The courtyard they'd given him used to be ornamental.
You could see it in the bones: the pattern of stone tiles in a sunburst around a now-dry fountain, the narrow beds along the walls that once held flowers instead of training dummies stuffed with straw. Someone had hung wind-chimes there once; the hooks still waited under the eaves, empty.
Now it was Eli's.
Fire chewed at the dummies in ragged bites. Not elegant, not precise—the kind of burns that came from anger, not drills. He moved through Nhilly's pattern anyway, heel–slide–pivot, because his body had stolen it and wouldn't give it back.
"Again," he muttered.
He stepped forward, weight on the ball of his foot, dropped his center, dragged his heel the way Nhilly had shown him by the road. Fire peeled off his arm in a clean sheet and hit the nearest dummy in the throat. Straw hissed and blackened. The smell made his eyes run; he refused to blink.
"Too slow," he told himself. "Too soft. Again."
He pivoted, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth, breath counting itself out of habit. In for four, out for four. Celeste's rhythm, Nhilly's steps, his own Star screaming through muscle and bone. A bad choir.
He snapped another gout of flame at a dummy's knee, enough to slag the wood under the straw. It toppled, slow and stupid. He stepped forward and kicked the remains, sending a charred arm spinning across the tiles.
"Again."
His shirt clung, soaked in sweat; burns laced his forearms like old bracelets, half-healed patches where he'd let fire lick too close. The palace armorers had begged him to wear proper gear. He'd refused. He wanted to feel it.
"Hero Eli."
The voice came from the archway.
He didn't stop. Whipped a burst of heat sideways, cutting an imaginary Hound leg from under it. The air over the tiles shimmered; stone cracked quietly.
"Hero Eli," the voice tried again, more urgent. "Sir."
He let the last of the fire gutter out from his fingers, fingers curling empty, and turned.
A palace runner stood there, thin and breathless, sweat darkening the collar of his tunic. The boy's eyes flicked from Eli's burns to the smouldering straw, then up to his face. Eli saw the swallow, the way his throat worked around words he didn't want to say.
"Speak," Eli said.
"The Council sent me." The runner's hands twisted together, parchment crinkling between them. "News from the scouts. You… asked to be informed before the public proclamations."
Eli wiped his wrist across his mouth, smearing soot. "Well?"
The boy glanced once at the parchment, then seemed to decide there was no way to make it better by reading.
"They reached the valley," he said. "All of them. They say… it's gone. Just glass and craters and bones. No sign of the monster. No living found among the main bodies." He swallowed. "No remains that could be clearly identified as Great Hero Nihilus. Or Kael of shadows. Or Healer Celeste."
The names hit like teeth.
Eli kept his face still. It wasn't that hard. Nhilly had taught him the trick without meaning to. You anchor one muscle at a time. Forehead. Jaw. Mouth. Leave nothing loose for grief to get a grip on.
"So they're dead," he said.
The boy flinched. "The Council is saying 'fallen'," he corrected, as if semantics might soften it. "There'll be a ceremony at dusk. Altars. Incense. The king will speak. They asked that you attend—"
"I understand," Eli said.
He stepped forward. The runner took a half-step back—just half—and then forced himself to hold the line. Eli could see the thin sheen of sweat on his upper lip, the way his left hand twitched like it wanted to make a sign against bad luck.
"Tell them," Eli said, voice even, "that I've heard. Tell them I'm honored. Tell them I will… consider… the ceremony."
The boy's shoulders loosened a fraction in relief. "Yes, Hero Eli."
"And tell them," Eli added, "that I need to finish training. Alone."
Something in his tone made the boy bow without arguing. He turned, almost stumbled, then ran, footsteps slapping down the corridor until they faded into palace noise.
The courtyard listened.
Eli stared at the archway for a long moment, mind blank in that strange, clean way that precedes either laughter or collapse. The air smelled of burned straw, sweat, and the faint perfume of the herb bed someone had tried to save along the wall.
He walked back to the nearest dummy.
Its head was half gone. Bits of black straw stuck to his boots. He set his hand on its shoulder and found he didn't remember putting it there.
"They're dead," he said, very quietly, to nobody.
His knees went.
There was no drama to it. No slow slide, no clutching at his chest. His legs just stopped being interested in holding him, and he folded, hitting the tiles hard enough to jar his teeth.
