Page 110

She looks past me, toward the red-soaked horizon, where the towers in the valley still smolder in the distance. Not flames. Just heat. Just memory. This whole world feels like it was set on fire and then abandoned. Even the shadows here rot more slowly.

Then she moves. Shoulders squaring. Eyes forward again.

“I’m going home,” she says. No fear. No plea. Just certainty.

I nod once.

“Then I’ll help you.”

Everything about this place feels like a world that stopped growing, like it hit the ceiling of its own story and got left behind when the gods moved on.

Luna doesn’t care. She walks anyway, straight into it, like direction is just a suggestion she doesn’t have time for. Her steps are too fast for her injuries, shoulders tight, jaw lockedlike she’s holding a scream behind her teeth. Her back is a wall. No glance at me. No word spared. Just the sound of her boots crunching through the patchy, vein-thin grass that glows the wrong color when we walk across it.

I trail behind her because I don’t trust this place not to shift when we’re not looking. The landscape doesn’t feel set. The trees are too tall, their roots exposed and coiled like something mid-crawl. Their bark peels in long wet strips, revealing layers of meat-colored wood beneath that twitch slightly in the wind. That is, when there’s wind. Mostly, the air just hangs. Warm. Stagnant. Full of the copper tang of something old and breathing underfoot.

We pass a grove of trees where the branches have teeth. Not metaphorically. Actual, calcified ridges along the bark, long as fingers and sharp enough to catch the edge of her sleeve when she moves too close. She rips free without slowing. The fabric tears, and she doesn’t even look down. Her arms are already littered with scratches and moss-colored bruises, some fresh, some turning a deep, sick yellow. Whatever this place is, it doesn’t heal like the real world. Or maybe it doesn’t let you.

I glance behind us out of habit, just to make sure the path hasn’t vanished. It hasn’t, but it isn’t the same either. The trees seem taller now. The roots are deeper. The field we came from, where Brashir’s pet collapsed and bled into the dirt, is gone. Or maybe it was never there to begin with. Maybe this place rearranges itself every time we stop paying attention. Which means the only thing keeping us moving is her.

I pick up my pace until I’m beside her, not blocking, just there, and she scowls but doesn’t say anything. Her hand brushes against her thigh like she’s reaching for a weapon she doesn’t have anymore. The absence of her blade is obvious now. She walks like someone half-dressed, her body used to a weightthat’s gone. Her fingers twitch, and I wonder if she even notices how often she flexes them.

The hill rises in front of us, steep and gnarled, the stone a color I don’t have a name for. Something between rust and dried blood, flecked with silver veins that glow faintly every few seconds, like a pulse. At the summit, I can see the curve of a broken tree, split down the center and hollowed out like something massive used it for a coffin.

The incline is slippery. Not mud, exactly, but something slick that shifts underfoot, a mix of moss and rot and whatever this world uses for soil. I follow her, keeping a few paces behind because she’s not ready for anything else. Her shoulders rise and fall with each breath, too sharp to be tired. She’s running on rage. She’s going to crash eventually, and when she does, this place is going to eat her alive.

At the top of the ridge, we pause.

The world opens below us like a wound. Fields of jagged stone stretch in uneven slabs, cracked open like shattered teeth. Spires jut from the landscape at random, crooked and leaning, some draped with vines that look more like intestines than plants. There are lights in the distance. Not firelight. Something colder. Something that flickers too fast, like it's trying to decide whether to be real.

Luna stares out over the expanse, her expression unreadable.

I move to her side, slow, careful, watching the way her eyes narrow slightly as she takes it in. The wind moves at this height. Just a little. Enough to stir her hair and carry the scent of something burning far off, like oil and bones smoldering in a furnace no one’s watching.

She doesn’t speak, so I do.

“There’s no sun.”

She doesn’t respond.

“No stars either,” I add, quieter this time. “Which means there’s no way to tell direction. If this place has one.”

I exhale through my nose and drop into a crouch, running my fingers along the stone underfoot. It’s warm. Not from sunlight, but something deeper. Alive. Almost like the hill is breathing under the surface. I press my palm flat against it and wait. There’s a rhythm there. Faint. Inconsistent. Like a heartbeat that doesn’t know who it belongs to.

“You know, we could pick the wrong direction and never come back, right? This place doesn’t care if we get lost.”

Still nothing. Her eyes are locked on the horizon, on the glow where the towers bleed light through the fog. Her hands are clenched now. I can see the pulse in her throat. She’s furious. Not just with this place. With everything. With Brashir. With the gods. With me. Probably more with me than anyone.

“Luna,” I say, not sharp, just steady, and her head snaps toward me.

She looks at me like she’s seconds from punching something. Me, probably. I see it in her jaw, in the way her mouth twitches before she speaks.

“I’m not stuck here.”

I nod, slowly. “Didn’t say you were.”

“You’re not part of this. You don’t have to follow me.”

“I know.”