgusting.” 

“I’m kidding, she’s just fondling it a little.” 

“That makes me feel so much better.” 

“I wasn’t trying to make you feel better.” 

A long pause hung in the air between them; then they spoke at the same time:

“Did Sath tell—”

“I wanted to—”

Quai exhaled a breath through her nose. 

“Go ahead.” 

“I was going to ask if Sath ever told you he came to see me.” 

“He did. He said you were… not very receptive.” 

“‘Not very receptive’ is putting it lightly.” 

“It is. What’s your problem?” she asked confrontationally. “You’ve been distant since he and I got together, you’ve kicked out Gwen— who, from what I hear, has landed on her feet perfectly fine, no thanks to you— and you did your level best to alienate one of the only true friends you have. What gives?” 

“Nothing give—”

“Bullshit!” she exclaimed as she slammed her pen down on her desk. 

“Fine!” Andrew exploded. “You want to know why I’m so fucking miserable and shitty all the time? Why I’ve been alienating the only people who give a damn about me? Why I did everything short of begging Sath to punch me in the fucking face when he found me?” 

“Yes!” Quai shouted back, exasperated. 

“Because I feel NOTHING!” he screamed. Quai flinched at the volume. 

“Andr—”

“I feel nothing, Quai! Food has no taste anymore! Sex is meaningless! A wound deep inside me re-opened, and it— it—” He took a deep breath. “Nothing makes me… feel good anymore. The only thing I feel is anger… hate… jealousy at the people who can feel good and whole and… and…” 

“Happy?” Quai ventured softly. 

“Yeah.” 

“...Andrew, I’m sorry I’ve been distant.” 

“It’s okay.” “No, it’s not. I thought you were mad at me for getting together with Sathrenak, so I was… avoiding you. And I didn’t realize I’d avoided you all the way to becoming engaged.” 

“Well, I was mad. Not like, mad-mad where I would’ve held it against you forever. But I guess I was a bit… jealous, or whatever.” 

“Of me?” 

“Of you, of your ability to just… open your heart to people, even if you know you might be hurt.” 

“He’s never hurt me, not once.” 

“But Brian did. James did. Stanhis, Corban, Oliver. I watched it, they all… took away pieces of you, tore bits of you down in some way. And you picked yourself up every time and dusted yourself off and kept going, kept… believing in love, and believing in yourself that you’d eventually truly find it.” 

“I’d actually pretty much settled on being single forever when Sathrenak came into the picture.” 

“So you weren’t even looking, and love found you.” 

“Love’s found you, too, Andrew. Em, Joey, Gwen—”

“The only real one was Joey. Maybe Gwen.” 

“Not Em?” “She was… just a girlfriend.” 

“You still loved her.” 

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter.” 

“Love isn’t some contest you win, Andrew. It’s not a matter of quantity.” 

“Are you really going to give me the quality over quantity talk? Trust me— I know quantity. I’ve had quantity.” 

“And is it making you any happier?” 

“...No. You know, you’re almost as condescending as your fiancé.” 

“Why did you kick Gwen out?” 

“Because she’s too kind. Her spirit’s too pure for this world; for me, she deserves…” He sighed. “She deserves soft kisses and multiple orgasms. She deserves to wake up to breakfast on a tray, hand-squeezed orange juice, banana pancakes, flowers in a little vase. Aside from the multiple orgasms thing, I’m not… that person.” 

“You could be.” 

“He’s dead, Quai—” Andrew’s voice broke. 

“I know,” she replied softly. 

“I can’t… move. I’m still there, I’m still— I’m still on that fucking beach in a burning tent, holding his body. Every time I close my eyes, every time I… stop long enough to let an actual thought in.” 

“Gods, I’m so pissed at Elrix for this—”

“It’s not her fault, don’t go getting all cunty towards her.” 

“Fine, I won’t,” Quai grumbled. 

“If it was that easy to open it all up again, I never did any real healing, did I?” 

“The fact that you recognize that is a step in the right direction.” 

“Is it?” 

A small smile graced Quai’s face. 

“Yeah, it is.” She sighed. “Why don’t you come home? I’ll help you find a new therapist.” 

“A new one?” 

“I’m fairly certain you’ve been lying to Christine, and it’s probably best if we don’t have the same one, anyhow.” 

“...Yeah, that’s fair.” 

“So you’re coming home?” 

“...Yeah, fine.” 

“And you’re coming to the wedding, whenever that is.” 

“What do you mean, ‘whenever that is’?” Andrew demanded. 

“I just got the ring on two days ago, Andrew— nothing’s planned yet—”

“You are such a mess. I’m coming home today, we’re fixing this. You’re fucking hopeless without me.” 

