They didn't speak at first. Isolde reeled from two close encounters in as many days.
Not until the silence settled again—less like peace, more like a stunned hush after thunder.
Isolde sank onto a moss-covered boulder at the edge of the clearing, her hands braced against her knees. Her breath had steadied, but only just. The dark blood from the creature stained the cuff of her sleeve, still wet, still foul. She struggled to wipe the evidence from her sleeve until finally just deciding to cut the small patch of offending fabric away. Nobody wanted to be so close to something to tainted, so unnatural.
Alaric stood a few feet away, watching the trees like they might open again.
"They're not beasts," she said at last. "They're not natural, either. I have a theory but.. I'm worried if saying it aloud will give it life."
"No. But say it anyway."
"They move like something born—but they don't bleed right. Don't fight right."
Alaric turned, slowly. "Because they're not alive in the way we understand it."
She looked up at him. "Then what do you think they are?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. But they know me."
That landed like a dropped stone in her chest.
Isolde reached for her water flask, sipped, then held it in her lap. The moss was damp beneath her, grounding her, but her thoughts spun too fast to anchor.
"Why did it run?" she asked softly. "It could've killed me if you hadn't stepped in. It should've tried again."
"It didn't want me to see it," Alaric said. "Or maybe… it didn't want to remember what I've done."
Isolde frowned. "You said it remembered you. You think you've fought one before?"
"I think I've fought many." His voice was flat. Distant. "Even if I can't recall when."
That chilled her.
She stared down at her flask, thumb tracing the edge of the cap, then asked—carefully, gently, without accusation:
"Where do you come from, Alaric?"
His gaze flicked to her, unreadable. "Now?"
"No. Before. Before the wandering. Before the curse. Did you have a home?"
A pause.
Then: "Yes."
"Do you remember it?"
He hesitated. Then walked over, crouched near her but didn't sit.
"There was a castle. Built into stone. Cold halls. Echoes everywhere. Always someone watching. Always someone judging."
Isolde looked up. "Royal?"
He gave a dry laugh. "Once."
"Your family…?"
"Still alive, last I knew. But I haven't seen them in a long time."
"Why?"
Alaric looked at her then. Really looked.
"Because when I stopped dying, they stopped knowing what to do with me."
That hit her harder than she expected.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He shook his head. "They weren't cruel. Just... afraid. I became a reminder of everything they couldn't control."
She watched him, her healer's instinct parsing the tension in his hands, the stiffness in his shoulders, the weight in his silence.
"What was your family name?" she asked quietly.
His lips pressed into a tight line.
"I don't say it," he answered. "Not anymore."
"Why?"
"Because saying it means I'm still bound to them. And I let that thread go a long time ago."
Isolde nodded slowly. She understood threads. The ones you cut. The ones that refuse to sever. The ones that loop back in dreams and dig into your ribs when you think you've finally healed.
"Then I won't ask again," she said.
A breeze rustled through the trees.
Alaric finally sat on the moss beside her, close but not touching. His presence grounded her better than any stone ever could.
"I'll tell you the name that matters," he murmured, not looking at her. "The one I heard before I woke up in your woods."
She turned toward him.
He looked at her then. Eyes pale as stormlight.
"Yours."
Isolde blinked.
For a moment, she wasn't sitting on damp moss or clutching a flask of water. She was suspended—caught in the weight of his gaze and the truth layered inside it.
"Mine?" she echoed softly.
Alaric didn't look away.
"It was a whisper," he said. "Not a sound, exactly. More like a… knowing."
His voice dropped, roughened by the gravel of memory. "I've died before. Not always with pain. But always with silence at the end. And this time, before I woke for the last time—before I even remembered my own name—yours was there."
Isolde's throat felt too tight to speak.
"You said it," he added. "In the dream. Or maybe it was me. Maybe I've been saying it for lifetimes."
She stared at him. "That's not possible."
He smiled faintly. "Neither is surviving fire that should have turned my bones to ash. Or waking with no wounds where there should be scars."
She turned her face away, just slightly, trying to collect herself—but he saw the way her shoulders drew in. The way her hands curled tightly in her lap.
He didn't reach for her. Instead he opened his shirt and tore off the bandage, underneath was clear unmarred skin. No evidence of the injury she'd treated the night before at all.
But he did speak—quietly, without force.
"I don't want to frighten you."
"You don't," she said immediately, too fast. Then again, slower: "You don't. That's the part that scares me."
At that, his brow knit. "What do you mean?"
"I mean…" She trailed off, brow furrowed. "Whatever this is between us—it's too familiar. Too easy. I should feel wary. Suspicious. But instead I feel like…"
Her voice caught.
"Like I've already missed you once," she whispered. "And I don't want to do it again."
The breeze shifted. Pine and old ash on the wind. A raven called somewhere high above, and the forest watched with breath held tight.
Alaric's voice, when it came, was barely more than a breath.
"You haven't."
Isolde's eyes met his.
He lifted a hand—not to touch, not quite—but close. Close enough to feel the warmth between them. "I'm here."
And for the first time, she reached back. Just two fingers brushing his.
They didn't hold. They didn't grasp.
But in that soft, sacred touch, something pulsed.
Ancient.Familiar.Unbroken.
Their fingers parted, slowly. No promises. No vows. Just a quiet understanding sealed without need for words.
Isolde stood first.
She didn't speak as she adjusted the strap of her satchel or turned toward the path ahead. She just nodded once—an invitation, not a command.
Alaric rose and followed.
They walked in silence.
But it was a different kind of silence than before. Not heavy with fear, not frayed by unspoken truths. It was softer now. Settled.
Still, the forest changed around them.
The moss beneath their boots grew thicker, unnaturally green despite the season. The leaves didn't rustle the way they had before. The air hung low, damp, and just a little too still.
Isolde slowed.
"Smell that?" she asked.
Alaric nodded. "Salt. And stone."
"We're close," she murmured.
But even as she said it, she could feel the land protesting. Not with sound, but with that subtle shift of wrongness—like stepping onto a staircase and expecting one more step than was there.
The trees ahead grew farther apart, revealing a faint rise in the earth, and beyond it—the edge of a crumbling stone den built into the hillside. Vines grew thick around the entrance, but several had been torn away, exposing fresh claw marks in the old wood frame.
Isolde stopped just before the clearing.
A raven burst from the upper branch of a gnarled pine and shrieked once, harsh and sudden, before wheeling into the clouds.
Alaric's hand hovered near the hilt of his blade.
"I feel it too," he said before she could ask.
Isolde nodded once, then took a slow, centring breath.
"I need to see the child," she said. "Before whatever this is takes him too."
Alaric's voice was steady. "You won't go alone."
She gave him a look—half challenge, half gratitude.
And then together, they crossed the last line of trees and stepped into the shadow of the den.