For a second he stayed like that, hands flat on hot stone, breathing too fast. The palace sky above him was a clear blue dome, untroubled. Somewhere beyond it, Constellations lounged in their boxes, wine in hand, enjoying a good third-act tragedy.
"You got what you wanted," he told them, voice hoarse. "You bastards."
The word 'bastards' came out as a hiss. The fire in his throat wanted out. He forced it down until his stomach hurt.
Images rose whether he invited them or not.
Celeste, hair tied back, eyes bright as she adjusted someone's bandage. Kael, smirking over a bad card hand, pretending not to care about winning. Nhilly, standing on that boulder with the whole army's attention caught in his teeth, saying I am melancholy for home like it was a joke and a prayer at once.
Gone.
"I'm still here," Eli said to the tiles. "Why?"
No answer. The fountain, dry as a throat, didn't bother pretending to speak.
He curled his fingers against the stone until the pads burned. Fire wanted to come; he let a little seep out, thin and mean, enough to etch lines into the tile under his hand. It hurt. He welcomed it.
"You couldn't even die properly," he told himself. "Ran like a good little boy. Left them there. And now they're gone and you're—" He laughed, short and ugly. "You're Hero Eli. Congratulations."
Something in him snapped on that laugh.
He pushed himself up, staggered to his feet, and threw everything he had left at the nearest dummy.
Heat exploded out of him, wild and uncontrolled. The dummy went up in a single whoomp, straw and wood turning to black shards. The fire hit the wall behind it and crawled up the stone, licking at the eaves before he dragged it back in with a gasp that felt like drowning.
"Again," he snarled. "Again, again, again."
He trained until his legs shook so hard he kept missing steps. Until the blisters on his palms burst and rewrote themselves in angry red. Until every dummy in the yard was a melted ruin and the stone under his feet shimmered with heat mirage.
He swore at the Hound. At the teeth. He swore at the constellations, at the unseen boxes, at every god who had ever watched a boy die and called it art.
When his Star finally guttered out on its own, leaving him shivering in a courtyard that stank of ash, he dropped.
This time he didn't cry. Not yet. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling of sky, and realized his chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with training.
The ceremony came and went without him.
They sent someone to fetch him: a dignified councillor with a lion pin at his throat, who made the mistake of opening with, "The king would be pleased if—"
"No," Eli said, not looking up from where he sat on the floor with his back against the cold stone of his room, a bottle balanced between his knees. "Tell him I'm busy."
"Busy," the man repeated, incredulous. "They're burning incense for your comrades. There are speeches. The people would take comfort from—"
"From what?" Eli asked. "From my face? I don't have Nhilly's smile. I'm out of Celeste's kind words. Kael's dead and he took all the interesting lies with him." He took a long swallow, the cheap Lydia spirit burning all the way down. "Tell the king to go comfort himself."
The man sputtered. Eli kept his eyes on the far wall. Eventually, the councillor left, muttering about ungrateful Returnees and battle shock.
The bottle helped. Not much. Enough to make the edges fuzz for a few blessed minutes. Enough to let memories slide instead of stick.
He thought of Munich.
It came in pieces, like an old film reel.
The U-Bahn at 7 a.m., packed with commuters in winter coats, breath fogging the air. The way the doors chimed in stern, annoyed men, warning people to get out of the way. The smell of cheap coffee and wet wool and the bakery at the corner that always burned its first batch of pretzels.
Snow on the Maximilian Strasse, turning the expensive shops into something quieter. The Isar river in spring, green and fast and full of drunk students' yelling on the banks. The old stone buildings with their carved angels and their scars from a war nobody alive remembered properly.
His student room, tiny and messy, with the radiator that never worked right. A floor mattress. A poster of a football team he pretended to care about. The window that looked out onto a courtyard where an old woman fed pigeons every morning at nine whether it rained or snowed or the world ended.
"I miss you," he told the city in his head. "You boring, beautiful, stupid place. I miss you."
He laughed, because the idea of missing the smell of the U-Bahn enough to cry would have been funny once. Now it wasn't.
He cried anyway.
Not the cinematic kind. No broken sobs, no poetic collapse. Just tears, hot and infuriating, slipping down his face without waiting for permission. He wiped them away with the heel of his hand and they kept coming, streaking soot across his cheeks.
"I miss Earth," he whispered. "I miss bad coffee. I miss exams. I miss being scared of stupid things, like a grade or a crush or calling my parents back. I miss… I miss not knowing what bone smells like when it burns."
