They regrouped at the foot of the burnt hill, where the air was thin and the world looked ruined in every direction.
Emma couldn't walk.
The moment they stopped running, her legs gave out. No cry. No warning. Just dropped—like something inside her had switched off.
Her skin was slick with sweat. Her veins shimmered faintly beneath it, thin traces of silver crawling beneath the surface like something alive.
"They said it happens," Esther murmured, crouched beside her. "When someone without a fully formed chain taps too far into their flux."
Nobody asked how Emma had used any.
Nobody asked why she had to.
Veron stood nearby, silent. Not unreadable— just… hollow. His posture didn't carry weight anymore. His spark was still there, but dimmed. Like he wasn't sure if striking again was worth it.
So Thierry carried her.
Of course he did.
No chain, not even any sword skills either. But sure, break your back carrying her. One bastard collapsing, another going mute. It's always me, huh?
She sagged across his back, burning hot. Her breath was shallow. Delirium whispered out of her mouth in half-words and heat. He adjusted her grip higher, ignoring the jolt in his shoulder.
No one else is gonna do it, right?
They climbed.
The slope was steep and choked in black dust. Each step sank into ash, brittle and crumbling. Once, Thierry's foot punched through the crust and slid into freezing sludge below. It climbed to his shin and clung.
He swore under his breath, yanked it free, and trudged on. Gods. Mud, ash maybe even heatstroke. Sure, let's get buried for good measure.
The trees around them were all dead things—twisted, skeletal giants that looked ancient even in death. Their bark was blackened, stripped by fire and time, crooked limbs stretched skyward like accusations.
Fog wrapped the hill like a veil. It didn't shift nor did it break. Just hung there, breathing with them.
"Can you see through it?" Thierry asked.
Veron stopped ahead, squinting into the pale grey.
"I thought I could," he muttered. "But I can't even peer into it."
His voice was low and strangely soft, like saying it out loud made it worse.
They reached the top.
The summit had no vegetation. No roots nor grass. Just burnt rock and the somber grey sky, the soil flaking like charred parchment. The hill had been bled out, scorched to its bones.
Thierry laid Emma down on a flattish patch of ground. Her lips were cracked. Her breath rattled like something was stuck between her lungs and the world.
Veron sat nearby, knees drawn to his chest. Esther stood with her back to the wind, her spear still clean somehow.
There was no camp, not even fire. Just stillness and the distant sound of nothing.
Awkward didn't begin to cover it. Serious was too small a word. They didn't talk because they couldn't think of a reason to break the silence.
Thierry glanced at the tallest tree near the ridge—a massive husk of bark and shadow, still standing despite the burn. Taller than anything nearby.
He turned, made to walk toward it—then stopped.
He heard voices behind him.
"She'll live," Esther was saying. "If she doesn't burn out."
"Just what type of prodigy is she?" Veron asked, his voice quieter than usual. "No training. No chain. Just… flux, like it acknowledges her."
"She's not fractured," Esther replied. "That's all I care about."
Silence stretched.
Veron broke the silence after a pause, voice low. "Do you think he'll keep going?"
Thierry didn't turn. He didn't need to, Esther's answer came clear.
"Thierry maybe useless now. But he has potential, you should know better than anyone."
He huffed once through his nose. Don't say that like you know me.
He climbed.
The tree's bark cracked under his hands, but it held. He climbed slow—Emma resting across his back again, heat pulsing through his spine—and pulled himself onto a wide, blackened limb halfway up.
Here, the fog thinned.
The forest unfolded in fragments. A broken map beneath a grey sky.
To the east, the woods were charred like here, but the trees stood tall—unnatural stillness, upright and resolute. Their bark bore scorch marks, but not weakness. Not drained. They felt... tense as if waiting.
To the west, the land dipped. The trees were darker, slicker, their trunks curving ever so slightly inward like gravity had changed direction. Between two narrow spires, he saw it—a faint shimmer. Water? The reflection of something buried?
A lake?
To the south, past the fog, he saw life.
Verdant and dense, each tree rising like a pillar, canopy thick with untouched green. No fire had kissed it. No ash lingering in the air. It was distant, but it was there.
To the north, nothing grew. Just plains of ash and shattered stone, burned flat under some past cataclysm. But at its farthest edge, rising like a nail from the horizon—a monument. Not a person. Not a beast. A shape too distant to name, but not forgotten. Its silhouette pressed down on the land around it like a thumb into wet cloth.
And at the centre, the forest sank.
It wasn't a crater, not exactly—more like the ground had given way in slow motion. The trees tilted inward, their limbs caught in descent. Fog clung thicker here. That was where the forest bled.
Scattered across everything were ruins—fragments of gates, broken altars, stone pathways that led to nothing. Bones of another age, now half-swallowed by bark and ash.
Around the forest, there was nothing. Just the endless grey veil obscuring vision and blocking the outside world from view.
Thierry stared.
None of it made sense. Not the fog. Not the forest. Not Emma.
Why did I come here?
The wind tugged at his sleeves. Emma's weight pressed into him. Her skin burned. He could feel her heartbeat—fast and light, like wings beating against glass.
You came to be great. So don't be the bastard who dies first.
But even that rang hollow now.
He leaned back against the tree, sweat cooling against his skin. The fog began to rise again, curling around his legs, up his arms.
Sleep pulled at him like tide.
His vision blurred.
You came to be more than forgotten.
But as his eyes drifted shut, his last thought wasn't comfort. It was just a whisper, barely a breath:
Bastard. Why'd you come here at all?