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The air smelled of brine and blood, a perfume of ruin and rebirth.
Tav’s eyes snapped open to the pulsing crimson glow of the nautiloid’s membrane, a grotesque heartbeat in the ship’s veins. Her lungs burned, as though she had been pulled from the deep, her corpse wrung empty of life and refilled with something wrong. Her hands clawed at her throat, expecting cold fingers—his fingers—but found only the slick warmth of the pod’s fluids, the viscous kiss of illithid machinery, the distant symphony of screams.
“You wished to be mine forever,” Astarion’s voice curled in her skull like silk wound around steel. “And I promised to keep you, darling.”
Memory struck like a blade: crimson eyes, triumphant and hollow. The bite she was never allowed to reciprocate. The knife in her ribs, twisting like a lover’s embrace. His laughter, rich and wretched, as she choked on promises that had never been real.The lash on her back, her retribution.
Tav lurched from the pod, her limbs weak, her body trembling with phantom agonies. The tadpole squirmed behind her eye—a parasite, a brand, an unholy tether anchoring her more tightly to her past than to herself.
“You’re alive. A miracle, considering the company.”
Shadowheart’s voice cut through the haze, cool as temple stone. Tav flinched, scrambling backward until her spine kissed the pod. The cleric stood in the doorway, her expression sharp as a dagger’s edge. The first time, Shadowheart had smirked at the ship’s grotesque decor. Now, her gaze lingered too long, as if she could see the cracks spiderwebbing through Tav’s resurrected soul.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Shadowheart said, offering a hand.
Tav ignored it. “I’m fine.”
The lie crumbled like ash on her tongue. She wasn’t fine. She could still feel Astarion’s hands in her hair—gentle, reverent, then crushing. She could see Gale’s eyes darkening like a starless void when he declared godhood “a worthy consolation prize.” She could hear Karlach’s last smile, turning alien, turning wrong, as she begged Tav to run.
You failed them. You failed everyone.
A wave of dizziness stole her balance. Tav gripped the pod’s edge, her vision splintering into cruel echoes of the past: Astarion’s palace, walls choked with spawn wearing her face. Gale’s tower, a mausoleum of unread tomes and unspoken regrets. The Mindflayer colony, Karlach’s voice echoing, “Better this than the Hells, right?”
“Hey—hey.” Shadowheart’s grip on her shoulder was firm. “Get up. We only have to reach the bridge.”
Tav laughed, brittle as a blade about to break. If only.
They carved their way free of the nautiloid, as they had before. Every step was déjà vu, a marionette dance rehearsed too many times. Tav’s dagger moved as if wielded by someone else—parry, slice, kill—while her mind howled beneath the weight of fate. When the ship crashed onto the beach, she stumbled into the bushes and vomited, her body rejecting the lie of her existence.
Astarion found her there.
“Well, you’re a mess,” he drawled, leaning against a tree with that practiced, careless arrogance. Sunlight kissed his curls, and for a heartbeat, Tav forgot how to breathe. He hasn’t ascended yet. He’s still him—the liar, the survivor, the man who loved her in flashes between the shadows.
She reached for him. Then stopped. His smile was practiced, but it never reached his eyes.
“Careful, now,” he purred. “You look at me like I’m about to stab you in the back”
You did, she thought. You will.
That night, campfire smoke coiled into the stars. Tav stared into a waterskin’s reflection—pale lavender skin, white hair tangled with blood, eyes like fractured amethyst. Funny, how she had nearly forgotten that they weren’t always red.
Gale sat across the fire, his gaze weighing her like a spell unspoken. “You’ve been quiet.”
“Tadpoles. Worms. Apocalypses,” Tav muttered. “Not much to say.”
“Ah, but there’s a difference between silence and secrets.” His fingers steepled, the Karsite Weave flickering like distant lightning in his palm. “You fight like someone who’s already lost.”
Tav stood too fast. The world tilted. Astarion’s laugh curled from the shadows, Karlach’s engine thrummed low like a dying heartbeat, and for a moment, the fire’s glow mirrored the gaze of a thousand starving spawn.
“Get some rest,” Shadowheart murmured, watching her too closely. “Tomorrow’s another disaster.”
Tav didn’t sleep. She carved a tally into her arm with a dagger, a silent countdown.
How long until it happens again? How long until I break?
The tadpole stirred, whispering.
Not this time.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Astarion called her darling three days later, his voice honeyed and careless, as they picked through the ruins of the shrine to Jergal.
The word hooked into Tav’s ribs like a blade. She flinched, her boot catching on a loose stone, and for a heartbeat, she was back in that sunless palace: his fingers tracing her jaw, the mockery in his voice as he whispered, “You can never leave me, darling. Not really.”
“Careful,” Astarion murmured, catching her elbow with a grip light as spider silk. “Wouldn’t want you to trip over your own dramatics.” His touch burned.
She jerked away, her hand flying to the dagger at her hip. His brow arched—a flicker of surprise, quickly smothered by amusement, the mask slipping effortlessly back into place.
“Relax, my sweet. I’m not the monster here.” He gestured to the withered skeletons ahead. “Yet.”
Tav didn’t laugh. She watched him until the group split, her gaze tracking the slow, confident sway of his coat through the next doorway. He hasn’t changed. Not yet. But the seeds of the Vampire Ascendant were always there, waiting for the right soil in which to bloom.
That night, she found the ring.
It lay buried in a hidden fold of her pack, the silver band etched with an hourglass tipped on its side—Cazador Szarr’s favorite symbol of time devoured. The metal hummed beneath her fingertips, the pulse of old magic coiling like a serpent against her palm. He had slipped it onto her finger the day of his ascension, a chain disguised as a promise. “For emergencies,” he had said. Later, in the dark: “You belong where I can see you.”
“Burn it,” she whispered, but her fingers curled around it instead. What if it’s the only way out this time? What if it binds him to me as much as it binds me to him?
“Nice trinket,” Karlach said, looming suddenly over her shoulder. Tav nearly dropped the ring. The tiefling’s engine glowed faintly in the dark, her smile sharp with concern. “You’ve been jumpier than a cat in a hound pit. Spill: who do I need to set on fire?”
Tav swallowed. “No one.”
“Bullshit.” Karlach plopped down beside her, the ground shuddering. “You look at Astarion like he’s got a second head. Gale like he’s a walking corpse. Even Shadowheart—you flinched when she healed you today.” Her voice softened. “Did one of them hurt you? Before the nautiloid? We could run. Just you and me. Screw the tadpoles, screw the Absolute.”
Tav’s throat tightened. You did, she wanted to say. You let the tadpole eat your soul to save me, and it wasn’t enough.
“I’m fine,” she said, tucking the ring away.
Karlach snorted. “You’re a shit liar, soldier.”
