The Head and the Blade

There’s a rooftop in the Verge where the city forgets how to breathe. No towers. No signals. Just concrete veined with ivy and broken glass. I stood there as the moon carved its way through the clouds, silver and indifferent.

I’d carved a circle into the rooftop months ago, back when I first felt Selvetarm’s echo stir in the static. Tonight, I bled into it for the last time.

The blade was obsidian—an old relic Echo found buried in a forgotten shrine beneath the Grid. I’d etched Eilistraee’s glyphs into the hilt with silver wire and my own blood. The edge caught moonlight but didn’t reflect it. It absorbed it like a memory.

I drew it across my palm, slow and steady. The pain was sharp, real. More honest than most things in my life.

“I don’t ask for mercy,” I whispered. “Only for clarity.”

The wind picked up, brushing my coat back like a hand on my shoulder. Not warmth. But presence.

I knelt at the center of the circle, blood dripping into the cracks. Around me, the runes flickered awake—Low Drow spirals woven through shamanic glyphs, looping together in the language only grief and defiance understand.

“I was once a vessel,” I said. “But tonight, I choose to be the blade.”

The world blurred. Somewhere between breath and thought, I felt her.

Not Selvetarm.

Her.

Eilistraee. Dancer in the dark. Moonlight on a forgotten path. No voice, no shape. Just a sense of being seen. Not judged.

I closed my eyes. Let the tears fall.

“A thousand ways to lose your head,” I said softly, “and I’ve tried most of them.”

The circle flared white.

The Dullahan didn’t take my head. I had given it away. Now I was here to take it back.

The ritual bridge Echo gave me was a patchwork node stitched from an old commlink shell, memory crystal, and too many prayers. It was bound to a burner deck and wired to the obsidian blade. The code was unstable—half symbol, half instinct—but it would hold.

I jacked in through the pulse line on my wrist and let the world slip sideways. The space between mind and Matrix shivered. The city fell away, and I entered the threshold.

It wasn’t quite the Matrix. Wasn’t quite the astral plane either. It was something between—a bleeding edge where data ghosted against magic and meaning had shape. Buildings rose like ribs from forgotten dreams. The skyline looped in on itself, recursive and twitching, flickering between ruined skyscrapers and long-dead temples.

At the center of the dreamscape stood a tower made of memory.

It wore the architecture of everything I tried to forget: the old academy where I learned to bind spirits. The alley where Selvetarm first whispered. The Iron Snakes’ hideout. The cathedral crypt. All of it braided together into a monument of fractured identity.

The sky above was white noise. The air tasted like old spells and burned metal.

I stepped forward.

Somewhere beneath my feet, the echo of a voice whispered:

“Welcome home, Isilme.”

The world breathed once—and it was standing before me.

The Dullahan.

It emerged from the base of the tower like it had always been there, glitching and flickering through forms—man, woman, child, blank. Then me. The shape of my back, the slant of my jaw, the way I used to walk when I didn’t flinch at ghosts.

Then the helmet slid into place. Cracked. Black. Radiating nothing.

I drew the obsidian blade. It sang with silence.

The Dullahan didn’t attack. It watched. When it spoke, it used my voice. Not perfectly. Not anymore. But close enough to make my skin crawl.

“You gave me shape,” it said.

“No,” I said. “I gave you pain. Someone else gave you purpose.”

The skyline folded in on itself. We stood in the center of a spiral city, mirrored windows flashing fragments of my worst nights. Screams I’d silenced. Names I’d forgotten. Echo’s eyes. Halo’s hands.

The Dullahan moved like lightning and regret—fast, smooth, familiar. We clashed. Blade to nothing. Spell to glitch. My obsidian edge cut across its chest, and it bled code and silver light.

But it didn’t fall. It laughed in a chorus of my voices.

“You keep trying to kill what you never buried.”

I slashed again, harder. It split and reformed, glitching through my faces—Isilme at the academy, Valkyrie in the alley, the girl on the rooftop praying to stars no longer listening.

“You were once a weapon,” it said.

I was panting now. Worn. My blade was steady, but my soul wasn’t.

“What makes you think,” it said, stepping forward, “you’re not still mine?”

The helmet opened. Inside was nothing. Not shadow. Not fire. Just absence. My reflection gone, and I understood. It wasn’t trying to kill me. It was trying to become me.

“You don’t wear my face,” I whispered. “You wear my fear.”

I lowered the blade.

The Dullahan paused. Glitched. Wavered.

“I’m not your shape,” I said. “I’m your end.”

I stepped forward. Opened my arms, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t fight.

The Dullahan surged forward. I embraced it.

The impact hit like a thousand broken mirrors. But I didn’t shatter. I refused.

The light that exploded from the circle wasn’t fire. It was memory, my memory. Not stolen. Not archived, but chosen.

The helm cracked. The code unraveled. And the echo fell silent.

I stood alone in the fading tower, surrounded by quiet. The blade in my hand had dulled. But my name—my name—was mine again.

The world didn’t rush back. It leaked in—slow, heavy, uncertain.

I came to on the rooftop where it began, knees curled beneath me, coat damp with dew. The sky was a bruised gray, morning not yet brave enough to show its face. My hand still gripped the obsidian blade. It didn’t hum anymore. It just… existed. Like me.

I couldn’t move right away. Every breath felt like it had to claw its way through ash. I stared at the circle, now nothing more than faint carvings and drying blood, and tried to remember what it felt like to be whole. But wholeness wasn’t the prize. Wholeness was a lie.

What I’d claimed was something more honest: the right to bear the fractures without being defined by them.

I touched my chest. My heart still beat. Not because I’d fought to survive—but because I’d stopped fighting the part of me that wanted to.

The echo was gone. The helm shattered. But the scars remained—and that was right. That was mine.

He’s wearing your fear, I had said. But maybe I needed to admit how long I had worn it, too. I’d wrapped myself in myth, in the idea that Valkyrie was a shield and Isilme was the wound. In order to live, I had to kill her.

But the truth? The truth was she never died. She just got tired of not being believed in.

I stood slowly, the blade hanging limp at my side. Echo would be waiting. There were things to clean up, loose threads to burn. But for now, I let the silence linger. Not the kind of silence that haunts, but the kind that heals.

When I turned to leave the circle, I left the blade behind.

There may be a thousand ways to lose your head, but I only needed one to find it again.