This story is Darkling's narrative of the battle on the Fold with Alina

As Mal dropped to the ground, a scream erupted from her lips, a scream so loud that it echoed across the whole of Ravka and pierced through my heart. I saw the agony on her face. My thousand years of loneliness had rendered me immune to emotions, yet looking at her grief defied all that. I felt a strange sudden urge to go and wrap my arms around her, console her, caress her, wipe off her tears, do anything to shake off that troubled look from her face. I took a step forward but suddenly she looked up.

"You were right, Darkling. You took everything from me, everything I knew, and everything I loved. But this is not how it ends. Not like this. This dark night will haunt your dreams forever. My face will haunt you like your own shadow as you remember your loss; how I sapped you of the one thing you wanted the most. Power, infinite power. You will be just a weak, lonely man haunting the earth and haunted by the powers that you once had" said she and raised her hands up high, summoning all the light in the world. Her eyes closed and hands up until every single sunbeam had been sucked into her being; she was no longer the Sun Summoner, she had become the Sun herself. And then I realized the meaning of it all. She planned to kill herself while taking away my powers.

"Alina, Please don't. I am your villain, I am your culprit, punish me, not yourself." But before the words had escaped from my mouth, she had connected the bridge between us. A bright stream of light emanated from her hands and engulfed me in its glow. My eyes blinded by the glare, my mind numb, my lips saying "Alina, Please don't." Through that blur, I saw the stream of light expand and form a sphere, more like a ball of fire around us, its glare making us invisible to the ones standing outside it.

Through a dry smile hanging on her lips, she said "Enjoy your eternity, Aleksander" and then a roaring laughter broke out from her lips amid the tears glistening on her face. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, I saw the shadows leave my body. I felt the irony of it all. All my lonely years, I craved power and now that it was leaving me, I didn't care.

"This will kill you, Alina. You need to live. The world needs your light. End my immortal journey. I don't want to be alone again" said I straddling across to her to stop the madness that she was up to.

"This is your end, Aleksander and mine. I don't want to live through eternity. The world doesn't need another Darkling. "She held my palms and the shadows started fleeing my body, filling the sphere of light around us. Suddenly we were covered by blackness, which was a continuous pattern of growing thick from my shadows and thinning out as she took them in. It was a pain I had never known before but what was hurt more was that the girl whom I had come to love after a millennium was dying leaving me behind to suffer. "I won't let her die for my sins" I thought and jerked away my hands from hers. I bent down and lifted a knife fallen near her feet.

"Put this through my heart" I said "but don't give me two deaths. I have died enough for a thousand years" but she didn't blink. She stood still staring at me and then the darkness around us was gone. Vanished into the soul of the one girl I loved. I knew her body won't survive the powers of both darkness and light. It would kill her.

I threw the knife and took her in my arms. She didn't move. I lifted my hand slowly, put it on her collar and invoked all the power left in me to break it apart. It didn't move. Being a living amplifier, I knew I could do it but she had invoked too much power and I had too little time. And then she became limp falling in my arms like a dry leaf. My vision blurred, my eyes stung and I realized that I had tears in my eyes.

I held her tight as if my embrace would stop her soul from leaving her body. She was the only hope for my redemption and I couldn't let her die. I took the knife and hit it hard on her bracelet. It made a deep gash on her wrist and blood oozed out from where the bracelet had been. I won't let you slip away from me, Alina.

As soon as I had broken the fetter, there was a big blast and there was light all round us, just like a few minutes ago. A jolt passed through her body and I was thrown away. As I looked around, there was chaos everywhere. Earth was shaking badly and there were cries all around us. It stopped as abruptly as it had started and the shadows started leaving her body along with the light. Golden and black beams entwined with each other were leaving her body as it lay limp waiting for the powers to leave it together with her soul. But then she flinched. I saw her left hand tremble.

I ran towards her. I ran towards my Alina. It felt great to know that she was alive. I raised her head in my lap and ran my hands through her white hair, my tears falling on her cheeks as I bent my lips to meet hers. Then she opened her eyes but she didn't push me away. She just lay still as I wrapped my hands around her in a tight embrace.

"Why didn't you let me die"she asked in a feeble voice

"I couldn't" said I and hugged her tightly.

"But you lost your powers. That was all you ever wanted" she asked, her eyes searching mine.

"Yes I lost my powers and I didn't realize until today that it was not power that I had wanted. Power was just a balm for my loneliness. Not until I saw you almost die in that orb of light did I realize how much you mean to me."

Suddenly she jerked me and tried to get up, flinching with pain, her eyes searching everywhere and said "Where are the others? You killed them all. No…. We killed them all. We are murderers….. Now I am also a Darkling like you" she stumbled as she said these words and crouched on the ground holding her head in her hands and sobbing through her tears.

I looked around. We were in the woods. How was that possible? We had been fighting in the Fold; there was sand all around us and ….and dead bodies."Aleksander, Aleksander" I heard a faint voice somewhere. It was not Alina's. It sounded familiar. Then the voice grew closer and I turned around to see a Grisha lady in a black kefta. I knew that face too well. It was my mother. "Aleksander, where were you? I heard loud explosions and saw lightening. It was so strong that…" she stopped as she saw my hands full of blood"Why is there blood on your hands? Are you hurt?"

"Who is that girl" she asked as her eyes fell on Alina. "And why is she bleeding"

My mother had stopped calling me Aleksander long ago. Then the truth hit me