The nightmares were worse that night. Tav woke choking on phantom blood, her fingers clawing at the specter of a knife in her chest. Astarion’s face swam above her, pale and pitiless, before dissolving into the flickering glow of the campfire. Gale knelt beside her, offering a waterskin, his gaze dark and inscrutable.
“You were muttering about… a contract,” he said, his voice smooth, calculated. He was always calculating. “Seven thousand and one souls. A fascinating number for midnight ravings.”
Tav wiped the sweat from her brow. “Dreams lie.” She drank greedily, avoiding his gaze. He’d been different too, once. A man who recited poetry over burnt stew, who blushed when she kissed his stubble. Now, all she saw was the shadow of a god, petty and vast.
“Perhaps.” Gale leaned closer, the scent of ozone and ambition clinging to him. “But even the most forbidden knowledge can be a key. If shared.”
Tav stood, her legs trembling. “There’s nothing to share.”
She fled to the river, scrubbing her hands raw in the icy current. The ring burned in her pocket. Use it, a voice whispered, though whether it was memory or madness, she couldn’t say. Jump. See where it takes you.
She slipped it on.
Nothing happened. No magic surged, no world twisted beneath her feet. Just cold metal against her skin, and a whisper, soft as a lover’s breath: “You’ll come back to me. You always do.”
By dawn, the tally on her arm had four marks.
Astarion watched her carve the fifth, his head tilted like a curious cat. “Self-flagellation is so tediously mortal,” he said. “If you’re going to brood, at least do it with style.”
“Go away.”
“Make me.” He crouched beside her, too close, the scent of wine and death curling in the air between them. “You’re hiding something, darling. Something intoxicating.” His voice dipped lower, velvet over a knife’s edge. “I can smell it.”
Tav froze. His fingers brushed her wrist—gentle, possessive the way a predator might test the fragility of its prey’s throat. For a heartbeat, she almost leaned into it, into him. He was her first mistake. Her last regret.
“Touch me again,” she said softly, “and I’ll cut your hands off.”
He laughed, bright and hollow. “Promises, promises.”
But when he left, his steps were too quick.
Like he was running.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The ring should have dragged her back to her cell. Instead, it brought her to her gravestone.
Tav was cornered by gnolls near Rivington, their guttural snarls drowning out Gale’s incantations. Blood slicked her palms, hot and sticky, and Astarion’s laughter rang too close, too sharp—teetering on the edge of something unhinged. Just like before. Panic clenched her ribs—not again, not again. She flung a burning potion at her feet and twisted the ring.
The world shattered into a scream of shadows.
When her vision cleared, she stood in a graveyard choked by fog. Moss-clad headstones leaned like broken teeth, whispering names of the long dead, and the air reeked of damp earth and rot. Her boots sank into mud as she stumbled forward, drawn by an invisible pull to a pair of graves at the edge of the plot.
The first read:
Gustava of the Seldarine. Died Betrayed.
The second, smaller and older, its letters half-eroded: Astarion Ancunín. Died Free.
Her breath hitched. He’d buried himself here. After killing her. After losing everything. She knelt, trembling fingers ghosting over his name. Had he mourned her? Or had he carved this stone in mockery, another cruel joke, another victory pried from someone else's ruin?
A cold wind hissed through the trees. Somewhere in the mist, a shovel struck dirt. Tav froze. This wasn’t just a memory. It was a warning.
Astarion cornered her that evening, his voice a blade wrapped in silk. “You’ve been distant, darling. And here I thought we had something special.”
He watched her for the flinch, he was always watching.
They stood at the edge of camp, the others distracted by Karlach’s booming laughter. Tav’s back pressed against a tree, his proximity setting her nerves alight. When his hand drifted toward her waist, she leaned into him, lips curving in a smirk she didn’t feel.
“Special?” she purred, trailing a finger down his chest. “You’ll need to be more creative than that.”
His eyes narrowed. For a heartbeat, she saw it—the flicker of recognition. The hunter recognising the predator. He knew this dance. Knew it too well.
“You’re good,” he murmured, catching her wrist. His grip was deceptively light, his thumb ghosting over her pulse. “But you’re playing my game, darling. The batting lashes, the breathy sighs… you reek of fear, not desire. Who taught you to hide like this?”
She stiffened. Cazador. He was thinking of Cazador.
“Jealous?” she deflected, twisting free.
He laughed, but it frayed at the edges, unraveling at the seams. “Hardly. But if you’re going to lie to me, at least do it with some conviction.”
That night, the tadpole whispered its truth.
Tav stood in Cazador’s ritual chamber, the air thick with the scent of old magic and spilled blood. Astarion’s blade pressed against her throat, his grip trembling. His eyes burned with something desperate. “You understand, don’t you? I need this. I need to be strong.”
Her voice was barely a breath. “Do you truly want this, Astarion?”
He hesitated. The ring on her finger pulsed, silver light crawling along the etchings like veins, a taunting echo of the past. She saw it warp his expression—saw him latch onto the vision flickering in the metal. “‘I want to protect you,” he whispered. “To keep us both safe. Forever.”
The knife slipped from his grasp. He turned to the ritual.
She didn’t stop him.
Tav woke gasping, the ghost of his choice wrapping around her throat like a noose.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The campfire crackled, its feeble glow swallowed by the unrelenting gloom of the Shadow-Cursed Lands. Tav sat apart, her blade whispering against the whetstone in a rhythm as steady as a heartbeat. The dagger’s edge gleamed like moonlight on obsidian, glinting wetly, a cruel mirror to the tally marks hidden beneath her sleeve—each one a ledger of lives spent, failures etched into her skin.Gale found her first.“You’re pushing yourself too hard,” he said, ladling a portion of stew into Tav’s bowl. “Another sleepless night?”Tav shrugged, her grip tightening on the blade. The stew steamed, its aroma laced with something more than simple nourishment. Magic curled through it, coaxing, compelling. A whisper of the Weave wove through the air, urging her to trust, rest, submit.She forced herself to take a sip. “I’m fine.”“You’re not,” he chided gently. “You’ve been jumpy. Distracted. Let me help.” His fingers brushed hers, Weave sparking. “A simple spell to calm your nerves. No more nightmares.”Tav jerked back, broth sloshing. ““Don’t,” Tav warned, though the ache in her skull begged otherwise.Gale’s smile tightened. “Stubbornness isn’t a virtue, my friend. Not when it endangers us all.”A breeze stirred the dying embers of the campfire. His magic reached for her, insidious as ivy creeping through the cracks of an old ruin, twining around her thoughts. A sweet warmth rushed through her, a lull.She swallowed against it. “I said no.” Her voice was steel now, and she rose to her feet, her dagger a silent barrier between them.
