He sets me down. Doesn’t release me. Just adjusts his grip so his arm wraps around my shoulders, pulling me against his side with the casual possessiveness I’ve come to need.
We turn toward the open ground. Toward the survivors we need to guide to safety. Toward whatever future waits beyond the Thornwood’s burned remains.
That’s when I see it.
A figure at the monastery’s edge, emerging from smoke that should have killed anything human.
At first I think it’s a trick of the firelight. A shadow cast by falling timbers, or a cloud of ash shaped by the wind into something that looks almost like a person. But it keeps moving. Keeps emerging. Keeps taking shape against the burning backdrop of the monastery’s final collapse.
It moves wrong—limbs bending at angles that don’t make sense, body twisted by transformation I recognize from the basement experiments. One of the Abbot’s subjects. Not one of the cells Zrynok reached—he accounted for all six of those. This must be the seventh. The one submerged to the door sill, the one no one could open, the one he had the sense not to look through.
Whatever was locked inside it has found its way out.
Maybe the fire forced it upward. Maybe the Bloom had changed it into something that could survive the flood of its own cell and the inferno above it. Maybe it simply refused to die, clinging to consciousness through the same stubbornness that had kept so many of us alive when we had no right to be.
It doesn’t matter why. What matters is that it’s standing at the burning forest’s edge, watching us with eyes that have been transformed into something inhuman. What matters is that it’s starting to move—not running, not charging, just walking with terrible, deliberate purpose.
Walking toward the survivors.
Walking toward us.
“Zrynok.” My voice comes out steady despite the fear crawling up my spine. “We have a problem.”
He follows my gaze. His body goes rigid against mine.
The figure emerges fully from the smoke. Its body is split open in places, crimson flowers blooming from wounds that should have killed it. Its face—what’s left of its face—turns toward us.
And it starts to walk faster.
FIFTY-THREE
ZRYNOK
The thing that used to be human moves through the burning forest like fire doesn’t touch it.
And maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the Bloom transformation has gone so far that normal rules no longer apply. The creature walks through falling embers without flinching, through smoke that would choke any living thing, through heat that has already blistered the skin of my forearms.
It walks, and it watches, and it keeps coming.
I put myself between the monster and the survivors. My body screams for rest—every muscle burning, every wound from tonight’s fighting reopened and bleeding fresh. My sword is notched and dulled from hours of killing, its edge ragged where Keeper blades have bitten into the steel.
It will still cut. That’s all that matters.
“Get them moving.” I don’t look at Arwen. Can’t look at her. If I see her face, I’ll hesitate. And hesitation will get us both killed. “Whatever happens, don’t stop.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Someone has to survive this. Someone has to use those records. Find the people responsible.” I shift my stance, tracking the monster’s approach. It’s closer now. Close enough that I cansee what the transformation has done to it—the split-open chest cavity, the flowers blooming from wounds that should have killed it, the face that holds no expression because it no longer has the capacity for expression. “Finish what we started.”
“Zrynok—”
“That has to be you, Arwen.” I finally turn to her. Let her see what I’m feeling—the fear I’m barely controlling, the love I’ve barely admitted, the absolute certainty that what comes next isn’t something she should witness. “You know the cult. You know how to find the trails that lead to the patrons. If I die here?—”
“You’re not dying here.”
“If I do—promise me you’ll finish it.”
She doesn’t promise. Doesn’t argue either. Just holds my gaze for a single heartbeat—gray-blue eyes burning with emotions I don’t have time to catalogue—then turns and starts moving the survivors toward the open ground beyond the forest.
