The city was awake again, restless and alive, its auras burning like constellations across the skyline. Ezzy stood on the rooftop of a tenement, the wind tugging at her coat, the dawn light painting her in pale fire.
The shard was gone. Caspian was gone. Selene was gone. But their echoes lived in her — scars etched into her aura, threads of shadow woven through silver. She could feel them when she breathed, when she reached for the city's pulse. Not as chains, not as hunger, but as memory.
For the first time in weeks, she wasn't afraid of what she carried.
Below, the streets thrummed with life: laughter, anger, longing, despair. All of it raw, all of it human. Once, it had overwhelmed her. Now, it was a symphony she could finally hear without drowning.
Ezzy closed her eyes. She thought of Caspian's last words — You've stolen me, Thief. Make it count.
She would.
Not by feeding, not by hoarding, not by becoming another Selene. But by walking the razor's edge between shadow and light, by claiming her own name in a world that had tried to make her a vessel.
She was Ezzy Khanum. She was the thief who had stolen the thief. And she was done running.
The city would whisper about her — the girl with the silver-shadow aura, the one who defied Caspian, who shattered Selene, who walked away from the hunger and survived. Some would fear her. Some would seek her. But none would own her.
Ezzy opened her eyes, the skyline blazing before her. She smiled, sharp and certain.
"Let them come," she said to the wind.
And with that, she stepped down from the rooftop into the waking city, her aura burning steady — silver streaked with shadow, a paradox made flesh.
Not prey. Not puppet.
Finale.