Astarion watched from the periphery, where firelight faltered into shadow. His fingers curled against his arms, nails pressing half-moons into his skin. He had seen Tav recoil from Gale’s touch, seen the tremor in her hands, the way she had retched behind the trees like she was trying to purge something that had stained deeper than her stomach.It was familiar. Too familiar.So when Tav returned to camp, her steps too measured, her expression brittle as frost, he struck.“Running out of bedmates, darling?” he drawled, blocking her path, his fangs bared in something too sharp to be a smile. “First me, then the wizard, now… what? The tiefling? Or will you finally stoop to the dog?”She froze. “Stop.”“Stop what?” He prowled closer, crowding her against a tree. “Stop pointing out how you cling to anyone who offers a scrap of validation? How you crawl into their beds so that when they fuck you, you can pretend you wanted it?”Her breath hitched. A flinch.Good, he thought savagely. Let her fight.But when her eyes met his, they weren’t filled with anger. They were filled with grief.“You don’t mean that,” she whispered.The certainty in her voice made him recoil, made something deep in his gut twist with unease. “Don’t pretend to know me.”
Karlach cornered him later, her infernal engine thrumming with barely leashed fury. “What the hells was that?”“A performance review,” Astarion snapped, scrubbing invisible blood from beneath his nails. “She’s falling apart. Someone needed to say it.”“You’re a bastard.”“And you’re a hypocrite.” He tossed the rag into the fire, watching it curl to ash. “You coddle her. Gale manipulates her. At least I’m honest.”Karlach’s fist slammed into the tree beside his head, splintering the bark. “Honest? Or just cruel?”He didn’t answer.
Gale whispered to Tav by the river, where the moonlight bled silver across the water..“Astarion is a liability,” he said, voice low. “His unpredictability endangers us all.”“We need him,” Tav said, rinsing the blood from her bedroll.Gale exhaled, shifting closer. “Do we?” His voice softened, becoming something almost gentle. “Imagine how safe our camp could be without his instability. Peace isn’t a curse, Tav. It’s a gift. One I could give you.”She stiffened, the water freezing against her hands. “You sound like the Absolute.”“I sound like a man who values your well-being,” he corrected, fingers steepling. “You’re wasting yourself on him. On all of them.”
Astarion found her retching in the bushes after breakfast. Gale’s leftover stew and guilt sour in her throat.“Poisoned?” he asked, too casually.“No.”“Pity.” He leaned lazily against a tree, arms crossed. “For the record, if you’re going to die, at least make it entertaining. Watching Karlach mope would be insufferable.”Tav let out a weak, bitter laugh. “Noted.”Silence stretched between them, heavy as unspoken truths. Then—“I’m not him,” Astarion said abruptly. The words escaped before he could swallow them, raw and jagged. “The monster in your head. Whatever you think I’ll do… I won’t.”Tav studied him, her face inscrutable in the dim light.“Say something,” he hissed, impatient now, desperate for a response, any response.She exhaled, slow and deliberate. “You’re right.” A pause, then softer: “He’s not here. I’m free.” The words felt hollow, but she couldn’t tell which lie was the emptiest.Astarion blinked. He hesitated a fraction too long before turning away, disappearing into the night without another word.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The graveyard awaited her like a patient predator.
Tav returned at midnight, the ring cold against her chest. The fog clung thicker now, alive with whispers. She knelt between the two graves, her palm pressed to Astarion’s eroded epitaph. Died Free. The words hummed with infernal energy, the contract carved in cold defiance.
Astarion had died without a master. No chains, no gods, no mortal ties. He had died free of doubt. He’d died free of her. And she’d died betrayed by the only man who had ever loved her. His first kiss wrapped in deceit, and her last tasting of her agony.
A voice slithered through the mist, rich with the decay of forgotten nobility. “Do you want a new ending?”
She turned sharply. The shade stood cloaked in shadow, fangs glinting through the tattered remains of its once-regal face. Cazador’s echo.
“Rewrite the terms,” it purred. “Let him die free of fear instead of pain. But you…” A skeletal hand gestured toward her grave. “You must die betrayed. By him. By yourself. The cycle must hold.”
“How?” Tav whispered.
The specter’s grin cut through the dark like a rusted dagger. “Break his heart before he ascends. Make him hate you. Let him kill you willingly. Let him die free of you.”
Her stomach twisted. Another betrayal. “And if I refuse?”
The shade’s laughter coiled around her like smoke. “Then you both rot here. Forever.”
Tav felt the weight of exhaustion pulling her to lie in her place on the moss. If she buried herself twice, fulfilled both prophecies, would that be enough to save his soul?
Astarion found the ring two nights later.
He’d been rifling through her pack for healing potions—“borrowing, darling, don’t be tedious”—when the Szarr crest glinted in the moonlight. His blood went cold.
Cazador’s ring.
The same twisted joke of a relic he had once been forced to wear for two centuries, a shackle disguised as salvation. Use it to escape torture, and it drags you back to the tomb. Use it to flee fear, and you drown in it. He clenched it in his palm, its magic biting into his skin like the cold grip of the grave. He had thought Tav’s nightmares were echoes of her own horrors, twisted reflections haunted by the same smell, but this—this—was his nightmare. The tomb’s pull lived in the silver. It was the isolation, it was the rats, it was the weight of the centuries suffocating him all over again.
His voice was lethally calm. “Cazador’s sigil.” He turned the ring in his fingers, watching the way the firelight danced on its silver edges. “Planning a trip?”
Tav’s breath hitched. “That’s not yours.”
“Neither is its nasty little trick, apparently.” He stepped closer, voice dropping into something low and dangerous. “Tell me, did you know? That if you used this, you’d be dragged beneath the earth? Trapped in the dark with the silence and the stench and the crawling things?”
Her silence betrayed her. His jaw tensed, fangs flashing as he let the ring dangle between them like a noose.
Tav’s throat tightened. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, I think you’re lying.” He prowled closer, the ring clenched in his fist. “Did he send you? Are you here to fetch me, to whisper pretty lies until I crawl willingly back into his grasp?” His laugh was brittle. “Joke’s on you. I’d rather die than be his dog again.”
“I’m not—”
“Aren’t you?” He caught her chin between his fingers, forcing her gaze to meet his. “You flinch when I touch you. You know things you shouldn’t. And now this.” He tossed the ring into the dirt. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
She said nothing. The truth lodged in her throat like a shard of glass.
Astarion’s hands circled her throat, not yet squeezing, but close. “You’re planning something,” he accused, voice tight. “You followed me. You’re bringing me with you on this fool’s errand. Why?”
Tav’s eyes burned. “To save you.”
“From what?”
“Yourself.”
He laughed, jagged and raw. “Oh, darling. If you wanted to play hero, you should’ve picked a better damsel.”
