I Evolve 10,000 Times Faster

The elite officer barracks were at the end of the bunker corridor, past the medical wing where Aldous lay in a bed, staring at a ceiling that offered no answers.

The door was made of steel. A placard on the wall read, "Officer Quarters, Authorized Personnel Only." Beneath it, someone had scratched "Twins Only" into the paint with the tip of a knife.

Holden opened the door without knocking.

The room was small, containing two cots, two weapon racks, and two footlockers. The walls were bare except for a single mounted mirror that had been cracked down the middle and never replaced.

Cora and Sera were inside.

Cora sat on the left cot with a whetstone in one hand and a short sword across her knee. On the right cot, Sera had disassembled her own short sword. The blade was separated from the hilt, the guard had been removed, and each piece lay in a neat row across a dark cloth. She cleaned the components with an oil rag, her movements practiced from years of repetition.

Both women looked up when the door opened.

Their eyes found Holden, took in the scorch marks on his armor, and then settled on the thing he was carrying.

A cloak. Black and silver, with the Vanguard Academy insignia on the shoulder.

The Twins’ hands stopped moving.

Cora’s whetstone went still against the blade. Sera’s oil rag froze over the guard. Their eyes locked onto the cloak with the focused attention that had made them Vespera’s personal weapons.

They recognized it. They had stood behind Vespera for years and seen that cloak every day, resting on her shoulders during briefings, deployments, and command meetings.

It was not on her shoulders now.

It was in Holden’s hands.

Cora stood first. Her whetstone slipped from her fingers and landed on the cot.

"Voss." Her voice was different from the synchronized speech pattern the Twins used in public. This was a single voice, rough and uncertain. "Why do you have her cloak?"

Sera rose beside her sister. "Why isn’t she with you?"

Her voice was higher than Cora’s, thinner, with a tremor that had never appeared during combat.

Holden walked to the small table between the two cots. He set the cloak down, unfolded it, and laid it flat on the surface with the insignia facing upward.

Then he looked at the Twins.

"Vespera is dead."

Cora’s face did not change. Not at first. For three full seconds, her expression remained exactly as it had been before the words reached her. Alert. Focused. Ready.

Then the mask broke.

The composure, arrogance, and synchronized confidence that had defined Cora since the first day she appeared in the academy corridor demanding badges from Emric and Renna vanished all at once.

Her eyes widened until the whites showed around her irises.

"No," she whispered. "No. She’s not."

Sera’s reaction was different. Quieter, but somehow worse.

She stood where she was, staring at the cloak on the table, and her body simply stopped responding. Her knees gave way, and her posture collapsed.

Thud.

"Sera!" Cora’s voice came out broken and raw. She dropped beside her sister, grabbing her arms and trying to hold her upright. But Cora’s own legs were no steadier. They buckled beneath her, and both Twins ended up on the floor, kneeling and holding onto each other.

A sound rose from them at the same time.

Cora made a noise that was half gasp and half scream. Sera did not scream. She sobbed, grabbing the fabric of her uniform and twisting it in her fists as if she could hold herself together by holding on to her clothes.

"She can’t be dead," Cora said. Her voice was wrecked. "She can’t. She promised she would come back from the Epicenter. She promised!"

"She said she’d be fine," Sera managed between sobs. Her voice was higher now, drowning in grief. "She looked at us and said she’d be fine, and we believed her because she never lies. She never lies, and now she’s..."

The words died in her throat.

Cora reached for the cloak on the table. Her hand trembled as she touched the insignia, tracing the Vanguard Academy crest and following the stitching she had seen a thousand times on Vespera’s shoulder.

"She raised us," Cora whispered. "She found us in the gutter. We were twelve. We were starving. We were nothing. She picked us up, fed us, trained us, and gave us names. We didn’t have names before her. We were just... numbers."

Sera reached for the cloak as well. Together, the Twins pulled it from the table and held it between them, pressing the fabric against their faces.