“Oh, no. You’re not throwing yourself into this until you’ve sobered up and had a whole bunch of therapy. I’m not having you have a breakdown on my wedding day because you can’t keep it together.” 

“Uh, ouch?” 

“That is not the worst thing I’ve ever said to you.” 

“Third worst, maybe.” 

Quai chuckled. “Third worst,” she confirmed. 

“...Hey Quai?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Are you happy?” 

“Deliriously,” she admitted, unable to keep the smile from her voice. 

“Good.” 

“Andrew?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Come home soon, okay?” 

“Okay.” 

The comm went silent, and Quai found herself once again alone in the silence of her office. Her gaze shifted to the window as the horizon beyond the distant mountains began to darken and a bank of pewter-coloured clouds rolled quickly into the valley. The birds outside fell silent as they disappeared from the sky and took shelter in the forest below in anticipation of the incoming rain. Thunder— low and distant— rumbled ominously in the ever-darkening sky. 

Another ‘ping!’ from the comm stone roused her from her thoughts. She tapped the stone once more. 

“Yes?” 

“Hey, you.” A smile spread across her face as Sathrenak’s voice filled her ears. Her gaze flicked briefly to the ring on her left hand.

“Did you hear me, Captain..?” the Major asked as he leaned slightly into her eyeline. Quai’s gaze shifted slowly to meet his as she sat upright in the bed in Dornogal, heavily bandaged but alive. 

“...I’m sorry, I didn’t— Sir—” she stammered as she tried to push the memory away once more. 

“I said, I am sorry for this,” the Major repeated. “This was supposed to primarily be something of a milk run, this tour— we grossly underestimated the Nerubians and the power they hold in Azj-Kahet, and we did not pay attention to the Arathi when they warned us of the danger.” He at least had the good sense to look ashamed as Quai fixed her gaze on him. 

“You thought because they’d been fighting with slow-moving zeppelins, we’d have an advantage in planes,” Quai replied softly as the Major’s gaze shifted away. A beat of silence passed before she continued: “Corporal York—” 

“Corporal York,” Major Danes interrupted, “will be given a full military sendoff and his widow will be given his Medal of Honour. But before any of that happens, I need your report, Captain.” 

It was Quai’s turn to avert her gaze. 

“Captain Mason, you understand the importance of this—” 

“I do.” 

“You’ve been back in Dornogal for several days, now— you’ve had a chance to rest, recuperate—”

“I know.” 

“We have done you the favour of not immediately court-martialing you, but we need to know why you went looking to kill Corporal York after your planes went down.” 

Quai’s attention finally snapped to the Major. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said sharply. “Our comms were out, and we’d already been there a day with Nerubians crawling all over the town when he woke up and started screaming. Sepsis had likely already kicked in, and he was blind from some crap from the engine, and he couldn’t hear because of the damage to his head.” She winced as she struggled to sit up straighter. “Would I have gone through the trouble of fashioning him a chest tube and then trying to splint his broken leg if I were looking to kill him?” she snapped. 

“Captain…” the Major warned, an edge to his tone. 

“Do you know what else was wrong with him,” she continued, her voice rising, “aside from a tension pneumo, blindness, deafness, and a broken leg? He had burns—full thickness burns— on his hands and arms. I could see bone, Major… luckily at that point the nerves were all burned away and he probably didn’t feel it at all. But he felt everything else. He was burned over sixty percent of his body, and most of them seemed to be second to third degree burns— from what I could tell in that fucking unlit basement. By the grace of the gods I was able to bail out before my plane went down— so these burns on my arms and hands and neck, the ones that weren’t from the flaming wreckage of my own plane? These are from when I crawled into his cockpit with my own broken leg and pulled him out. So no— I wasn’t looking to kill him.” She looked over at the Major, tears in her eyes. “And when I did eventually have to do it, he was already in so much pain he likely didn’t even realize what was going on.” 

Both of them were silent for a few moments: Quai staring angrily at the Major; the Major looking back at her with no small amount of pity in his gaze. 

“You knew him for quite a long time, didn’t you?” he asked quietly. 

“I have known Billy York since I was eighteen years old. He was one of the two military pilots— only a month older than me— who was sent to our conscripted group of bush pilots in Northrend to show us how to fly those wretched Goblin bombers.” Despite the tears now freely flowing from her eyes, she smiled very slightly. 

“...The C-4s, right?” the Major asked.

Quai scoffed. “I think they called them that on purpose, the stock engines were—” 

“Combustible.” The pair exchanged brief smiles before lapsing back into silence. 

