Silence lingered in the air. It was a painful silence. The kind of silence that made Cirilla bite her lip and Neo twist his ring until a red mark had formed across his middle finger.

“This is bull-“

“Silas!” Cirilla snapped, cutting short the profanity that she never liked but always heard from her brother’s mouth. The brown-eyed boy returned a glare. Looking round at all of the faces now staring at him, a deep sense of disbelief bubbled to the surface in the shape of the anger that his friends, all too well, knew he was prone to.

“No! You are all sitting around waiting for some miracle to happen. But guess what? It’s not going to happen. We need to do something!”

Neo sighed and returned to playing with his ring whilst Cirilla rested back against the white haired Lyra whose eyes were peacefully closed as if she were trying to block out everyone in that room. Despite that, she opened one eye as Silas grabbed hold of his sword and swung it at Ember.

Ember was sitting quietly in the corner, watching carefully at the events unfolding before her. She reached a tall 5’8 yet her presence was unnoticeable; it was how she liked it. Her hair, darker than the sky at the witching hour of the blackest nights, helped to hide her in the shadowed room, yet when when she was noticed, her grey eyes gifted a piercing, soulless look in return.

The point of the blade stopped only an inch away from her face, slicing a couple of strands of hair as it cut through the air. She didn’t flinch.

“You’re supposed to be some genius right?” He spat.

“Being smart doesn’t make her a _god_,” the observant Lyra said in defence of the blood of her own, understanding well herself how damaging the weight of pressure can be.

“And yet,” Silas continued, ignoring the deathly stares he was receiving from Ciri, “Ember is the one that always has a plan. That always has a solution. And..” He was spluttering now, working himself up but his eyes never left the grey of immovable girl in front. “And.. she’s just _sat_ here. Doing _nothing_.”

The silence returned with the challenging stare that Silas held against the quiet Ember: the warrior of the night, the girl who death had sided with, the _Ember_ that could start an inferno. Her face remained unchanged and unreadable. Neo had looked up from his ring once more, rounded eyes flickering between his two friends in a state of gross anticipation.

Before the boy had time to blink, Ember had knocked the sword sideways with the metal of her dagger clanking against the sharpened blade. It had moved only fractionally before Silas was able to regain control, not enough ordinarily for a person to be able to escape the situation but Ember wasn’t ordinary.

She ducked swiftly under the steel and reappeared at the scowling figure’s side with a dagger to his neck and her free hand twisting his wrist hard enough so that he dropped his weapon with a groan.

“Come the season of life, death will rain down upon all of us. This time, _Silas_, there is no winning.”

There was a look in Ember’s face that Silas had not seen before, that none of them had. It was a look of defeat.

Her tone was cool but bitter. Her sister, Lyra, could even hear what she thought was a sadness in it. It sounded strange and unfamiliar. Yet her words were convincing.

“Once the flowers boom, we’ll be doomed.”

This time, maybe there really was no winning.