I don’t say any of that.
Instead, I watch him sharpen blades meant for monsters, and I accept the truth I’ve been avoiding since the shrine.
I don’t want to separate. Don’t want to run in different directions.
Don’t want to survive this hunt alone even if survival alone would be easier.
The space beside him has become necessary in ways that have nothing to do with tactics.
EIGHTEEN
SOREIA
The dream comes that night.
Not death this time. Not the usual visions of endings and silence.
I wake gasping, the Anchor crackling at my fingertips, reaching for a threat that isn’t there.
Kaster crouches beside me. Close. His hand hovers near my shoulder—not touching, but ready.
“Nightmare?”
“Different.” I force my breathing to slow. Force the magic to subside. “Not warning. Pressure.”
“Pressure toward what?”
I don’t answer. Don’t know how to explain the sensation of being pushed toward a cliff I can’t see.
His hand lands on my shoulder. Brief. Steadying.
The contact sends heat racing through my nervous system. Not sexual. Not exactly. More like recognition—my body acknowledging his presence as significant in ways my mind hasn’t fully processed.
“The dreams are changing.” I say it quietly, a confession meant for darkness. “They used to show me death. Now they show me...” I trail off.
“Show you what?”
You. The word almost escapes. I catch it at the last moment.
“An ending I don’t understand yet.”
He accepts this without pressing further. His hand remains on my shoulder a moment longer—steadying, stabilizing—before withdrawing.
“Sleep. I’ll watch.”
“You watched last night.”
“And I’ll watch tonight. And tomorrow.” His eyes gleam in the darkness, reflecting light that shouldn’t exist. “Until the dreams show you their meaning, I’ll make sure nothing interrupts them.”
The declaration shouldn’t comfort me. Shouldn’t make the pressure behind my eyes ease slightly.
It does anyway.
I close my eyes and let the darkness take me.
Dawn arrives gray and cold,ice groaning its greeting to another day of dissolution.
We move before full light. The terrain ahead shows more evidence of the freeze’s collapse—crevasses splitting the landscape, old structures scattered like toys, the remnants of a world that existed before the ice swallowed it whole.
