3.

"Lyra, Lyra, Lyra." A familiar voice called to her from the shadows. "You shouldn't have run. He's pissed." A pair of immaculate designer shoes revealed themselves from shrouded darkness. A handsome young man stepped into the clearing just a few feet shy of Lyra and the looming mountain at her back.

"Kai." Lyra stated. "Where's your master, Dog."

"How rude." Kai chuckled darkly, observing the wounded creature before him.

To him Lyra appeared deadly calm, if a little pale, despite the fact she was on the verge of bleeding out. Her face cold to him as if they had not grown up together, more akin to brother and sister then the inseparable childhood friends they had been once.

Scratched up and looking like hell, Lyra looked no better than a vagabond and yet still, she was a vision to all who looked upon her and stared into her clear but frozen gaze. Her eyes held within them the very night sky as they swirled with stars trapped in their infinite depths.

Her dark hair whipped loosely about her face in the stirring winds as the rain clouds grew darker above their heads and thunder clapped ever closer still

Her dark hair whipped loosely about her face in the stirring winds as the rain clouds grew darker above their heads and thunder clapped ever closer still.

Kai had to admit, even knowing Lyra through the passing centuries she never failed to surprise him. After all she had managed to evade them for seven days and tonight was the peak of the eighth night. They had gotten lucky when they wounded her so severely earlier when she had become the slightest bit sluggish from exhaustion. Kai knew it was dumb luck but he wasn't about to admit it, most especially to Lyra herself. He would never give her the credit.

"Annoying."

He murmured only for himself to hear. She had sincerely tried his every last ounce of patience childhood friend's be damned. They were nothing to each other now. If anyone were to be blamed for that Kai supposed it would be Rei. But how could he resent him... no, never him. Lyra was disposable to Kai now. He had Rei.

"Come with us Lyra, we'll get you patched up. You can see Rei again." Kai's voice was gentle. It sounded like golden childhood memories immortalized and familiarity only the two of them could share and understand between siblings.

Lyra stood unmoved. There hadn't been even the slightest show of hesitation or a flicker of emotion over her marble features. Maybe there might have been- if she didn't know it was Kai's voice screaming at her from the forest earlier that she had nowhere to run.

The wind shifted suddenly and like a switch the atmosphere pressed upon them more heavily than before as rain began to pelt bullets from the sky. A flash of lightning struck the mountain peak behind Lyra and danced erratically for the briefest of moments but lingered burnt into their retina's still.

Lyra felt something shift behind her, barely perceptible, hardly noticed if she wasn't so used to it. If she didn't know it so well.

On reflex by instinct she released an explosive high kicked to the space behind her. Her leg a solid piece of steel blurred to an afterimage as her body turned to follow through with the deadly kick. Lyra's strength could shatter boulders, cut steel, and halve mountains, she was a masterpiece of a martial artist and warrior and was not to be taken lightly for her thin frame.

Her kick, her bone disintegrating, earth leveling, high speed unstoppable kick was caught by a large, familiar palm forged from the same stuff she was. Her only match and equal. Her fiancé.

"Rei."

His cold, emotionless eyes stared deeply into hers, burning into Lyra's as they scorched a path directly into her very soul like they had so many times before. And then, as if to finish her off, he decimated her even more as he smiled.

"...Lyra." He breathed.