She moved before she could think, kissing him—a hard, desperate clash of teeth and guilt. He stilled, then gripped her hair, yanking.
“Don’t,” he breathed. “Don’t you dare use my tricks on me.”
But his hands trembled.
That night, the tadpole bled memories into her dreams.
Astarion, young and trembling, on his knees, half-flayed and weeping. Cazador’s voice, slick as oil. “The ring is a test, boy. Use it, and you’ll learn the price of cowardice.”
Astarion, pale fingers twisting the silver band. The world lurches—
—and he’s in the tomb. The walls press close. Rats gnaw his fingers. He screams until his voice dies.
Tav woke gasping.
Astarion stood over her, his face a mask of cold fury. “You saw that, didn’t you?” he whispered. “You knew.”
“I didn’t,” she lied.
“Liar.” He backed away, eyes blazing. “Stay out of my head.”
Karlach found her at dawn, dragging the edge of a dagger over the tally marks on her arm, making the lines sharper, deeper.
“Your arm’s bleeding,” the tiefling said, nodding at Tav’s sleeve.
She tugged the fabric down, hiding the tallies. “Scratched it on a branch.”
“Bullshit.” Karlach crouched beside her. “You’ve been carving those marks since day one. Seven… eight… nine… What’s the count for, soldier? Days until you bolt? Until someone dies?”
Tav’s hand stilled. “Until I fix this.”
Karlach’s voice softened, though the weight of it did not. “Fix what?”
The camp stirred behind them. Astarion’s laughter rang out, sharp and hollow.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The goblin camp reeked of blood and rot, but Astarion’s laugh cut sharper than the stench. He twirled a dagger, its edge still wet from the gutting of a hobgoblin priestess. Tav watched him from where she sat, her ribs aching where he had “accidentally” knocked her over during the fight—a retaliation, perhaps, for suggesting they spare a prisoner.
“You’re slipping, darling,” he purred, flicking gore off the blade. “Mercy is for the weak. Or did you forget?”
She hadn’t. She’d seen the prisoner’s face in another life—a rebel who’d helped them infiltrate Moonrise Towers. But this Astarion didn’t care. This Astarion struck first and never asked.
“We need allies, not corpses,” she said quietly.
He slapped her.
The crack echoed. Karlach jerked forward, but Wyll held her back, his face grim. Astarion’s hand lingered in the air, trembling.
“Don’t,” he hissed, eyes distant, “lecture me.”
Tav touched the heat blooming across her cheek, her fingers pressing into the sting. He’s afraid, she realized. Afraid that kindness is just another leash waiting to tighten.
The thefts started subtly.
Her favorite dagger vanished. Then her bedroll. Then the locket she had carried since the nautiloid—a trinket from a life she could barely remember. Each time, she found them later: the dagger buried in a tree, the bedroll shredded, the locket dangling from Astarion’s belt like a trophy.
“Looking for this?” he purred when she confronted him, twirling the locket between his fingers. “It’s mine now. Consider it rent for tolerating your nighttime screaming. You’ve been ruining my beauty sleep.”
She reached for it. He backhanded her, splitting her lip.
“You want it?” He dropped the locket into the mud. “Crawl.”
She didn’t.
The thefts escalated.
Astarion stole her boots next, leaving her barefoot in the frostbitten camp. “You’ll walk sharper this way,” he sneered. Then her dagger again, then her bedroll, forcing her to huddle by Karlach’s smoldering engine for warmth. He never touched Cazador’s ring.
“He’s an arsehole,” Karlach growled, handing Tav a singed blanket. “Let me talk to him.”
“No,” Tav said. “He’ll stop. He just… needs time.”
Astarion prowled back and forth by his tent, watching them. “Darling,” he said, his teeth gritting at her flinch, “Do keep avoiding my eyes like I’m some feral beast. I’ll show you what a monster does to pretty, useless things.”
Karlach lunged for him. “Enough!”
“Stay out of it,” Tav croaked.
Astarion laughed, wild and broken. “See? She likes it.”
Later, she found her dagger in her tent, its edge freshly sharpened. When she caught him watching from the trees, he smiled.
“You’ll thank me,” he said in Cazador’s voice. “Pain is the chisel that carves wisdom into stubborn stone”
She held his gaze, then pressed the blade to her own throat. A single, gentle movement. A line of sticky red welled up, slipping onto the bare soil. Astarion’s smirk vanished.
“Stop,” he whispered, too fast, too quiet.
She remembered the nights he had fed from her with trembling restraint, the way his hands had once cradled her face as he murmured, You’re the only thing I haven’t ruined.
Now, he looked like he was the ruin.
Gale found the blood first.
“Astarion, I presume?” he asked, his magic already curling around Tav’s throat, stitching flesh back together. His magic lingered, warm and cloying. “You tolerate too much from him.”
“He’s not himself,” Tav muttered.
“Isn’t he?” Gale’s smile was thin. “The vampire’s nature is to devour. You’re a fool to think love will leash it.”
Tav leaned towards him, offering a smirk through her lashes. “And yet, you still worshipped the hand that fed on you. Funny, that.”
He didn’t answer.
“She’s a liability,” he murmured to Shadowheart over a game of lanceboard, moving his bishop with deliberate calm. “Tav’s obsession with Astarion will get us all killed. You’ve seen the tallies. The recklessness.”
Shadowheart’s hand hovered over her knight. “What are you suggesting?”
“An… intervention.” Gale’s smile was all teeth. “Shar’s magic could suppress her memories. Just until we reach Baldur’s Gate.”
“You want me to erase her?”
“Save her.” He captured her knight. “Checkmate.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Cazador's voice slithered through the dream-smoke, cadaverous fingers carding through Tav's hair.
“Show him the truth. Let him taste your pain.”
That night, she pressed her palm to Astarion’s sleeping temple, the tadpole writhing. Memories flooded him: Tav shackled in Cazador’s dungeon, her screams muffled as a blade carved infernal runes into her ribs. Above her, a pale hand turned the blade - Astarion’s fingers, Astarion’s face, twisted with cold delight. A voice purring, “No, don’t beg, gorgeous. I just want to hear your screams”
His breath stuttered as his body jerked awake,
Tav watched from across the dying fire as Astarion clawed at his own chest, nails drawing black blood, as if he could excavate the vision.
"What in the Hells was that? Whose memory…" he hissed, pupils blown wide.
“A nightmare,” she said flatly. “Guilt does funny things, doesn’t it?”
He recoiled. “I’ve never done—"
“Haven’t you?” She held his gaze, tilting her head to expose the bruised column of her throat. He’d stolen her dagger to cut her with it more times than she could count. It hardly felt like it belonged to her any more. Last week, he’d kicked her legs out and forced her to her knees, that perfect mimicry of Cazador’s honeyed malice purring, “Kneel, my sweet. That’s where you belong.”