Outside, Dornogal was bustling beneath a cloudless, blue sky: merchants called out, hawking their wares as crowds of people— military and civilian alike— milled about in the Forgegrounds below. After a few beats of silence, the Major spoke again: 

“...Alright, Captain. I will consider this your verbal report, and I will mark it as NFA— no further action required.” 

* * *

The memory of that day played fresh in her mind, as though it had just happened. The scratchiness of the sheets; the smell of iodine; the cool, faintly scented breeze floating in through the window: all of it came rushing back as though it had happened just the other day. Quai stared down at the paper in her hand as the official-looking envelope it had come in fluttered to the ground outside the front door. She closed her eyes for a moment as she heard footsteps on the marble floor behind her. 

“Who was that?” asked Sathrenak as he approached. Quai lifted a hand and ran it heavily down her face, her chin cupped in that hand for a moment as she gathered her thoughts. 

“...A messenger.” 

“He looked military,” Sathrenak remarked. Quai turned and held up the paper, upon which was a succinctly written set of orders. 

Drip. 

Drip. 

Drip. 

The slow, distant dripping noise roused her from slumber: she reached out in the dark, the other side of the bed devoid of its usual inhabitant; instead, her fingers grasped at nothing but cold sheets. 

‘Are you there?’ she asked into the darkness; nothing responded. 

Drip. 

Drip. Drip. 

Drip. 

Frowning into the darkness, Quai rolled out of bed and pulled the sheet with her to wrap about her naked shoulders. She felt her way across the small space to the door and stepped out into the dimly-lit hallway on an upper floor of the Breach. 

Drip. Drip. 

Drip. 

The sound was louder in the hall, and was coming from a distinct direction: the public lavatory at the end of the stone corridor. She moved towards the sound as the long shadows cast from guttering lanterns stretched towards her and followed her down the empty hall; they grasped covetously at her quickly moving form as she swept towards the lavatory; she paid them no mind.

Drip. 

Drip. 

At the door, something gave her pause: an inkling; a feeling of something like dread that had settled into the pit of her stomach. She stood with a hand pressed to the worn wood. 

Drip. Drip. 

‘Sathrenak?’ she called out. 

Drip. 

Drip. 

The dread in her stomach grew as she pushed on the lavatory door. 

Drip. 

The hair on the back of her neck stood up as the door swung open and a shaft of faint light from the hallway illuminated the grisly scene within: bodies. 

Bodies stacked against walls, piled in the middle of the room, draped the stall doors. Bodies that had been flung haphazardly across sinks, necks and limbs bent at odd and unsettling angles; bodies that were hung from the ceiling, suspended by their feet with heads missing: blood drained out of them and pooled on the stone floor in shimmering, wine-dark puddles. 

Drip. 

Drip. 

But something else lurked in the dark, out of reach of the weak shaft of light: a hulking form, shrouded in darkness and bleeding shadows into the rest of the room like ink in water. 

‘I… warned you…’ the creature whispered through the still, damp air. There was something familiar in the tone; something she couldn’t quite place as the faintly coppery scent of blood stung her nostrils. Her gaze remained fixed on the creature, brow knit in focus as she tried to make out a shape, a form— anything at all that would tell her what it was. 

‘Warned me?’ she asked. 

‘...Dangerous…’ the creature hissed as it shifted around in the darkness, still beyond reach of the light. 

‘Who’s dangerous?’ she asked. Her gaze flicked to one of the piles; she did a double take when she realized who was sprawled on top. ‘...M-Maud?’

Quai dove to the blood-slicked floor and shook the young witch’s shoulder, but her head lolled to the side, revealing lifeless eyes and half of her face missing, skin and bone shredded like soft butter. She looked to the next body: Cathrin, partially decapitated. 

Then another: Odi. 

Another: Zena. 

Masnira. 

She turned and scrambled towards the door, slipping over and over in blood, tangled in the sheet as she tried to get back to the relative safety of the hallway. Hands slicked with red grabbed at the door frame as she tried to steady herself. 

‘...Dan-ger-ous…’ the creature repeated in several discordant notes. She heard it move; shuffling in the shadows as she squinted in its direction. 

The only warning she had was a hiss and a flash of red as two eyes opened in the darkness: the shadowy creature suddenly lunged, faster than anything of that size reasonably should be able to move. 

It caught her easily in its grip, and cold claws dug harshly into her bare back, puncturing the skin with ease. The torchlight in the hallway flickered out, engulfed and extinguished by the quickly encroaching shadows. 

Massive jaws clamped around her neck.  Everything went dark. 

Quai’s eyes flew open. 

She lay on her side, facing him, her body curled into a ball. Her feet had twisted in the blanket during the course of the nightmare; she slowly untangled them and drew herself closer to him, and slipped an arm comfortably around his waist.