The fever had broken. But something remained.
Evelyn sat upright beneath the bent branches of a winterwillow tree, dew clinging to her lashes. The fire from the night before was long dead, its ashes scattered by wind. Torren knelt a few paces away, sharpening his dagger on a flat blackstone, the scrape steady, grounding.
She pressed her palm to her chest.
Not pain. Not pressure.
A pulse—not her own.
Thump.
Then again.
Thump.
Not faster. Not slower. Just… other. It echoed beneath her ribcage like a second songline, one that beat in tandem with no natural rhythm. It did not belong to flesh or blood. It was deeper. Rooted in bone, or soul—or something older still.
I am changed.
The thought came without fear. Just a quiet, terrifying certainty.
"Did I talk in my sleep?" she asked.
Torren looked up. "You called a name. Not mine."
She frowned. "Whose?"
He shrugged. "Didn't sound human."
Evelyn's fingers trembled as she reached for her satchel. The core shard was gone—burned out, perhaps, or dissolved inside her during the fever. Whatever it had been, she had absorbed it entirely. And now something inside her watched the world through her eyes, quiet and patient.
"What did you do?" Torren asked. Not unkind. Not accusing. Just tired.
She stared at her hands. The skin along her forearms shimmered faintly, like cooled glass. When she flexed her fingers, the glyphs from her dreams seemed to rise for a moment, then vanish.
"I survived."
Torren sheathed the blade, stood. "We need to move. There's rot-stench on the wind. Echoed."
She stood slowly, still testing her limbs like new tools. The aches from their flight had faded. Even her half-healed scrapes were ghost-pale now, as if weeks had passed instead of days.
"I feel… wrong," she admitted.
He met her gaze. "You feel alive. That's more than most of us."
They packed in silence. The forest around them seemed subtly altered. The birds still hadn't returned. The usual buzz of insects held a strange pattern, pulsing in rhythmic waves. Even the trees leaned slightly eastward, as though something beyond the ridgeline pulled at their roots.
As they crossed into thicker brush, Evelyn stopped.
The heartbeat inside her answered something outside.
She turned—slowly.
A crow, perched on a low branch, cocked its head.
Its eyes glowed faint silver.
Then it cawed—a harsh, broken sound—and flew.
Torren stiffened. "That… that wasn't right."
Evelyn nodded.
The core inside her flared—brief and bright. Not power, exactly. More like recognition. As if whatever resided within her knew that crow. Or the thing that had worn it.
You are not alone, the pulse seemed to say.
She didn't know if that was comfort or warning.
They walked until dusk, the forest growing quieter, as though something massive had passed through not long before. Trees snapped at odd angles. A stream they crossed bubbled with dark oil before clearing again. Evelyn kept touching her chest—not in pain, but to reassure herself that the new rhythm hadn't stopped.
By nightfall, they made camp near a fallen stone monument, its glyphs half-buried in moss. Evelyn traced one with a fingertip.
It shimmered beneath her touch.
"It knows me," she whispered.
Torren stirred the fire. "What?"
Evelyn shook her head.
She didn't have the words yet.
But she would.
The core inside her was listening.
And soon, she would learn to listen back.