Just this morning, Astarion had pinned her windpipe beneath his palm while the other wrenched her jaw upward, his Master’s signature appraisal of livestock, before crushing her lips in kisses that tasted of vinegar and violets instead of rich, dark fruits. She’d felt like a well-kicked dog, struggling to keep her breathing even as he called her his “Clumsy angel.”
“You’re not the monster yet. But you’re trying to be”
Astarion laughed, brittle. “You’re one to talk, darling. I know what you’re hiding. I know that you talk to him in your dreams. Bargaining with the devil. And what is he asking in return? All those flinches, those tears—just a performance to soften me up.”
Tav’s chest tightened. “If I were his spy, why would I have this?” She brandished the Szarr ring, its hourglass sigil glinting.
“Because he owns you,” Astarion snarled. “Just like he owned me. But I won’t go back. And if you try to make me…” His dagger flashed. “I’ll carve that pretty lie right out of your throat.”
She didn’t flinch. “Do it, then.”
He hesitated. The blade trembled.
Karlach found her submerged in an icy stream at dawn, her skin blue-tinged, tally marks raw and red on her arm. Tav turned away. The stream reflected Karlach's engine—a cracked furnace, gears grinding with every breath. Two months. Maybe three.
“Soldier,” Karlach breathed, wading in. “What’s this? Trying to freeze the tadpole to death?”
"Nightmares." Tav scrubbed raw skin. "They stick in the pores."
“Right. And the tallies?” Karlach gestured to her arm. “You counting how many times you’ve talked yourself out of drowning?”
Tav stiffened. “It’s not like that.”
“Sure.” Karlach sat beside her, steam rising off her engine. “Look, I’ve been there. Staring into the dark, thinking, ‘One less breath, and it all stops.’ But you keep choosing to live. Even when it’s shit.” She paused. “Even when it’s him.”
Tav’s laugh cracked. “You think I’m tallying near-death escapes?”
“Aren’t you?”
No, Tav thought. I’m counting how many times I would die to save him.
That evening, Astarion drank too much.
“Tell me,” he slurred, swaying into her tent. “Did Cazador make you beg? Did he make you like it?”
Tav’s fist connected with his jaw. He stumbled, laughing.
“There she is,” he crooned, blood on his teeth. “My vicious girl. All fury and no finesse.”
She kissed him like a blade between ribs—hard, desperate, mean. He answered with centuries of hunger, hands scouring her hips as if he could erase every touch that wasn't his.
When they broke apart, his thumb smeared her blood across both their lips.
“I hate you,” he whispered.
“Liar,” she said.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The mirror gleamed like a fresh wound in the fortress gloom, its gilded frame contorted into screaming faces. Tav unearthed it from a nest of femurs—Cazador’s crest grinning up at her through tarnish, the glass pulsing with sickly magic. A vampire’s truth-teller. She should’ve left it. Should’ve shattered it.
But Astarion’s laugh sliced through camp that night—a serrated edge of hysteria—and suddenly the cursed thing was in her hands, offered like absolution.
“I thought… you might want this.”
He went very still, pupils contracting to pinpricks. “Where. Did. You. Get. That."
“The fortress. It must’ve been Cazador’s once—”
His fist struck her cheek so fast she didn’t see it move. The mirror shattered against a rock, shards scattering like teeth. She tasted blood in her mouth.
“You don’t get to dig up my grave!” Spittle flew from bared fangs. “Is this his new game? Send his favorite pet to mock me with relics?”
Tav touched her stinging face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” His stolen dagger kissed her throat. “Didn’t mean to? You’re a liar! You want me broken at his feet again. Well newsflash, darling—” The blade drew a ruby line. “—I’d rather wear your entrails than his collar.”
She didn’t flinch. “I wanted you to be able to see yourself”
He laughed, wild and raw. “Oh, darling. I know what I am”
Across the clearing, Shadowheart knelt amidst the wreckage. A sliver of enchanted glass glowed faintly in her palm, reflecting Astarion's fractured visage—a hundred vampiric selves screaming in silent unison.
"Some truths cut worse when reflected," she murmured, tucking the shard into her pack. The artifact at her hip pulsed hungrily. "Best left buried."
Tav met Astarion's deranged stare. "I'm sorry."
“Stop apologizing!” He grabbed her shoulders, shaking her. “You want a monster? Fine. Here.”
He shoved her. She hit the ground, her pack spilling open. Astarion fell on top of her, kneeling on her thighs, a palm against her forehead pressing her skull into the dirt.
“Astarion—”
He tore off her belt with one hand and hurled it into the darkness. “Run along, darling. Fetch.”
Gale found her hours later, roots tearing at her knees as she clawed through loam. His mage light cast leprous shadows.
“Let me help,” he said, summoning a wisp of light.
“Don’t.” Tav’s voice was hollow. “It’s gone.”
“Nothing’s truly gone.” Gale’s hand settled on her back, warm and heavy. “Not while I’m here.”
She shrugged him off. “I need to be alone.”
“What you need,” he said, catching her wrist, “is someone who won’t break you.”
His grip tightened—not enough to bruise, but enough to promise. But with a twist of her wrist, Tav pulled away.
Astarion watched from the trees, his chest aching.
Why won’t she fight ME?
The thefts continued. Astarion stole a rough kiss the next day, then pinched her side, held her delicate ear between his teeth for painful minutes —each new cruelty was met with quiet, with dull resignation. Each one a test. Make me stop. Hate me.
But she never did.
So he escalated.
That night, he stole her breath, crushed under his weight by the riverbank—
“Beg,” he demanded, twisting her arm behind her back. “Beg me to stop.”
“No.”
He slammed her against a rock. Pressed her down with his weight, thrust himself against her back, hips rocking as he held her immobile with his strength “Saving your sobs for when Gale finally gets his head between your thighs?”
Her breath hitched. Her voice was small “Please, Astarion, I only belong to you”
He released her like she’d burned him. “Nothing belongs to me.”
She turned, and whatever he saw on her face made him look away. Her eyes fell to her dagger, stolen once again from her belt. His hands were too slow to hide it behind his back.
“Give it back.”
“What. Time for another tally? Why don’t you beg for it? Please, Astarion” he mocked. “Isn’t that what you want to say? ‘Please, Astarion, don’t hurt me. Please, Astarion, don’t be him.’” He stepped back once, twice. “But I am him, aren’t I? I don’t need to look in a mirror.”
He didn’t return the dagger. That night, she found him hunched over it, scrubbing imaginary blood from its blade.
“I’m becoming him,” he whispered.
“You’re not,” she said.
He threw the dagger at her feet. “Liar.” The word cracked like a rib.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Raphael found them on the crumbling bridge, his smile sharp enough to slit fate itself.
