The journey out of the Whispering Marshes was a pilgrimage through hell. Anya became a beast of burden, her world narrowed to the singular, all-consuming task of moving Elias's unconscious body forward. The chaotic whispers of the shattered echoes were a constant, meaningless static, a problem to be navigated, not a threat to be feared. Her new null-sense was her compass, guiding her through the swirling pockets of psychic energy, allowing her to find the quietest, safest path through the madness.
She talked. Constantly. Her voice grew hoarse, but she didn't stop. It was a shield, a mantra against the encroaching silence. She told Elias about the terrain, complained about a blister forming on her heel, described a strange, six-winged insect she saw flit by. The monologue was for her as much as for him; a tether to the physical, the real, the now.
While Anya fought her physical battle, Elias fought a war on a different front.
He was not in a peaceful sleep. He was adrift in a nightmare woven from his own history and the psychic venom of Ithos. He was back in the medical tents of the Southern War, but the canvas walls were made of swirling grey fog. The faces of his dying patients would twist, their eyes glowing with the mocking grey light of the husks. "You couldn't save us either, Healer," they would rasp.
He would turn and find himself on the battlefield, the ground beneath him not dirt and rock, but the fine, black dust of the defeated Stalker. The obsidian shard he carried was now a great, monolithic spire on the horizon, radiating a cold that froze his soul. The ghosts of the soldiers from his old unit would rise from the dust, their expressions accusing. They didn't speak of his tactics, but of his principles. "Your compassion is a beautiful, useless thing," they'd say. "It didn't stop the arrows."
He was powerless, a ghost in his own memories, about to be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of his failures. The phantoms of his past closed in, their hands reaching, their whispers promising an eternity of regret.
But then, a new sound cut through the nightmare. It was faint, distant, but real. A voice. It was rough, tired, and complaining about his weight.
"…heavy oaf… if you wake up, you're carrying me the rest of the way…"
He couldn't quite grasp the words, but he recognized the voice. Anya. It was a thread of reality in his tapestry of despair. Following the sound, he felt something else. A patch of… nothing. A cool, quiet void in the screaming chaos of his own mind. It felt safe. It felt like the Still-Point. He moved towards it, towards the voice and the silence, the two forces pulling him from the depths.
Anya finally staggered out of the last tendrils of the marsh's fog. The oppressive psychic pressure lifted like a physical weight from her shoulders. The ground was solid, rocky, and blessedly stable. She had done it. She had carried them out of the madhouse.
She found a defensible alcove in a rock face, a place where she could watch their backtrail, and gently lowered Elias to the ground. She was beyond exhausted, every muscle screaming in protest, but her work wasn't done. She cleaned the now-healing cut on his arm, the skin still unnaturally pale around the wound. She forced sips of the blessed water from the chapel past his lips.
"Come on, Healer," she murmured, her voice soft with a fatigue that went deeper than her bones. "Wake up. Your watch. It's your turn to carry the world."
As her voice washed over him, something in the dreamscape finally clicked into place. The voice, the silence—they were one and the same. They were his anchor.
Elias's eyes fluttered open.
For the first time in days, they were lucid. He was weak, disoriented, every inch of his body aching with a profound psychic exhaustion, but he was present. He saw the rocky ceiling of the alcove, felt the hard ground beneath him. He saw Anya, her face smudged with dirt, her hair matted with sweat, her features etched with a weariness that mirrored his own. She looked like hell. She was the most real thing he had ever seen.
He didn't ask what had happened. He didn't ask where they were. His first conscious act was to slowly, weakly, raise his hand. He didn't touch her face or her arm. He reached out and gently laid his fingers on the Echo Stone shard fastened to the crude buckler on her wrist.
A wave of profound, calming silence washed over him, quieting the last of the screaming echoes in his mind.
He looked up at her, his eyes filled with a deep, knowing gratitude.
"The silence," he whispered, his voice a dry, cracked rasp. "You brought it with you."
Anya stared down at him, her tough, pragmatic exterior finally cracking under a wave of pure, unadulterated relief. A single tear traced a path through the grime on her cheek. He was back. He remembered. Her impossible gamble had paid off. His mind was scarred, perhaps, but it was still his own. And in the heart of the Verse, he had found it anchored to her.