The night smothered the world.
Mist clung to the ruined monastery like burial cloth, its gauzy veil sinking into the cracks of shattered stone and creeping across the fractured courtyard. What had once been a sanctuary of chants and bells was now a carcass of its former self, arches snapped like ribs, frescoes long eroded into ghostly stains. The wind threaded through broken windows, humming hollow hymns that tasted of damp ash and forgotten prayers.
Here, amid ruin and silence, the fugitives carved out their fragile refuge.
Leo lay sprawled on a pallet of scavenged cloth, his body a war between life and something else. His chest rose in uneven lurches, the skin beneath his collarbone pulsing with unnatural rhythm. With every beat, the fragment throbbed like a second heart, its rhythm alien, discordant, dragging his veins toward fire. Each breath rattled as if the air itself carried shadow into his lungs.