The bottle grew lighter.
At some point in the loose, drink-slowed hours, his thoughts wandered back to Nhilly.
To the cliff. To the road. To that stupid, calm smile.
Not today.
"You liar," Eli said, rounding the words slowly, carefully, so he wouldn't slur them. "You said not today. You looked at me and you lied and I believed you. Because you're good at it. Because your whole face is a lie you tell so other people can keep walking."
His voice sharpened. "You left me to go fight that thing alone. You sent me away like a kid. Like a baggage you wanted off the board. You knew you were going to die and you lied to my face. I hate you for that."
The anger felt good for a moment. Clean. Direct. Easier than grief.
Then he saw, unbidden, the same moment from another angle: Nhilly standing against a sky full of teeth, shoulders set, watching Eli fly.
He saw the crack in that perfect smile, the fear pushed down under it. The way Nhilly hadn't looked away from the oncoming barrage when he said, Not today.
"I'm sorry," Eli muttered, the words rubbing his throat on the way out. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You did what you had to. You always do. I just…"
He trailed off.
What? Wanted you to choose me? Wanted you to run too? Wanted you to be selfish for once and let someone else die instead?
He didn't know.
At some point, the bottle emptied.
At some point after that, he found himself leaning on the railing of a high balcony, the palace falling away beneath him like a story he wasn't part of.
The drop was long enough to make his stomach lurch.
"Easy," he told himself. "One step. You've done harder."
He imagined the wind. The impact. The merciful nothing after.
His body disagreed.
The muscles in his legs locked. His hands seized the stone so hard his knuckles ached. Fire rose in his throat at the idea of turning it on himself and fizzled uselessly, his Star refusing the order.
"Too weak," he whispered. "Too weak to even do that."
He stayed there until his fingers went numb from gripping the railing. Eventually his legs gave out sideways instead of forward, and he slid down to sit on the cold stone, back against the balustrade, breath fogging the air in small, angry puffs.
"Fine," he told the night. "Fine. I'll live. But I'm not doing it for you."
He didn't specify who 'you' was. Constellations. Nhilly. The king. Himself. Any of them could take it.
Days dragged.
He trained. Harder. Longer. The courtyard tiles began to show the work: scorched in permanent patterns, hairline fractures where heat met stone too often. Servants muttered about repairs. No one stopped him.
Summons came, slid under his door or delivered in person.
"Hero Eli, the Council requests—"
"No."
"Hero Eli, the king wishes—"
"No."
"Hero Eli, the priests of—"
"No."
He gave his report when dragged into a briefing once, words clipped and efficient, jaw clenched. When one of the priests started talking about martyrdom and divine will, he stood up and left without excusing himself. No one chased him. They wrote it off as trauma. He let them.
At night, when the palace quieted and the incense from the memorial altars had burned down to bitter ash, he lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling until his eyes ached.
Sometimes he talked.
To Celeste. Telling her about the idiots on the council who wanted to call the Hound a demon like that would make it smaller. Asking her, out loud, if she'd been scared. Apologizing for not being there.
To Kael. Swearing he'd tell the story properly, with jokes, if anyone would listen. Promising to find out if there was anything left under that glass.
To Nhilly. Cursing him. Thanking him. Telling him every detail of the way the palace people looked at his empty room. Begging him, in a small, unguarded whisper when sleep wouldn't come, to not be dead after all. Just this once. Just him.
The days blurred.
The ceasefire stretched, official statements changing from ten days to twenty with careful ceremony. Lydia soldiers drank to the end of fighting; Wyre men on the other side of the line did the same, in their own taverns. Somewhere between those two celebrations, the Margin-Hound slept or prowled or ceased to be. The Constellations watched.
Eli stayed.
He stayed in the palace like a ghost that refused to move on. He burned the courtyard dummies down to frames and made the armorers build more. He walked the halls at night and talked to empty rooms. He cursed the sky until his voice frayed, then whispered to it instead.
He wanted to run. Back to Munich. Back to any place where the biggest thing he had to fight was a hangover and himself.
There was nowhere to run to.
So he stayed.
Because someone had to be here when—if—the boy who had lied and smiled and walked off the cliff alone decided to walk back in through the palace gates.
Eli didn't know whether he wanted to punch him or hug him more.
He trained.
He waited.
He stayed.