"It smells like her," Sera said. Her voice broke completely on the last word. "It still smells like her."

They held each other and the cloak, with nothing else left to hold on to. Their sobs came in waves, sometimes rising together and sometimes leaving one of them silent while the other struggled to breathe.

Holden watched them.

A few months ago, he would have stood there with his arms crossed and sarcasm ready on his tongue. He might have said something about their sloppy footwork or joked that the academy did not train assassins to cry on the floor.

He did not say any of that.

Instead, Holden slowly lowered himself to one knee, bringing himself to their level. He waited while the Twins cried, giving them time to get past the first, wild impact of their grief.

The sobs did not stop, but they gradually changed. The raw panic softened into something steadier. Cora and Sera still held the cloak between them, but now it seemed to be the only thing keeping them together. The three of them knelt on the floor of the military bunker while the world outside continued to turn.

Holden finally spoke.

His voice was not the sarcastic one they knew. It carried something else, something that had emerged from the ash field, from the moment Vespera dissolved, and from the black eyes that had replaced his own.

"Vespera gave me an order before she died," he said. "She told me to protect the Academy."

The Twins looked up at him. Their eyes were red, their faces wet, and their noses running. They looked broken.

They also looked human.

"She was your master," Holden continued. "But she was more than that. She was the person who picked you up when nobody else would. She gave you a home, a purpose, and a name."

His gaze moved from Cora to Sera and then back again.

"She was mine too."

The words hung in the room. True. Simple. Devastating.

"She’s gone," Holden said. "And the thing that killed her is still out there. It’s growing and spreading. The Abyss took her, and it’s going to keep taking people unless someone stops it."

He paused, allowing the words to settle.

"I’m going to stop it. I’m going to walk into that wasteland and destroy every single thing in it. Not because I’m brave. Because someone has to, and she asked me to."

His eyes moved to the tear-streaked faces and the hands still holding the cloak as if it were the last piece of a person they would never see again.

"You’re not my rivals. You never were. You were her blades. Her weapons. The ones she trusted to guard her back when the world was trying to kill her."

Holden extended his hand, palm up. It was not an offer of a handshake. It was the way someone offered something to a person who had nothing left to hold.

"She’s gone, but I’m here. And I’m asking you to be my blades. Not because I’m stronger, but because the war she was fighting isn’t over. She would want her weapons in the hands of someone who intends to use them."

Cora looked at Sera.

Sera looked back at Cora.

For the first time since Holden had met them, they did not speak in synchronization. The decision was made in that single look.

Cora reached for her short sword, which had been forgotten on the cot after the whetstone fell. She picked it up and held it in front of her.

Sera took her own sword from the cloth. The blade had been cleaned and oiled, and she held it in the same position as her sister.

Together, they turned the swords downward. The tips rested on the floor, and the hilts faced Holden.

It was an ancient gesture, one that had existed before academies, militaries, and kingdoms. A warrior offering a blade to a lord.

Not surrender.

Allegiance.

Cora spoke first.

"I, Cora, swear my blade to Holden Voss."

Sera followed. Her voice cracked on the second word, but she continued.

"I, Sera, swear my blade to Holden Voss."

They bowed their heads. The sword hilts rested on the floor between them and Holden’s outstretched hand.

Holden looked at the two blades, then at the two women. He could see the grief they shared and the rage building beneath it.

He placed his hand on both hilts. His fingers wrapped around the crossed guards, holding the swords together.

"Stand up," he said.

The Twins rose, Cora first and then Sera, pulling each other up the way they always had. Their swords hung at their sides, and their eyes were still red. But something had shifted. Their broken, directionless grief had found a channel. A purpose.

Holden stood with them.

"Vespera told me to protect the Academy," he said. "She also told me never to lose my humanity. I’m going to honor both orders. Part of doing that is making sure the things that killed her don’t get the chance to kill anyone else."

His gaze returned to the cloak on the table.

Black and silver.

Empty.

"We’re going to make the Abyss bleed."