“Ah, the heroes,” he purred, flames licking his fingertips. “The tadpole’s choir still sings behind your eyes. How sweet their discordant hymn. But a cure could be yours… for a trifling price.”
Gale stepped forward, the bridge groaning underfoot. In his shadow, the specter of Mystra’s kiss lingered—amethyst light bruising his collarbones. “Name your price, devil.”
“A sliver of your soul, wizard. A morsel.”
Before Gale could speak, Astarion shoved past him. “Translate this,” he snarled, yanking his shirt to reveal the infernal tattoo. “What does it say?”
Raphael’s grin widened. “Why, little vampire… it’s a recipe. A recipe for ascension.” His gaze flicked to Tav. “But your companion already knew that, didn’t you? Or should I say… she remembers?”
Tav froze. Astarion’s eyes narrowed.
“What’s he talking about?” Shadowheart hissed.
“Nothing,” Tav said, too quickly.
Raphael laughed. “Oh, this will be delicious.”
That night, Astarion cornered her. “You’ve been quiet,” he said, circling like a wolf, never touching. “Raphael’s little comment rattled you. Why?”
Tav’s back itched where the scars used to be. His scars. The ones he’d carved into her flesh in another life, claiming they’d “match.” Now, her skin was smooth—a secret she guarded like a wound.
“He’s a devil,” she said. “He lives to rattle.”
Astarion rested his thumb on the buckle that held her leathers at her waist. “Did our master write you any poetry? Where is it? Let me see.”
She yanked free. “No. And I already told you he’s not my master.”
He laughed, but it cracked. “You’re lying. Pet. Pawn. Plaything. Call it what you want—you’re wearing his brand, same as me.”
The missing tally woke her screaming.
One of the marks—the third—had vanished. Her arm ached where it’d been, the skin unbroken. A dream of slipping, falling, a dreadful weightlessness followed by a sharp stop. A light had gone out, somewhere out of reach. Failed. She’d failed. But how? Had she died yesterday? Or was it Astarion? Or—
“You’re alive,” Karlach said, tossing her a towel as Tav emerged shivering from the river. “Again.”
“I’m fine,” Tav muttered.
“Sure. And I’m a celibate nun.” Karlach’s engine flickered. “Gale’s worried. Thinks Astarion’s messing with your head.”
Tav stiffened. “Gale should worry about his own god complex.”
There were just eight tallies on her wrist.
Later, clean hair dripping rivulets of ice onto her skin, Tav walked towards Karlach’s tent seeking warmth —and froze.
Shadowheart's voice drifted from the fireside: "...contain the damage before it's irreversible."
Karlach's claws dug into her forearm, hellish ichor bubbling up like tar. "Break her heart to save her soul?" Her engine roared, drowning out the campfire's crackle. "They said the same shit when they cut mine out. 'Makes you stronger. More useful.'" A piston hissed, spraying acrid steam. "Guess what? No heart means no going back. You start carving pieces out of Tav's mind—" She loomed over Shadowheart, fist glowing like a brand. "—you stay where I can see you. Touch one memory that ain't yours, and I'll show you what 'useful' really looks like."
A silver tear tracked Shadowheart's cheek. "To do this would be to betray more than her. But if Shar wills it..." Her artifact pulsed, devouring moonlight.
Tav's boot deliberately snapped a twig.
Gale found her at dusk, his voice silken with false concern. “Astarion’s… intensity unsettles you. I’ve noticed.”
“Noticed or hoped?” Tav snapped.
He stepped closer. “You don’t have to endure him. We could… protect each other.” His hand brushed hers. “Let me,” he murmured, the Weave swirling in his palm—a black hole dressed as salvation. His other hand crept under her tunic, tracing the tally marks. “I could make us both… forget.”
Pathetic, she thought. But the missing tally gnawed at her - a warning of the loop tightening. You’ll turn him down. He’ll smile. And you’ll slip and fall and wake up. Again. With seven tallies left.
“Fine,” she said, pulling him into her tent.
It was mechanical, as though it followed a script. Gale’s hands were too soft, and then too hard, his kisses too eager. When he whispered, “You’re safe with me,” she almost laughed.
Safe. What a joke.
Astarion’s voice cut through the dark. “Enjoyed yourself, darling?”
He leaned against a tree outside her tent, arms crossed. Gale snored obliviously inside. “Was he tender?” he drawled, leaning against a petrified elm. “Gallant?” Moonlight carved him from marble and spite. “Or did our wizardly friend need diagrams?”
“Jealous?” Tav said, wrapping her shirt around herself. His eyes searched her skin for the brand, and found only bruises.
“Hardly.” His smile was venomous. “But if you’re trying to make me angry, it’s working.”
She stepped closer. “Why? Because you hate him? Or because you hate that I don’t need you?”
He grabbed her, fingers digging into her hips. “You need me,” he hissed. “You’re just too broken to admit it.”
She kissed him—a savage, teeth-clashing thing. For a heartbeat, he kissed back, desperate. Then he shoved her away.
“Don’t,” he breathed. “Don’t play this game with me.”
“Why?” she taunted. “Scared you’ll kill me?”
He vanished into the shadows.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Raphael sought her alone at the edge of camp, testing the bite of her dagger with her fingertips.
“Still clinging to hope, little ghost?” he crooned, materializing from a swirl of embers. “Let me simplify your paradox. A bargain: Astarion, unascended, turns you back into his thrall, and I pluck the worm from his pretty head. In exchange, you deliver me the Crown of Karsus.”
Tav’s blade stilled. “No.”
“No?” He leaned in, sulfurous breath hot on her neck. “Shall I let the tadpole show him the other version of your little midnight trysts? The one where you slithered into his bedroll, stretched out your neck, begging for a bite? How you pinned him down, rode his—”
“Enough,” she snarled.
“Ah, there’s the fire.” He grinned. “Tick-tock, darling. That parasite’s appetite won’t wait forever.”
The new tally appeared after the gnoll ambush.
Tav had thrown herself into the fray, reckless, begging for a fatal blow. When the gnoll’s axe cracked her ribs with the sound of a bell tolling, Shadowheart screamed, her resurrection spell stitching flesh and bone. Tav woke gasping, a fresh mark seared into her wrist—a jagged line, glowing faintly red.
"What festers here?" Shadowheart demanded, her silver handprint glowing where it gripped Tav's arm.
“A reminder,” Tav lied, clambering to her feet.
She died twice more that day. A goblin’s arrow. A misplaced step off a cliff. Each time, Shadowheart revived her. Each time, a new tally burned itself into her skin.
Three marks. Three lives to spend.
Astarion watched her bleed with narrowed eyes. “Suicide isn’t a good look on you, darling.”
“Neither is jealousy,” she shot back.
He bared his fangs. “Please. I don’t share.”
