Thing was, Zekia had broken a long time ago. Wesley had seen to that.

He felt the moment her magic vanished into the air, like those powers were as connected to him as they were to his little sister.

He felt the shame of her having to make that sacrifice because of something he had started.

Tavia squeezed the mirror doll tight enough in her shaking hands that Dante Ashwood couldn’t even make the noise of a scream.

He just mimed the action: the gasping and the grasping.

The snarl as his demons disappeared from the world.

Wesley held out his hand for the doll.

Tavia gave it to him without question, because of all people, Tavia knew Wesley best, and she knew that this was something he had to do.

The mirror doll felt light as air in his hands.

Wesley twisted its arm, hard enough that the corpse-like creature cried out, its deathly mouth twisting in pain.

Ashwood mirrored the noise and his arm flung behind his back, bone jutting from the shadows.

“You do not want to do this,” Ashwood wheezed.

Wesley’s magic laughed beneath his skin.

Yes, it said. Yes, we do.

There were many things Wesley didn’t want, like to watch Tavia bleed out on the side of the bridge. That was still too real, still too much to even think about. And he didn’t want to have shadow demons rip at his flesh again. Or have his sister sacrifice her magic to save him. He didn’t want his city destroyed.

But if there was one thing Wesley did want, then it was to kill Dante Ashwood.

Tavia pulled a small syringe from her pocket.

“I have an idea on how we can finish this,” she said to him.

“What?” Wesley asked.

“This is time serum,” she said, holding up the syringe. “Nolan tried to sell it to me once, saying it could undo the years for a while. Like I was some old crone.”

Of course.

Magic to undo a person, turning back time on their body. Making them young again, for few hours or even a day, erasing all that they were, for what they used to be.

They couldn’t kill this version of the Kingpin, with all his magic and darkness, but maybe they could kill another, earlier, version.

“You’re brilliant,” Wesley said.

Tavia frowned. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

“Let me do it.”

Wesley had to be the one to end this and they both knew it.

Tavia handed him the serum.

Wesley looked down at it.

At his cuff links, dirt-smeared and crooked. To the scars they sat misshapen atop. The scars he had gotten from his mother, who had sacrificed everything she had to ensure he would not fulfill some ominous future.

And then Wesley heard it, somewhere in the back of his mind, a memory turning to a song.

A prophecy cooing in his ear like a lullaby.