Torren dragged Evelyn's limp form over the rise, her weight slung across his back like a sack of smoldering coal. Her skin was hot—too hot. Her breath came in shallow fits, and sometimes, she would mutter words he couldn't understand.
Words that didn't belong to her voice.
He paused beside a mossy boulder and knelt, easing her down gently. Sweat soaked his brow. One of his hands trembled—not from exertion, but from fear. Evelyn's eyes fluttered behind her lids, her skin glowing faintly with threads of gold and red, as though veins of magma ran beneath the surface.
She whispered something.
"…the song… it's wrong… he watches from behind the glass sky…"
Torren cursed under his breath. The forest around them was too quiet again. No birds. No wind. Even the trees seemed to listen.
He touched her forehead.
Scalding.
Every instinct told him to run. To find the nearest Guild post or firewatcher trail and beg for aid. But he couldn't leave her. And truth be told, he wouldn't know which direction was safe anymore. The beasts that attacked Isenhold had not scattered like usual. They hunted in coordinated groups now. They lingered.
He remembered the Warden's broken voice. The wordless grief in its eyes as it died.
"Take it."
Evelyn had taken something. Something she shouldn't have survived.
Now she burned.
And the worst part? She didn't seem broken. She seemed... becoming.
He shook her gently. "Evelyn. You have to wake up."
Her eyelids lifted. Her eyes glowed faintly—gold-ringed, pulsing.
Then her mouth opened, and a song escaped.
It was wrong—shards of sound, discordant and beautiful and horrifying. Not a tune, but a pattern. A language. The trees creaked in answer, bowing inward. Shadows twitched along the corners of Torren's vision.
He slapped her, hard.
She gasped, and the sound ceased.
Her eyes focused. "Torren...?"
He grabbed her face, rough but relieved. "You're still in there."
"I... saw fire," she whispered. "But I wasn't afraid."
Torren stood, shouldering her once more. "No more fire. No more dreams. Just movement."
They traveled through the dusk like ghosts, Evelyn half-lucid, muttering fragments—names of long-dead cities, beasts that no longer roamed. Torren barely heard them over the pulse of dread in his ears.
Something followed.
Not just the echo-beasts. Not just the windless quiet.
Something listened now when Evelyn spoke. The world itself tilted slightly—unsettled.
By the time they found a collapsed waystation, the stars had gone missing. Even the moon refused to show.
And Evelyn? She began to hum.
The same song the Warden had sung.