The stew pot belched rancid steam, gelatinous globs of cheese clinging to its rim like diseased flesh. Gale’s gaze burned into Tav’s wrist as her thumb traced where tomorrow she would write the next tally —a phantom itch where the skin remained stubbornly smooth.
“There,” he murmured. His magic lashed out, pinning her wrist to her thigh. "There are gaps in between the tallies, plenty of space to put them there. No need to spoil your lovely skin.”
Tav tried to pull free. "Let go."
"Soon," he promised. The Weave around them curdled with sulfur and the acrid tang of infernal contracts. His skin glowed, the shadows rippled—a flash of cloven hooves, a smirk of too-sharp teeth.
His fingers dug into her wrist where the magic held strong, and two tallies snuffed out like candle flames. The empty gaps yawned wide, hungry.
“Imagine,” he whispered, lips grazing her ear, “a world where his name turns to ash on your tongue. Where this—” His hand pressed over her heart, pushing until her ribs creaked. “—beats for a future you wish to live to see..”
The kiss he forced on her tasted of grave soil and decaying parchment. Tav bit down hard, copper flooding her mouth—but Gale’s smile only widened, his teeth glinting with unnatural phosphorescence.
The confrontation erupted at breakfast. The campfire became a pyre of pride.
Astarion's kick sent Gale's tome spiraling—centuries of arcane knowledge curling into smoke. "You reek of Mystra's cast-offs and desperation. Does rutting with broken things make you feel divine?"
Astarion’s eyes were filled with a mad light, Raphael’s dreams clinging to his gaze like tar, thick and cloying - the sun-dappled memories of Tav’s laughter in sunlight, his gentle fingers in her hair, how she softened when he called her darling. They curdled when he saw Gale’s casually possessive touch on Tav’s shoulder that morning, as she held herself still and shivering, thirteen tallies marching up to the softness inside her elbow.
“You’re a predator,” he hissed. “She’s half-mad, and you slithered into her tent like a starving rat.”
Gale stood, fists clenched. “She chose me. Something you’ll never understand, leech.”
“Oh, I understand.” Astarion’s laugh was venom. “Mystra tossed you aside, so you cling to the first pretty whore that so much as looks at you. How noble.”
Karlach stepped between them, engine roaring. “Enough!”
But Astarion was already mist through the trees. He was gone for two long nights.
He returned at dusk, pallid and shaking, clawing at his eye as the tadpole birthed visions—Tav asleep in silk sheets. Tav weeping in the tomb. Tav arching beneath Gale, tally marks glowing as she counted down to oblivion.
“Don’t,” Tav breathed as Karlach raised her axe.
“He abandoned us!”
“And now he’s back.” Tav tossed Astarion a health potion. He caught it, his glare wavering.
“This changes nothing,” he muttered.
“Liar,” Tav said softly.
That night, she found him scrubbing ichor from his cheeks in the river.
“Why did you save me?” he asked, not looking up. His whisper stirred the tally scars beneath her collar.
“You know why.”
He laughed bitterly. “Because you’re a fool. Because you think I’m worth saving.”
She knelt beside him. “You are.”
“Even after everything?” His voice cracked. “Even if I’ll make you love me until you’re as hollow as I am?”
Tav took his hand, pressing it to her throat. “I want you to be happy. I want you to be free.”
He recoiled. “You’re sick.”
“Maybe.” She smiled faintly. “But I’m yours.”
The river carried his shuddering breath downstream—another secret for Baldur's Gate to drown in.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Astarion’s new hunger was a living thing.
It started with tremors—subtle twitches in his hands, a restlessness that kept him pacing camp at night. Then came the headaches, the way he’d clutch his skull and hiss as the tadpole burrowed deeper.
“I need… blood,” he rasped one evening, fangs glinting in the firelight. “Not animal. Not monster. A thinking creature.”
The Shadow-Cursed Lands offered no solace. No towns, no merchants—just husks and horrors. Tav met his gaze across the flames.
“Mine,” she said.
“No,” Shadowheart snapped. “We don’t know what the tadpole’s done to him. He could drain you dry.”
“He won’t.” Tav bared her throat. “Will you?”
Astarion’s resolve crumbled. “You’re a fool,” he whispered, but he was already moving.
The first bite was euphoria.
Then agony.
He drank too deep, too fast, the tadpole’s influence eroding his control. Tav’s vision dimmed, her heartbeat stuttering. Another tally. Shadowheart’s scream echoed as the world went black.
She woke to the cleric’s fury. “Are you trying to die?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Tav croaked, touching the fresh mark on her wrist. She shivered with frostbitten veins from Shadowheart’s lick of healing magic.
Shadowheart avoided eye contact. “The Nightsinger’s touch is a tomb.” Shadowheart turned her face to the moon. “For memories. Regrets.” She strode toward Gale’s quarters without another word.
Astarion hunched nearby, his face streaked with her blood. “I didn’t mean to—"
“Yes, you did,” Tav said softly. “And you’ll do it again.”
She waited numbly for the fire to warm her. Cazador's voice coiled through the bloodloss haze: "Each scar a prison, girl. Ten thousand years watching your pretty jailer rut with your corpse. Gale sculpting your skeleton into his godly chariot. Karlach's tentacles breeding tadpoles in your eye sockets."
Tav woke trembling. How many tallies? How many eternities?
Karlach found her carving another mark at dawn. “Stop this,” she pleaded. “Whatever game you’re playing—"
“It’s not a game.” Tav shoved past her. “It’s the only way.”
Shadowheart cornered her later, divine magic crackling. “Astarion’s getting worse. His body’s rejecting the tadpole. If you keep dying, I won’t have the power to save him.”
“Then leave me for the rats” Tav said.
Gale stepped from the shadows, face drawn. “This isn’t living, Tav. It’s obsession. Let me help you.”
“Help?” She laughed. “You used me. Don’t pretend this is about mercy.”
“It’s about love,” he said, reaching for her.
She recoiled. “You don’t know what love is.”
That night, Astarion came to her, trembling. “I can’t stop it,” he whispered. “The hunger, the rage… I’m becoming him.”
“Cazador?”
“Worse.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “Kill me. Before I hurt you again.”
Tav kissed him instead. “Never.”
He broke first, fangs sinking into her cheek. She let him.
A health potion. Another tally.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The tallies burned like brands.
Tav clutched her wrist, the infernal runes twisting under her skin. Fifteen left. She’d spent three already—perhaps to claw back from timelines where Gale ruled as a Weave-drunk tyrant and Karlach’s mindflayer hive consumed the Sword Coast. The failed timelines lingered as phantom limb aches, their lessons devoured by whatever cosmic leviathan fed on her resurrections.
“You’re shaking,” Shadowheart observed, her tone clipped. “Is it the tadpole?”
