18. NEVERMORE (End)

Everything had an ending. Everyone knew it, but few people ever took the initiative to bring it up halfway through.

More often than not, tacit silence was the preferred response.

Sometimes, Tain was even grateful to the first person in human history to invent it. He thought that person had either been a genius or a born fool—otherwise, how could they have grasped such an art without being taught?

And now, he was going to use it.

The sky and the earth—everything—were no longer blood-red. Silence shrouded all things, while the blue smoke released by the melting, disintegrating aetheric flesh drifted like mist around everyone's ankles. The ground was still muddy, but it had lost that unbearable evil that made one afraid to look at it. Everything here, every single thing, had become ordinary after some moment. Strange as it sounded, it was enough to put one at ease.

"You're not coming with us?" Sarral asked.

Tain smiled and nodded, then cursed himself inwardly. Why aren't you sticking to the plan?

"Why?" the Apothecary pressed urgently. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

He's hit the crucial point, Tain thought.

He turned to glance at his old comrades. The Ravens had reached some kind of consensus: they put on their helmets, shut their mouths, and let him—the naturally caustic one—explain everything.

It was not a good choice, at least not in Tain's own opinion. He knew his terrible temperament perfectly well and had no intention of changing it. Still, at this particular juncture, he restrained himself somewhat.

It left much less mockery and sarcasm in what he said next.

"Only here can we be considered alive," Tain told the Apothecary and his squad with rare patience, his tone stern and controlled. "Unlike you, we have been here for too long—so long that