But then I saw it.
The skin was healing.
Right in front of me.
----- ?⋅?⋅? -----
We’d been drifting through the countryside like ghosts. Slipping through the cracks of the world. Days lost their names. Trees gave way to open fields. The stars felt heavy and close, and every night grew colder, like the sky was preparing to freeze over. My body moved, but my mind was somewhere else. It was back in that cave, and I could still feel the quake tearing through me. That sudden surge, that raw power that ripped out of me like it had been waiting. Like it had a mind of its own.
I should’ve drowned down there.
But I didn’t.
And somehow, that’s what scared me. Since then, I’d been practicing, trying to understand whatever the thing inside me was. Aran called it a curse, Will called it a gift, and I didn’t know what to call it. But that raw power, the quake, or the surge, it hadn’t come back. Maybe that was a good thing, because letting go like that had felt… dangerous. Like I was opening a door I wasn’t sure I could close again.
A warm breeze swept across the road, stirring the tall grass in slow, sleepy waves. I blinked up at the sky, at the way the light spilled through thick, dark clouds, smothering everything in gray. We were finally moving again. Putting distance behind us. Getting closer to the Kingdom of Alevé. Closer to Licia.
Naturally, a storm had to roll in and slow us down.
But Iwouldsee her again.
She wasn’t dead.
The seer had said that she was trapped, in a place with golden buildings, a serpent, and paintings. And I couldn’t help but wonder what being a seer really meant. How did she know what she knew?
Licia used to say that the gods whispered to her. She’d told me that she heard my voice the night I disappeared, said she followed it through the dark.
What else could she do?
What else couldI?
I was so caught up in my thoughts I hadn’t even noticed how quiet it had gotten. At first, I thought it was just us, lost in our own heads. But then I realized the world had gone quiet too. A small cluster of houses emerged ahead, and it should have been a comfort. Maybe I’d finally dare to sleep at an inn again.
I had been sleeping better with the moon drops.
No more incidents.
And my back was starting to ache from curling up on floors in some of the less furnished windsheds. A real bed felt like a distant dream. Like the one at Iria’s. For a while, her guest room had felt like a prison—which was unfair, because I supposeIwas the prison. But still, sometimes, I wished we’d never left. Especially after walking for hours and hours.
The closer we got to the town, the worse it felt.
“Something’s wrong,” I said.
The clouds hung heavy above us, darker with every step. The fields we passed were dead and brittle, scorched patches of earth stretching all the way to the treeline. No workers. No carts. No animals.
Just silence.
Will’s shoulders tensed as he looked up. “Storm’s coming. We need shelter.”
I brushed a single raindrop from my cheek. “We should’ve seen someone by now.”
Aran shifted beside me, his hand resting near the hilt of his knife. “Maybe they’re all at the inn,” he muttered.
Will nodded toward the empty fields. “Then where are the farmers?”
We walked deeper into the town, wind dragging dust across the road. The streets lay silent. Homes blackened. Roofs caved in. And ash drifted through dead gardens like dry snow.
“No one’s been here in a long time,” I said, my voice barely rising above the wind.