“No,” Tav lied. “Just the cold.”
Astarion watched her from across the fire, his eyes fever-bright. The mutation had spread—veins blackening his neck, his canines elongating into jagged fangs. He’d bitten Lae’zel that morning, nearly draining her before Tav intervened.
He’s slipping. Again.
It happened in the ruins of Moonrise Towers.
Astarion pinned her against a crumbling wall, his breath ragged. “I can’t—stop,” he gasped, pupils blown wide. “Run. Now.”
She didn’t.
His fangs found her throat, then shoulder, then—
Crunch.
White fire erupted as his claws cracked her skull. She felt him rooting through grey matter, tadpole shrieking as it fled his ravenous chewing.
Oh. Tav’s dying thought held morbid awe. So this is how the story ends.
Cazador’s laughter chased her into the void. “Bravo! Encore!”
Six hundred years as Ascended Astarion’s doll. He dressed her in silks spun from spawns’ hair, fed her lies candied in affection. Each night, his fangs grazed the tally scars. “You love me,” he’d croon into the empty hollow of her skull. She crumbled to dust in his arms, her tallies unspent.
Woke screaming.
“Tav?” Gale’s voice, soft and urgent. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.” His face swam into focus—younger, softer, hungrier. Two days reset.
“You’re safe,” he murmured, healing magic stinking of embalming spices.
Tav recoiled. “Don’t touch me.”
“You’ve been thrashing in your sleep,” he said, magic flickering at his fingertips. “Let me help.”
“I said no.”
His jaw tightened. “You’re not yourself. That vampire has poisoned your mind.”
“Get. Out.”
He raised his hands in surrender, but they were casting a subtle enchantment—a compulsion to stay, to obey. It hit her like a coffin lid slamming shut.
Tav fought the spell, her muscles locking as she tried to reach Astarion’s tent.
“Gale!” she snarled. “Undo this!”
“I can’t,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “Not until you’re… stable.”
“You don’t get to decide that!”
“Someone has to!” he snapped. “You’re killing yourself for a man who’ll devour the world!”
She laughed, bitter. “And you’re any better? You’d chain me here to feed your pride.”
Gale’s compulsion tightened. Tav collapsed, gasping.
“Rest,” he murmured. “I’ll keep you safe.”
Liar, she thought. Monster.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Tav moved like a ghost.No tally marked her wrist that morning. No blood stained her sleeves. She sat too close to the fire, staring blankly until Gale murmured, “Move back, love,” and she obeyed without a word. Astarion watched, his smirk dying as she drifted through the day—a puppet with cut strings.“What’s wrong with her?” Karlach growled, eyeing Gale.“Exhaustion,” he said smoothly. “She needs rest. Peace.”But when night fell, Tav didn’t set up her bedroll. She walked numbly into Gale’s tent. Astarion’s laughter cut through the camp. “How domestic,” he drawled. “Though I’d have pegged you for a better actor, darling.”Tav didn’t flinch.Astarion waited until Gale left her side.“Look at you,” he whispered, slipping into the tent. “His perfect little doll. Where’s the fire? The fight?” He gripped her chin. “Darling.”No reaction.“No,” he breathed. “What did he do?”Magic slithered beneath her skin—Gale's compulsion, a thousand silk threads squeezing her organs. Astarion's snarl shook the tent poles.“You want a puppet show?” he screamed at the night. “I’ll give you a fucking spectacle!”He torched the tent.Flames roared. Tav sat motionless as flames kissed her flesh, savoring the blistering freedom of annihilation. Gale lunged through smoke, but Astarion barred his path—a vampiric Fury with ember-lit eyes.“Let her burn,” he hissed. “It’s what she wants, isn’t it?”“You’re mad!” Gale shouted.“And you’re a monster!” Karlach charged in, ax raised. Shadowheart froze the flames, Wyll dragging Tav free.The party splintered:Karlach, Wyll, and Lae’zel flanked Tav.Gale and Shadowheart stood opposite, spells crackling.Astarion stood alone, ash in his hair, laughing.Raphael found Tav in the smoldering wreckage.“End this,” he crooned. Give Astarion to Cazador. The tadpoles vanish. The loops break. You’ll wake in a world of your choosing—no pain, no him. Freedom. A little trifle of your soul. What does it matter who wears the crown?”Tav’s hands shook. A world without Astarion. Without the weight of every failure. Die free, and he can die betrayed. In the end, they would both be buried together. But the tallies on her arm were hope that her suffering might bring about a better ending.Raphael's grin turned feral. "You'd choose eternal pain over liberation? How delightfully human."Tav spat blood at his feet. "Take your bargain and choke on it."The devil reached out, to touch Gale delicately on his shoulder, then vanished in a sulfurous roar, leaving Tav kneeling in the smoldering ruins of camp. Gale's compulsions still coiled around her limbs like puppet strings, but Astarion's raw scream shattered the spell—"BEHIND YOU!"Shadowheart's curse struck with divine precision, the artifact flaring like a dying star.The world fractured.Memories peeled away like burning skin —Astarion's first startled laugh in sunlight. Gale's spectral hands bruising her thighs. Karlach's engine humming a lullaby that ground into choked silence. No. Tav clawed at the void, fingernails ripping as Shar's shadows devoured decades of shared history."Forgive me," Shadowheart whispered, tears cutting through the ash on her cheeks. "Gale was right—your madness dooms us all."Astarion's enraged snarl died mid-curse.Tav turned to see him frozen mid-lunge, Shadowheart's artifact drinking his memories like wine—Cazador's collar biting his throat. The tomb’s dust-choked air. Tav's blood bitter with salt and despair on his tongue. His crimson eyes met hers, wide with dawning horror as their entwined history unraveled thread by silken thread."Stop!" Tav rasped. "You don’t know what you’re doing""Saving you both," Shadowheart hissed. The artifact pulsed—a hungering void where light went to die. "These ghosts will never haunt you again."Tav moved without thought.The dagger slid between her own ribs like homecoming. Once—puncturing lung, hot copper flooding her mouth. Twice—seeking her frantic heart, missing by inches. On the third strike, her shaking hand found the tender hollow beneath her eye socket, blade scraping bone as Shadowheart's scream tore through the night."Stop her!"But the cleric's magic held fast to Astarion's frozen form, divine power stretched too thin to mend what Tav was so determined to break.As darkness crept in, Tav smiled through bloodied teeth. The tallies on her arm burned—fourteen chances left to rewrite this ending.Let me remember, she begged whatever gods still watched. Let this death be different.The last thing she saw: Astarion's spellbound face smoothing into beautiful emptiness, freed from seven centuries of shared damnation.The first thing she saw: Dawn light through the nautiloid's membrane, brine and blood in her lungs, her lover's name already rotting on unfamiliar lips.