Walking down the big streets of Mosa is a torture. My feet hurt, my back hurts, everything on my body seems to plot against me so that the other son of the bitch can regain control of this body.

He has to understand though that this isn’t just his body. It’s our body. We share it. He has to understand that. But no one understands, especially that whore, Eladia. She loves both of us, huh? She loves the one that makes her feel better about herself, and now, I’m not doing a good enough job.

The other Jasih doesn’t talk that much anymore. He spends his time sighing, twisting my guts inside, making me want to puke every other step. Why is he such a prick himself? Can’t he just give up and let go of this body? I would have done the same thing if I could.

The walking gets faster and more intense, meaning we’re probably getting closer. I want to stop and explore this marvelous city, the one I used to hate so much before. Right now, destroyed and empty, it’s just a memory of its glorious past. It’s like us; me and Jasih. And it’s fine. The city’s dark side fits me better after all.

Eladia doesn’t even turn to look at me anymore. Neither Zan nor Silver. Pyro is the only one that keeps checking on me every now and then, and that’s because I’m the cube-bearer. I’m the reason everything came down to this moment. Am I supposed to hate myself for this? I didn’t choose this fate after all.

Still, I keep walking, keep following them, keep hoping that everything will turn out fine.

Jasih...you can’t use the cube to destroy the humans.

Here he is then. Now, of all the times, he’s trying to talk me down. I thought he had given up on me, but it seems he can’t let me do what I want. He’s probably searching for the right words to change my mind.

The interesting thing is that he doesn’t call me Jay anymore. He had to stay in there all this time to understand that I don’t like being called with that name. I’m Jasih, an Esuh of the Two Faces damned it. I’m not another deadbeat that just happened to be at the wrong place the wrong time.

My thoughts are my answer to him. Jasih feels calm, structured right now. He doesn’t say anything else until we take a turn to our left. That’s when I see everyone standing still before a two-storey, big building. It’s the only thing standing in a long radius of devastated buildings.

It’s like the last standing fortress of the world, and we’re heading straight to it. Just the five of us, just some people with some training. We’re a sorry bunch, and they decide to point fingers to me. I’m the one dragging them down, right? Well, shit. I’ll show them.

“Okay, so, we have to be extra careful. These people are mercenaries that are trained to kill. Zan and Silver, stay in the back with Jasih and support him. Start for the City Hall when you see an opening but be careful. We don’t have an exact number of the enemies. Dale and I will jump ahead and open a way for you. If my estimates are correct, they have us outnumbered five-to-one. That means that you have to be extra careful.”

He keeps talking some more and then he nods purposefully. It’s the signal; the battle has started.

Dale and Pyro lunge forward, taking the heat of the first attack. They are as good as I remember them, especially this red-masked man. He moves like he can take all of them by himself, and I don’t doubt that he could if he was appropriately armed. Dale, on the other hand, wearing his green mask, spends a great deal of time fighting and throwing those marble-shaped things on the ground. When they touch it, a tiny, blue cloud appears for a second and then disappears without a sign.

The black-maskers that get close to him suddenly stop and can’t move, almost like they’re frozen. He’s probably using some kind of toxic sedative strong enough to numb their limbs. It’s a different way to fight, less aggressive and risky, but it takes him a good deal of time to prepare the battlefield to fit his purpose. Still, their mission is to open a way for me, the chosen one.

I turn and look at Eladia. I spot her eyes checking on me when she jumps over the half-wall separating us from the battlefield. She has a staff is in her hands, and she’s using it to balance her weight in mid-air. Eladia’s eyes upset me; there’s not even a speckle of love in there, not even pity. For her, I’m now reduced to just the enemy. And all that because I decided to kill the people behind every problem we have encountered all this time, the same people that hunted her for a whole year.

She doesn’t know that I’m doing this for her, to help her stop following false gods and strange theories about Nusae and their artifacts. She doesn’t know that I was going to sacrifice myself so that she could survive the extinction.

Eladia doesn’t know many things about me and still acts like she does. It’s unfair, but love is like that. Unfair and illogical, invisible and unacceptable. She doesn’t know all these things.

So, I have to prove that to her.

I collect my last bits of strength and run ahead of Zan and Silver.

“Hey! Jasih! Stop! Where are you going?” I hear them say.

But I don’t stop, not for a moment. I run ahead, passing through the dead bodies of the black-maskers. There are some who were lucky enough to fight with Eladia, meaning they survived the encounter because she doesn’t dare take a man’s life, but other than that, eight to ten bodies are lying on the ground. Still, if Pyro is right, almost twenty are probably hiding inside the building. They guard this place like an actual fortress.

And that’s weird. We just learned about this place yesterday, and they knew all along? How is that possible? I didn’t know that we were heading to Mosa until...until after we returned from Zeania.

I can’t stop right now, not even to uncover who the traitor is among our sorry bunch. But still, I won’t have to. After I choose Humans over the Phadh, they will all die.

Except her; I will give my life to protect her, the same way his wife, Jasih’s wife, did to protect him.